“I didn’t say he was evil,” I quickly say, prickling in defense. “This story . . . it’s a job, it’s like pulling the curtain away from something, or revealing something new about a topic people are crazy about. I am certainly not going to write that he’s evil!” I’m getting defensive, so I scowl. “I’m not a mean person, Mother, I’m just trying to do my job.”
“So what will you say? That he’s a womanizer? These girls maybe want to be taken advantage of. I know I did. Your father—”
“Stop!”
Her eyes widen at my outburst.
“I need to write this exposé, and do you know why? Because if I don’t, I’ll get fired, and I don’t know how I’ll get by. And even if I don’t get fired, Edge is at the edge of collapse—and dozens of people are going to end up without jobs. And this, Mother, this is my opportunity to get you a house—a house of your own so you can paint for the rest of your days and maybe have me support you. So I will write this exposé because I’m a professional, and then Edge will get a new edge and my job will stabilize or even catapult me to another level, and then I’m going to buy you a big-ass car and a big-shit house with the money that rolls in, and Saint will be on his yacht with a dozen lovers and he won’t even give a shit.” My voice breaks and my eyes start watering, and Gina and Wynn, who’d been busy flipping through my mother’s magazines, suddenly look up and lower them.
My mother’s face softens. “I don’t want a house, Rachel,” she says, slowly setting down the tea box she’d been pulling out of a cabinet.
A stray tear comes to the corner of my eye, and I dab at it. “Well, you’re getting one. You deserve one, Momma.”
“Rachel, did you miss having a father so much? Did it hurt you so much?” She comes over and sits by my side, and reaches out to take my hand in her warm, soft one.
“It didn’t make a dent. I had you,” I assure her, blinking because I’ve never, ever had an episode like this.
“So why do you need to do something that is clearly not sitting too well with you?” she continues in that understanding way of hers.
Another tear, in my other eye, escapes. I free my hand from my mother’s and wipe it, aware of Wynn and Gina being so quiet, everyone being so quiet except me, breathing fast as I try not to cry harder than these measly little sniffles. “Well, isn’t that what life is about?” I ask her. “Making hard choices? Isn’t that what you choosing to stop painting so you could get a job was about? It was a choice that broke your heart but you had to do it because there was no other choice. Not really. Was there?”
“This young man, how does he feel about you?”
“He’s not in love with me, Mother. He’s not my dad. It wasn’t love at first sight, it wasn’t two soul mates connecting. He doesn’t want to be with me like Father did with you. He didn’t see me and think, ‘That’s my soul mate, that’s the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, no matter how short’!”
I can’t go on. My throat clams up and my chest hurts. “I’m a challenge to him,” I add in a little voice. “I’m just this challenge to him. He’s not a man to feel love for a woman, he’s not made like that. He and I . . .” Something in my chest keeps tightening, like a noose, and my eyes are on fire. “We wouldn’t last even a season. And just like my dad, one second, poof, he’ll be gone, and it’ll be just me and you. Me and you, Mom. Like always.”
I don’t think I can bear to hear a reply, any reply, whether it’s to soothe, to reassure, even to agree, which might hurt even worse, and because I’m being stared at by the three of them as if I just grew a thousand worms out of my head—because I’m evil and that’s what happens to evil bitches like me—I push to my feet and head down the hall to my old room and close the door, breathing as I sit there on a stool before my mother’s unfinished canvas, my eyes leaking tears. I don’t even know why I’m crying. It shouldn’t have been this hard. I never expected it to be this hard. But my friends and my mother are starting to think I’m making a mistake.
I groan and lie down on the floor where my bed used to be, staring up above. I stared at this ceiling when I was just a little girl who wanted a dad, who had dreams, who wanted to make a difference, who wanted to write because writing made something . . . it made something out of nothing.
I used to lie here as a girl, and before I met Gina and she met Paul, I would wonder if I’d ever fall in love with a man the way my mother fell in love with my dad. My mother loved my dad before he even had the chance to disappoint her or break her heart. My mother has the purest view of men in the world, that they are inherently good—the yang in the world, the perfect complement to our yin. And I used to be a girl who would wonder who my yang would be. What he’d do. How he’d look. How hard he’d love me.
Never did I imagine twinkling green eyes and dozens of smiles, and a man who challenges me, teases me, is about as flawed as he is perfect, and makes me want to know him down to his every last thought.
My girl . . .
God. I’ve made such a huge mistake.
By fighting him, I’ve only intrigued him more.