I blanch and scrunch my nose. “I didn’t need to know that, though I could have guessed. But I am well aware of what happened before me. But I also know that nothing has happened with anyone else since he met me, if that’s your concern. He went to Mexico and couldn’t move on. He tried, Mom. He broke up with me and it destroyed us both.”

“I just don’t… how did this happen, Whitney, and be honest.” She gives me a pointed glare.

“Does it matter? Will it help anything?”

“Maybe?”

“I had a crush on him for forever which you knew. It was harmless, nothing happened before I was eighteen, I hope you can believe that.”

“If I didn’t believe that, Jacob would not still be alive.” She narrows her eyes though I can hear the joke lying beneath her words, I think.

I sigh. “I never thought he’d see me like that. He never gave me any indication, never flirted with me or… anything. And then one night I was drunk and,” I shrug as if it wasn’t the most meaningful night of my life. “I came onto him.” I wince. “I think seeing me for the first time in a year, he realized that I wasn’t that same little girl anymore. The last time he saw me, I was seventeen with blonde hair and braces and no boobs. So fast forward a year and I look different and act different and I’m coming onto him… I think it was a moment of weakness? That first night? Because he told me we couldn’t. He told me that was it, it shouldn’t have happened.”

“And yet it did.”

“Mom, I know this is weird and uncomfortable but if you thought about it, isn’t Jacob the exact kind of man you’d want to see me with? Trustworthy and kind and caring and good to me?”

“Sure. But there are other men out there that fit those characteristics that are not part of this family.”

“Well, we are here now and JP and I are planning to get married.”

She gasps and I frown at her shock.

“Seriously? That’s shocking?”

She doesn’t reply, so I continue. “You and Dad have to figure out if you can live with this. If you can be in our lives and accept this. I want that. I want my family. My whole family.” Tears have sprung to my eyes and begin to run down my face. “Mom, I’m so sorry that I did this to us. That I had a hand in destroying a relationship that you held so dear. But I do love him, and I want to be with him and I can’t apologize for that. I can’t spend the rest of my life apologizing for falling in love with your best friend.”