She wasn't looking for me.
She was here for Brit.
“What is this about?” I asked, stepping between her and B as my father came through the door as well.
“This is about us getting a phone call from Marco that you're throwing your career away. Is it because of Brittany?” my mother said. “Lucia told us you've been referring to her as Amore mio. Is that what you abandoned your training to come back over here for? This girl?”
“This girl is my best friend, and she has been for years,” I defended. “You're not about to treat B like she's some stranger, like you don’t know her. She's been my biggest support, there for me like nobody else has been. The other day, you talked about dinner being family only, but then Lucia showed up. She's not family, not close. But B? She is. And yeah - amore mio.”
“You are throwing your career away over a woman?”
“I'm throwing my career away, because I trusted my shady ass trainer. Cause I trusted my parents. And it ended up all messed up.”
“So this is our fault now?” my father chimed in, speaking up for the first time since this conversation started.
“Nah,” I shook my head. “It's not your fault. I should have been smarter. I shouldn’t have listened to you, to any of you. The only person here who has consistently had my best interests at heart is Brittany. She's the only one I should’ve listened to.”
“Don't you insult your mother this way,” my father argued. “She and I have done everything we could to ensure your success.”
“So you think your job is done?” I asked. “Ensuring my success, you think that's what I needed from you? You ensured my success while you crippled me to everything else, and you think that's what I needed? You're proud of that?”
“You have no idea how ungrateful you sound right now,” my mother snapped. “You have no idea how much your father and I sacrificed to provide a legacy for you - to make sure that you continued it for whatever children you might have. Maybe some of it was a little unorthodox, maybe Marco pushed you hard. But you do not get to act like we weren't doing our very best by you.”
I shook my head, letting out I sigh as Britt wrapped her arms around one of mine, leaning into me for support.
To give it, not receive.
“If this was your best… I would have gladly taken something else,” I told my parents, looking back and forth between them. “You have no idea what the last two years have done to me. Not just the physical, but the mental toll. The inadequacy I’ve felt. The shame, the guilt. And instead of asking me about any of that… instead of trying to understand why, to understand where I'm coming from… you come here to berate me into doing what you want me to do. To insult the woman I love, and tell me I haven't been grateful enough.” I shook my head, trying to keep my shit together, but I couldn’t keep it from coming out in my voice. “I would have taken anything else. Anything.”
“Why are you so stuck on this?!” my mother hissed. “You're healthy, Raf. You’re whole. You don't have to be stuck here.”
“You're right, I don't have to be stuck here, and I won't be. But I'm not whole.” I nodded. “I will be though. And it won't be thanks to you.”
My mother's eyes grew cold as she stared at me, and that hit me like a lead weight in the stomach. “That's how you feel?” she asked.
I nodded, because I had to.
If I didn't stand up for myself now, if I didn't hold my ground… this would never end.
“It is.”
“So be it then,” she said, turning her back on me to look at my father. “We're going home. See how well you fare here alone.”
“He's not alone,” Brittany chimed, glaring at my mother as she clutched my arm. “I hope you understand, this is your loss. Not his.”
My mother opened her mouth to speak, B’s feisty ass immediately held up a hand and stepped forward. “No. You don't get to speak anymore. You get out of my home.”
They left in a huff, neither of them looking back.
I was… strangely okay with that.
At least for the first few seconds.
After that though, after minutes had passed with me still stuck there, and the silence had settled around us… I felt gutted.
Completely.
“They'll come around,” B spoke up, trying to sound hopeful.
If she had hope, that made exactly one of us.
I shook my head. “It doesn't matter. Let's go to dinner.”
She frowned. “Raf, no. We are not “going to dinner” after something like that. You need time.”
“I need to eat. And…we need to talk about this interview with Wil Cunningham-Bishop.”
Britt's eyes bulged wide for a moment before she smiled. “You're going to do it?”
I took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yeah. Everybody wants to speak for me, everybody has their thoughts and ideas about what I should do. Questions about when I'm coming back, why I’ve made my decisions.” I shook my head. “I can't keep dodging it. It's time to tell my story.”
Chapter Twelve
I woke up to hundreds of notifications on my phone.
My first reaction was to panic, thinking it had something to do with Rafael. Like maybe his trainer, or his parents, or maybe Lucia, had spilled his business to the press or something.
I gently eased myself out of Raf’s arms so I could get a good look at my phone. He was exhausted after everything that had happened between yesterday and last night - so exhausted he was snoring, which was unusual for him.
I really, really didn't want some bullshit to be the way he woke up.
To my relief though, the notifications had nothing to do with Raf at all. Apparently, Miss Tiffany – from that hike in Sugar Valley - had been given access to social media for her thirteenth birthday and had been perusing the vitiligo tags there in search of community. Which, I thought was an excellent idea. I would have killed for that kind of access when I was her age going through this.
