CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“You are going to call Bradford and you are going to patch things up with him.”
I wanted to sigh. How predictable. Same song, different verse. Actually, I couldn’t even say that. Same song, same verse. She made her demand imperiously, like she was the queen of her kingdom and expected all the peasants to do her bidding.
What she’d forgotten was that made me a battle-ready princess. “I will not be doing that.”
The look on her face was so priceless it made me wish that I could have taken a picture of it. “I beg your pardon?”
I knew that I had shocked her, because that wasn’t how I normally behaved with her. When she and my father were busy casting me out and disowning me, I stayed silent. I didn’t cave, I went ahead with the choices I’d made, but I didn’t talk back. I hadn’t verbally stood up for myself, just nodded and went along with their punishments.
Something else that was about to stop.
“I know you’re not hard of hearing, Mom. I’m not going to call him. This may be a surprise to you, but this isn’t the twelfth century. Your daughters are not your chattel and you don’t get to arrange our marriages.”
Somehow her back straightened even further. “I demand to know why you won’t call him.”
“Um, because he sucks and is a crappy human being?”
“I fail to see your point.”
This was it. Time to throw away my get-out-of-jail-free card. She was never going to forgive me for this, and I was okay with it. It wasn’t like I had anything left to lose. “I’m done with Brad. I’m not marrying him.”
“You say that now—”
“No. Not now, not ever. He and I are through and should have been done a long time ago. If I hadn’t been so caught up in trying to always please you and Daddy—”
Now it was her turn to cut me off. “When have you ever tried to please me? You’ve always done exactly whatever you wanted with no thought to how it affected me. Have you stopped, even once, to think about what you breaking up with Bradford would do to me?”
She was never going to get it, because she couldn’t think or care about anyone besides herself. “This isn’t about you, Mom. If you want to be connected to the Branson family so badly, you marry him. I’m not going to do it.”
That made her gasp. “After all I’ve done for you, all I’ve given you, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer ingratitude! Give me one reason why you won’t marry him.”
“Just one? Wow. That’ll be hard. I have so many.” I leaned back in my chair, considering. “There’s the fact that I don’t love him, that he makes me really unhappy. But I think if I can only pick one, I’m going to go with he can’t stop sleeping with other women.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who has to deal with that?” she snapped. “Sacrifices have to be made to have the life you want.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You should. I raised you to be smarter than this.”
She was right. I was smarter than this. Smarter than all this. “I’m not going to put on a brave face in public while my husband humiliates me time and time again.”
She snarled, her entire face twisting. “And you think you’re too good for that? That you’re better than me?”
Something had changed inside my mom. She was usually so much more controlled, so smooth in her condescension and disdain. I found myself feeling unexpectedly sorry for her. I didn’t pretend to understand my parents’ relationship, and after that outburst I certainly didn’t want to know more. Part of me wanted to tell her that it wasn’t my fault her life was terrible. To tell her all the ways she’d failed me as a mother and how I was trying to live a decent life in spite of the way I’d been raised.
I wanted to tell her that none of this was normal. That this was not how parents treated their children. I’d seen my kids at school with their parents. Watched my friends with their families. Blind obedience didn’t equate to love.
But I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. She wouldn’t hear anything I had to say unless it was what she wanted to hear.
“It’s not about being better than you. It’s about making the choices that are right for my life. And one of those will include marrying a man I love, that I respect and I trust. If you want to be a part of my life, if you can support my decisions, then we can talk. Otherwise, I think we’re done here.” This conversation was definitely over.
I stood up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. “I haven’t dismissed you.”
“Despite what you seem to think, I’m not your servant.”
She stood up, too, anger racking her entire frame. “Do you think you can just walk out on me? On me?”
I nodded and the level of quiet, self-assured calm I was feeling seemed to only infuriate her more. “The next time you call or send someone to fetch me, I’m not going to come.”
“Oh, yes you will!”
“What are you going to do?” I asked her, genuinely curious. “Disown me again? That’s the problem when you go nuclear. You can only play that card once. You have nothing else to hold over my head.”
I went out into the hallway and she followed me to the door, huffing and puffing with frustration. “You are going to regret this! I promise you, you will regret it!”
That did make me stop and look over my shoulder at her. “No, Mom. I don’t think I will.”
As I walked toward the kitchen for what I assumed was the very last time, I thought that I probably should have felt sad.
Instead I felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
When I got home, Tyler was in the living room with Pigeon. “How did it go?” he asked, the concern in his voice making my heart feel wonky.
“Fine. I mean, I guess not really,” I said as I hung up my coat. “I told my mother I was done with Brad and wasn’t going to marry him and she went volcanic.”
“That bad?”
“There will be enough magma to bury a city.” I went into the kitchen and got myself a glass of water. “I can’t be who they want and so they don’t want anything to do with me.” The words stung a little, but not as much as I’d once thought they would.
