Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Christ.
This is it. This is how I’m going to die.
I’m having a heart attack. I can’t breathe and I’m dizzy and all I can focus on are the words he just seared into my brain. Babies and marriage and things that will never happen.
I sit up and clutch my chest.
“I told you to stay away from me,” I yell at him. “You should have listened. I can’t give you those things, Rory.”
He’s quiet, but his hand reaches out for mine. Our fingers tangle together and that line inside of me is going berserk.
I don’t know how this happened.
I was supposed to be the one to fuck him up.
But he’s got me all fucked up instead.
I’ll never admit it.
I’ll never admit that he’s done this to me.
And I need something to grasp onto. Something to make me feel like my old self.
“You got my files,” I accuse him. “Didn’t you?”
Dead silence.
His fingers stiffen around mine, and I have my answer.
“I had no choice,” he says. “I needed to know what I was dealing with. I need to protect you.”
“Did you like what you found?” I ask. “Do you feel vindicated now? Because I’m just so goddamn helpless?”
“I saw your mother,” he blurts.
That’s it. There goes the flat line. Back to where it belongs.
“Fuck. I don’t know why I did it, Scarlett. I only want to take care of you.”
The mental image of him and my mother together in one room, speaking about me… it’s too much.
“Fuck you.” I lunge from the bed and grab for my clothes.
He comes after me, and I yank out my knife and aim straight for his heart.
“Come any closer, and I won’t miss this time.”
“Scarlett.”
He is sad and broken and all the things I knew he would be. But he did this to himself, and I’m out of generosity as far as Rory is concerned. As far as anyone is concerned.
“You should have stayed away,” I tell him again.
“Don’t leave.”
“I told you,” I say. “I fucking warned you. And now, you better watch your back, Rory.”
Thirty
Scarlett
The fault is not in our stars, but our hearts- those immortal instruments which beat on in spite of our most valiant efforts to destroy them.
I don’t know why I’m here.
Nothing has changed.
My mother is shopping and day drinking, the same as she does every Wednesday afternoon. I watch her through the window, perfectly coiffed and utterly miserable.
She alone could keep Botox in business.
Because she doesn’t want to give away anything real or true.
She’s always been this way. She was born miserable, and she will die miserable.
But she will take that secret to her grave.
All that matters is how her life looks on the outside.
People don’t care that there’s a feud between the employees in the back when there are glamorous objects up in the store window. My mother keeps her storefront stocked with glamorous things.
Pretty words and practiced topics of conversation. Conservative but fashionable clothing and a face that is immune to time and gravity.
She fell in line like she was supposed to. The way an Albright was supposed to. She married into old money, and she had a baby, like she was supposed to. That was when things went terribly wrong for her.
I never could fall in line, the way that I was supposed to.
I had so much privilege it was nauseating. I had been blessed with everything. There was one critical problem with the whole situation. I couldn’t play the role I had been cast in. I gave it a fair effort, but I wasn’t her. She could never understand that.
She fought for what she had her whole life. She fought tooth and nail for it.
She never knew any other way.
And all I ever did was disappoint her.
I watch her drink her thousand-dollar champagne through the window, and for the first time in my life, I feel truly sorry.
I feel sorry for her.
My mother will never know the simple pleasure of telling someone to fuck off. Of doing something because she wants to, and not because it’s expected of her.
She’s never going to know freedom in its purest form, with the chains she’s so carefully bound herself in.
This world is hers, and I don’t belong here anymore.
I never did.
But I know it now more than ever. The path I set out for myself is the only one I could have followed.
And I have nothing to say to her.
I have nothing to say to anyone here. Except for the last three names on my list.
The last three names before I am truly free from this life.
The train feels old hat though I never actually took public transportation in New York. Albrights got around in town cars.
The first time I ever took a train was the night that I left. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I just checked the board and picked the next scheduled train.