I wake up to the lingering smell of cinnamon and cloves in my hair, the buzzing of my phone on the bedside table, and my mom’s grating voice in my ear. “Hello, Linds,” I grumble, half-asleep and completely annoyed.

“Don’t hello me,” Linds snaps. “You’ve been avoiding my calls. Were you ever going to tell me you’re getting married?”

“Um… No?”

My mother scoffs, and I sit up in bed, leaning back against the carved wood headboard in preparation for her impending tantrum. The room is bathed in midmorning light, and Andrew isn’t in bed beside me, his sheets already cool to my touch. I don’t have time to wonder where he is, because Linds.

“Are you being serious, Elena?” she squawks. “You weren’t going to tell me you have a fiancé? I know I haven’t always been the best mother,” Linds begins to whine, “but the idea that my only daughter would get engaged without telling me—that I would have to find out from pictures on the internet—makes me feel completely worthless, Elena Jane.”

“I was kidding, Mom,” I drone out the lie. “Of course I was going to tell you. Did the, uh”—I cringe at my own cowardice but barrel on anyway—“official engagement announcement arrive in the mail?”

“No, but I’ve been staying with a friend in Tempe,” she says, her spirits sounding vastly improved already. “So, tell me everything! How did you two meet? How did he pop the question?”

I don’t want to do this with her, especially not at—I pull the phone away from my face to check the time—nine in the morning after a night of mulled wine and semi-questionable choices.

I go for a subject change. “How’s Ted doing?”

“Ted who?”

“Ted… your husband…?”The man you married only one month after meeting him. Like mother, like daughter.

“Oh, that prick. Fucking gone is how he is. And good riddance. It’s fine. Doesn’t matter,” she insists. It sounds like it matters quite a lot, but I’m not going to argue with my mother about her love life. Lindsey Oliver is an exemplary reminder that all relationships are doomed to fail. Probably within a calendar year. “I’m swearing off men for a bit. For real this time, Elena. I’m fucking done with the whole lot of them. Maybe I’ll give women a try, like you did.”

“I didn’t ‘give women a try,’ Mom. I’m bisexual.”

“Not anymore, apparently. Now you’re getting married!”

I check the time on my phone again. What was that—three whole minutes before Linds said something biphobic? “That’s not how bisexuality works. I will always be bisexual, even if I marry a man. Even if I only date men!”