In any case, she’d finally decided to take the selfie plunge for herself, and had posted the picture we took together up on Sugar Leaf Mountain. An image that I, of course, had not, because she was a child, and I hadn't exactly gotten permission from her mother to have her face all over Instagram.
Tiffany had though.
Someone recognized my face in the pictures, so I’d gotten tagged pretty early on.
“This moment meant everything to me. I have never seen such a beautiful person with skin like mine before. She was so freaking cool too, with a cute boyfriend. #goals”
I smiled at her caption.
If these current teenagers thought you were cool?
Yeah.
You were cool.
The images had been reposted by a bunch of people, a bunch of times, which is why my notifications had gone crazy like that. I made sure to navigate to the original post on Tiffany's account, where I made sure to hit the follow back button before I left my own comment.
“Everything you said about me, I could say the exact same things about you. ❤️”
I left a heart emoji on the end of my comment and then backed out to take a look at my other notifications. Because of the traction from Tiffany's post and all those reshares, I'd actually picked up a whole lot of attention and new followers… something I wasn’t that excited about.
There were so many ways something like that could go wrong.
I was pleasantly surprised though.
All the commentary was typical enough - there were a whole lot of the usual hashtag platitudes, a whole lot of the words beautiful, gorgeous, soooo pretty, being thrown around.
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes about it.
I could fully admit being prone to dramatics and overthinking, and some dramatic overthinking. It was during one of those very recent deep dives into my own thoughts that something occurred to me.
A few days ago, I’d gone to the furniture store with Raf, and afterward he couldn't seem to keep his hands off me. In his words, I w
as “too beautiful for him to not touch.”
I believed him when he said that.
I didn’t think he was lying.
I didn't think Jules or Anika, or the people on social media were lying.
I didn't think my mother was lying.
I didn't think Vaughn was lying.
I didn’t think any of my string of boyfriends, with all their other personality deficits, were lying when they said I was beautiful.
So that made me the liar.
I had to start stopping my lies in their tracks, and telling myself the truth. If everybody else could see it, then I damn sure would too. I refused to be the odd person out in seeing myself as a masterpiece.
So instead of writing those compliments off as corny, and shallow, I absorbed and let them sink in a little. Then, I pulled myself up from the bed fully, heading to the bathroom to get cleaned up a bit.
Raf’s interview at the radio station was in the early afternoon, and my plan for success was to keep him here at my apartment. We would eat the breakfast I was about to go get for us, and talk and laugh and not let our thoughts give way to any bullshit. Afterward, if he was up to it, we’d go to Anika and Jules’ party.
I had a feeling he might need a chance for some fun and decompression after this interview, knowing Wil Cunningham-Bishop. She was an excellent interviewer for sure and I adored her.
But she was tough.
Real tough.
I had no delusions that she would take it easy on Raf.
But… I knew he could handle it.
As protective as my instincts were when it came to him, as hard as this whole thing, these last years had been - to the point it left him uncertain of himself - I had full faith in him.
He was working on settling into himself.
Transitioning into this new man.
I couldn't be prouder of him.
I slipped away from his hold when he tried to pull me back in the bed with him, when I went back to tell him where I was going.
“I'll be right back,” I promised, planting a soft kiss on his lips before I headed out.
Yesterday had been such a lovely day, and this one… was the opposite of that. It was dark today, and gloomy, and I tried not to let myself wonder if it was some sort of symbolism, a warning for how this day was about to go.
I probably should have given that a little more thought.
As soon as I walked into Stacks to pick up a couple of breakfast platters, my eyes landed on my father.
Part of me wanted to turn around and just go get coffee and bagels or donuts or something instead of sharing space with the man I despised.
But the man I loved wanted pancakes.
He won.
I walked up to the counter and sat down, holding my breath as I waited for a server to approach and take my order. I made sure to put space between where I was sitting and where he was, but he looked up anyway when I sat down.
“Well, well,” he drawled. “If it isn't the prodigal daughter.”
I blew out a deep sigh. “That doesn't mean what you think it does,” I told him, rolling my eyes.
“I know what it means, Brittany. I'm just making conversation with you.”
“You don't have to. As a matter of fact, I’d rather you not.”
I groaned as instead of being deterred by my apparent lousy attitude, he got up and moved down a few seats until he was seated right beside me.
“You do understand that no matter how you feel about me, I'm still your father, right?”
“As long as you understand that the word means nothing without some actions to back it up… yeah, sure,” I countered.
“Brittany.”
“Quincy.”
My father blew out a sigh and shook his head. “Girl, you are just as infuriating as your mother.”
“Oh, my mother. I'm a little surprised you remember her.”
“I was married to the woman twenty-three years. Why wouldn't I remember her?”
“Well, usually people tend to get amnesia about the people they wronged. Why wouldn’t I think the worst about you?”
“Of course you do,” my father chuckled. “But only about me, never about your mama.”