“Is there a chance you just accept them for who they are and move on from there?” I couldn’t tell if Tyler was just trying to be helpful, or if subconsciously he was trying to defend his own choices when it came to his mother.
“I do accept them. I know them and understand them. Probably better than they realize. But this is not up to me. I don’t think they’ll change, no matter how much I want them to. They’ve made it clear that I’m not in charge of this relationship. They are. They make the decisions. And the only way I’ll be their daughter is if I do what they want when they want it. I’m not going to live my life that way anymore.”
“I respect that,” he said. “I know how hard that must be to realize.”
“In some ways it is, but in other ways it’s not. It makes me feel . . . free. Like the whole world has opened up to me in a way that it never was before.”
I put my glass in the sink and walked into the living room. I considered sitting down next to him, but I still felt a little edgy around him. “What have you been up to?”
“I was actually just going over my finances because I was hoping that I might be able to go down to Guatemala this year. I’ve done it in the past for this charity I work with. They build houses down there.”
Nodding, I said, “I know. I mean, I saw it on your Insta.” Then I realized how that would sound. Like I was cyberstalking him. I rushed to try and explain. “Frederica showed me your picture on Instagram when she was telling me about your apartment and then . . .” Then my best friends had gone through all his posts and shown them to me and that was creepy and I needed to shut up. “That sounds like it would be a nice trip. Maybe you could take Pigeon.”
My eyes went wide. Oh crap, I had just done it again. Referenced his Photoshopped pictures of him
and Pigeon on Instagram, which I had also ogled.
He didn’t seem to notice. “I’d love to take her all over the world.” His eyes flicked up to mine and the intensity that I saw there made me feel like my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. “Traveling is always better when it’s with someone you care about. Maybe someday.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest. He wasn’t talking about me and I needed to stop hoping that he was. “When are you going?” I asked, fighting to get the words out.
His face fell at my question, the blue flame in his eyes dying out. “I can’t. My mom sent me an email today saying she wants to replace her car and have this elective procedure done and . . .”
His voice trailed off but I knew what he was saying. He was going to have to put aside his wants again so that his spoiled mother could have everything she wanted. How he couldn’t even have the job he really wanted because he had to earn enough money for her wish list. Having the career I wanted had been so important to me that it really upset me to think that Tyler was being trapped in the same way.
I knew I should stay quiet. This was none of my business. Even if I was telling him everything about my crazy life, it didn’t mean that he wanted to do the same. Or that he was interested in my advice. His situation wasn’t exactly like mine, and I should probably remember that.
But I couldn’t help myself. I saw a long, lonely road in front of him, one that I’d been headed down but had veered off. “We’re friends, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.” He said it like I’d surprised him. As if it were a ridiculous thing to ask.
“I don’t want to be rude to you, and you’ve been a good friend to me, but I think because I’m on this truth-telling bender at the moment I want you to know that it would be okay for you to tell your mom you’re not going to bankroll her life any longer. It’s not a bad thing for an able-bodied adult woman to support herself.” I thought maybe I should stop there, but I’d already let the horses out of the barn, so I kept going. “You don’t have to cut her off completely. You could put her on a budget. You’re good at making those. And if she doesn’t like it . . . .well, I guess she could find a job. Or get married again. You should have the job you want and not care about whether it’s enough to support her. Or anyone else.”
That made him smile a little, and he asked, “Anyone else? What about if someday I end up with someone who expects me to be wealthy? Who came from money herself?”
Someone like me? It felt like he meant me. Which was obviously crazy. I wanted to ask, but didn’t. “Any woman who loves you, any woman who is worthy of your love, will not care what you do for a living. Only that you’re happy and doing what you want to be doing. And it would be one thing if you had this job because you were ambitious or because you wanted to make a lot of money. At least then it would have been your choice. But if you want to be a software engineer, you should be a software engineer. Go back to school. Do what you love. But don’t let somebody else take that decision away from you.”
“I’m a little too old to go back to school,” he said.
“There are plenty of people your age still in college.”
“Yeah. They’re called graduate students or doctors.”
Now that he was joking with me, I knew we were okay and that I hadn’t stepped too far over the line. “Your mother won’t like it. Mine certainly didn’t. But we’re supposed to grow up and be independent, right? I mean, if there’s one thing I learned from this Brad mess, and the blowout with my mother, it’s that drawing boundaries is okay.”
He nodded and held his laptop up. “I should probably get back to this.”
Yes. He should. Maybe spending time looking at his bank account, at how hard he was working and how much of it was going to his mom, would allow him to take some steps forward and live the life he wanted. Not the one that had been forced upon him.
I went into my room and shut the door and lay down on my bed. I felt emotionally drained. I reached over and grabbed my Hello Kitty doll, holding it tight against my chest. I probably shouldn’t have said anything to Tyler. He seemed happy with his life and his mother’s selfish demands. But if I could help him, if I could maybe get him to see that things didn’t have to be this way, then it would have been worth it.
