Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Language. I’m driving, and I’ve got you on speakerphone.”
“I know what the f-word means, Mom,” Siorse said primly.
“Do you know what grounded means, young lady?” Julie sighed. “Vic? What happened?”
“Remember that bloke I told you about?”
“Mmhm. The one you like that doesn’t like you? Or you think he doesn’t like you.”
“I know it, now. I…we…had this thing going, this kind of mutually beneficial thing, I guess…” It was hard enough picking words carefully without telling her he was letting Amani tie him down and drive him beyond reason with torment and pleasure; harder still to keep it vague and G-rated with Siorse listening. “I wanted it to be more. And instead of telling him that or showing him that, I treated him like he was disposable.”
“Well that’s a shit thing to do.”
“Language,” Siorse piped up.
“Grounded,” Julie retorted. “God, she gets more like you every day.”
Vic laughed humorlessly. “Your daughter needs better role models.”
“Ha. Ha.” Julie broke off, swearing under her breath in whispers as honking erupted around her. “…New York drivers…Vic, what do you want to do?”
“I want to take it back. Tell him I didn’t mean it. Tell him I love him.”
“So do that.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple,” she said. “You fu—effed up by not being honest with him about what you wanted. If you want to fix that, well…”
He pinched the tight knot between his eyes. “He’ll just tell me to sod off.”
“So you’re a mind-reader now?”
“Predictions based on past experiences. Math major.”
“I always hated math.” Julie snorted. “What happens if you fail?”
“He hates me.”
“And what happens if you don’t even try?”
“…he hates me.”
“Exactly. There’s not exactly a new net loss here, but if you try and he’s willing to listen…”
“But I can’t know how he’ll react if I—”
“Of course you can’t know.” Julie cut him off with an exasperated sound. “Because you can’t control that. The only thing you can control is what you choose to do, and then everything else is out of your hands.”
“I don’t know how to start.”
The frustrated tone in Julie’s voice warmed. “Do right by him,” she said. “Not because you want something in return. Not because you want to atone. Not out of some sense of cosmic guilt or morality or anything else. Do right by him because you want him to be happy, even if it’s not with you.” Gentle words, yet they cut to the quick. “Can you live with that? Can you live with giving everything for him, and he still walks away from you?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation, his lips and his heart speaking before his mind could catch up, could over-analyze, could pick his feelings to pieces small enough for him to sweep out of sight. “If he’s happy…if he’s happy, if he’s safe, then yes. Yes, I can.”
“Then do that,” she urged. “And just…see what happens.”
He smiled faintly. “Thanks. I’ll try. I just…thanks. I needed that perspective.”
“It’s not an unfamiliar scenario with you,” she said tentatively. “You’ve been trying to atone for something you didn’t do to me for your whole life. Sometimes I wonder if Siorse and I are even people to you, or just your personal crusade to compensate for Oliver.”
It was like she’d picked him up only to knock him back down again with a hook right to the face. He stared blankly at the floor between his knees. “I…of course I see you as a person, Julie, I…”
“Then you have to treat me like it.” She didn’t even sound upset; if anything there was an odd kindness to her words. “I’ve wanted to say this to you for a long time, but right now…it seems like you’re finally in a place to hear it. I can’t be a golden bird in a golden cage, Vic. I appreciate everything you and your family have done for me, for us, but it feels like I’m living in this box where my only identity is your brother’s victim. I want more than that. I want to just be me without his ghost always haunting me. I want…I want a happy ending. My own, not one bought and gift-wrapped for me.”
Fuck. He couldn’t even do this relationship right. If he couldn’t treat Julie right, how could he ever hope to do right by Amani? But he tried to shove his own feelings down, tried to bind up all the bitterness and the loss and the pain and the emptiness into one tight fist inside himself. “What would be your happy ending, then?” he asked raggedly. “Is there anything I an give you that would help you on your way?”
“A job,” she answered. “That’s all I want. I sit in this house all day doing nothing and filling my life with useless hours in between waiting for Siorse to need me again. I just want to do something I love.” She laughed, but it came with a choked edge of repressed tears that said she was hurting as much as Vic, and somehow it softened the sting of the wound, connected them again with rougher edges where they’d be messy for a while, but maybe they’d be okay. “Your parents paid for that agricultural tech degree and it’s been sitting in a box ever since. I just want to be able to prove myself without someone else holding me up.”