I frowned, but was interrupted from speaking by the server stopping by to take my to-go order. Once she was gone, I turned to my father. “Yeah, just you. Not her. You were the one I saw doing wrong.”
“Yeah,” he huffed. “That was all you saw.”
“Okay what are you trying to imply? Are you trying to insinuate my mother did something wrong to you?”
“Well, we can start with those damn plants!”
Immediately, I rolled my eyes. “Her being passionate about something and leaning into that passion despite your disapproval isn’t doing you wrong. I'm sure it seemed that way to you though.”
“Brittany, I'm allergic to all those damn palms and ficus and fig trees and shit. Even the smell drives me nuts, makes me sick as a dog if I get too close.”
My eyes went wide. “You’re serious?”
“Yes, your mama filled the house up with those plants knowing it made it hard for me to breathe while I was there. Did it to drive me away – she admitted it!”
I looked him right in the face, pressing my tongue between my teeth as I laughed. “Yes mama,” I muttered to myself, making my father let out a snort.
“See there? You hate me so much that you hear something like that and think it's funny.”
I pushed out a sigh, and wiped the amusement from my face as I looked at him. “Okay… how about you tell me why I shouldn’t.”
His eyebrows went up. “Why you shouldn't what?”
“Hate you.” I answered. “And you need to tell me something better than because you're my father.”
He shrugged, ready with an immediate answer. “Because your mother didn't. No, I'm not going to sit here and act like I was a perfect man, because I wasn't. I have made some mistakes I deeply regret, and I absolutely didn't do right by you, your brother, or your mother all the time. But I'm not that man anymore, Brittany. After your mother left me, after we divorced - it wasn't until then that I really got it.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “You finally had a consequence.”
He gave me a deep sigh, not denying my words, because he couldn't. “I accepted my consequence, and then I decided I didn’t want that anymore. So I made it right with your mother, which is how we ended up back together.”
“Right. You charmed her right back into your grip, even though she was the happiest I've ever seen her without you.”
“That might be true, and I own that. But in that time we were back together, before she died… I made her happy, Brittany.”
“And then she died, because of you. Because of the toll of the stress that you put her through.”
“Your mother had a heart condition.”
“With stress-induced, ongoing complications,” I argued, unwilling to relent on my point. “After she left you, she was getting better.”
My father shook his head. “She was not getting better. Maybe she told you that, to ease your mind. But… she knew she was dying. It was the only reason she gave me another chance. She didn't want to be alone.”
“She wasn't alone. She had me.”
He laughed. “You know damn well it's not the same thing.”
I turned away from him and huffed, not wanting to tell him he was right, and simultaneously baffled by the little tidbit he’d just revealed to me.
She’d lied.
When I questioned her decision to get back with my father, my mother rightfully put me back in my place - outside of her business. She didn't have to answer to me, she didn't have to explain. But when I asked about her health - when I asked about the doctor's appointments she always had, she wasn't secretive.
She outright lied.
“Of course she forgave you then,” I said. “When people are dying, they forgive everything. But… I'm still here, and she's not. But she would be if you
hadn't put her through so much that it literally made her sick. I don't have my mother because of you,” I snapped, trying my best to hold back the tears that were suddenly brewing behind my eyes. “And so… I come back to my question. Why shouldn't I hate you?”
My father stared at the coffee cup resting between his hands, staring into its depth as he considered my question. Finally, he looked up, meeting my gaze with full sincerity when he said, “Because I'm still here. We shouldn't squander it.”
I was saved from responding by the arrival of my order.
I grabbed my bag, paid, and left without saying a single word to my father or looking back. I headed back home with my head swirling, taking the long way. I had to give myself a little more time to get my mind right before I walked back into my apartment, where Raf was waiting.
He had enough shit of his own going on.
Because of that, I was especially not in the mood for any more drama - which of course meant it found me. I was back on my street when a passing car slowed down and I looked up to see a familiar face peeking out of the back-passenger side window.
Lucia Fortini.
“Hey,” she called out to me. “It's Brittany, right? My goodness, you are just so… uniquely pretty. I can see why—”
“Let me stop you right there, bitch. Because I'm not the one, and this is not the time. I don't know what kind of reverse psychology, mean girl bullshit you think you’re about to pull on me, but I'm going to make myself real clear with you, real quick. Raf is mine. You cannot have him. You and your father don't get to threaten him. You cannot talk to him. As a matter of fact, don’t fucking look him up. And if I find out you’ve attempted any of the above, I will personally come to wherever you are to kick your bitch ass. Okay?”
Lucia’s eyes were wide with alarm by the time I finished speaking, and she nodded. “Sure,” she stammered. “I don't want any more trouble. Rafael is a good guy, and I'm sorry for all of this.”
“All of what?” I snapped, stepping toward the car, which I realized now had rideshare logos in the windows. “Is something happening? Do you know anything?”
In Tandem Page 16