We both deserved better.
That night we decorated the tree as we’d planned. It ended up being a little more difficult than we’d initially thought since neither of us knew how to string lights properly. Then Pigeon kept trying to knock the balls off and tugged at the garland. She was more fascinated by the ornaments than she had been by the tree itself.
As the days passed by, Tyler and I fell into an easy routine. Eating dinner became almost like a dance as we anticipated what the other one needed before either of us had to ask, moving like a well-oiled machine to set the table and eat. He still watched reality television with me and we either made the festival decorations or he worked on his laptop. Sometimes on his actual job, other times on his mobile game. I took that as an encouraging sign.
He even asked me to beta test it on my phone, which made me feel special because I was the only one who got to play it. The game was simple. Just popping bubbles that slowly moved around the screen.
“It has options,” he told me, bringing up a Christmas theme. Now instead of bubbles it had floating Christmas trees.
I popped them with great delight. “You did a really good job on your game.”
“It’s basic. But I’ve learned so much doing it. Look at the menu, click on the other themes, and tell me what you think.”
I did as he instructed and nearly gasped when I found a Hello Kitty level.
“You’re kidding me with this,” I said. The smile on his face let me know that he’d done it for me. I felt tears welling up, and I forced them back down. I so wanted this to mean something even though I knew it didn’t. “Don’t you need a license for this sort of thing?” I asked, popping a Hello Kitty head.
“You do. I’ll take that theme out before I publish it.”
It really had been just for me. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes for fear that he’d see how it made me feel.
I found myself doing that on a pretty frequent basis, hiding my feelings, because we were always together. Especially since Tyler never seemed to stay late at the office. I figured that although he’d cut out most of his traveling, his new position would still mean a lot more work and responsibility. During my childhood my father typically hadn’t come home until after nine o’clock every evening. A tiny part of me hoped that I was the reason Tyler was home so often. That he enjoyed spending time with me just as much as I enjoyed spending time with him.
Although at the back of my mind there was this nagging sensation that things weren’t quite the way they had been before the kiss. And initially I couldn’t tell if it was him or if it was me, but eventually I came to understand that the thing that had changed was me.
I didn’t want to be just his friend. I definitely didn’t want to be just his roommaid. I wanted more than a crush. More than this unrequited limbo I was currently living in. I wanted to be with him, to be his partner and his girlfriend, for him to love me the way that I loved him.
Knowing that I loved him wasn’t like being in a dark room and then having a bright light suddenly turn on; I didn’t look at him one day and realize that I’d fallen for him completely. It was gradual, more like a sunrise, where it got brighter and brighter until it became something that I just knew—I’d fallen in love with him. Slowly, day by day, he had become the most important person in my life.
It also made me realize that I’d never been in love before. What I felt for Tyler compared to what I’d thought I’d felt for Brad? It was like comparing a grain of sand to a giant mountain. So much of my relationship with Brad had been motivated by my fear of losing him, of trying to change myself to be what he wanted, feeling like I never measured up.
But with Tyler? I could be me, even the lounging-in-s
weatpants version of me, and he liked who I was. I didn’t have to change for him. And he made me feel amazing about myself. His compliments, his laughter, his banter, how he listened to me, the way he took care of me by feeding me and giving me a place to live; it all added up to a security and comfort and adoration like I’d never known.
I loved that we laughed together, that we shared so many personal and intimate parts of our lives. That I could tell him his mom was overstepping and he didn’t get angry at me or shut me out. How my heart would flutter every time he smiled at me. The way my stomach got that light, flappy sensation whenever he walked into a room. I’d thought eventually I’d get accustomed to him, but so far it hadn’t happened.
There was a nagging thought at the back of my mind at how quickly this could all end. That while I had scoffed at my mother, telling her she had no power over me, if there was anybody who could figure out a way to hurt me, she was the one.
Of course this could have been some bad residual energy from having grown up in my household and always expecting the worst.
Maybe it was time to try expecting the best. Or, at least, hoping for it.
And that was my new plan, right up until the moment I nearly wrecked everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The poms were finished. I stored them in my room and it looked like a cotton candy machine had exploded in there. Making the fishing wire with cotton balls was difficult until I figured out that if I hot glued the cotton balls, they stayed put. Delia had lent me her hot glue gun, because, of course, she had one.
“Who says you can’t teach a still somewhat youngish dog new tricks?” I asked Pigeon. Feeling full of myself, I wasn’t paying attention when I went to cut the fishing wire with the razor I’d been using and sliced across the fleshy part of my palm.
Blood spilled out—all over my hand and all over the couch. I wrapped the bottom of my T-shirt around the wound and ran into the kitchen. Thanks to the one time I had tried helping Tyler by cutting vegetables for dinner, I knew he kept a first aid kit in the cabinet above the stove.
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