Or, alternatively, I can bottle that up and make a therapist really rich one day.
I put the book back where I found it and scan the floor, which is suspiciously free of clothes. Looking around the room, I finally land on his desk where I was sitting earlier and the shuffling around when he got out of bed suddenly makes sense.
He was folding my clothes.
I don’t take long to dwell on the unfamiliar, fuzzy feeling that floods my stomach at the realization before quickly pulling my clothes back on and heading toward the door. At this point, I’m ready to be in my own space again. I back out of the room slowly, holding down the handle to close the door as quietly as I can so he doesn’t think I’m storming out of here.
I’m satisfied with my efforts to leave, maybe feeling a little smug since Emilia and her ballerina friends tell me I’m about as quiet and graceful as a drunk hippo. Well, feeling smug right up until I turn around to leave and two pairs of inquisitive brown eyes are staring right at me.
“Why do you look like you’re fleeing from the scene of a crime?” Russ’s friend Henry asks at a volume I’d prefer him to lower.
“I don’t.” The girl he’s with gives me a sympathetic look that says you do, without her saying it out loud. “I gotta go, sorry.”
They both step out of the way as I rush past, hoping with everything that I’ve got that it’s not going to be difficult to get a ride and I’m not going to be forced to do the walk of shame.
“He’s a good guy, y’know,” Henry says. “A really good guy.”
“I can tell,” I mumble back. “I really do have to go.”
The party is in its final stages. The only people around to potentially witness my disappearing act are too wasted to care and by the time I reach the front door my shoes are back on my feet, but I can’t get an Uber to accept my request so I set off in the direction of home on foot.
EMILIA BENNETT
Omw
You good?
Yeah
You getting the feeling scaries?
Yeah
You wanna sleep in my bed?
Yeah
The feeling scaries is what Emilia calls the moment of clarity you get after you’ve left a situation you were wrapped up in. It’s the sinking feeling in your gut when the anxiety sets in and you consider whether you did the right thing. It’s a moment like now, when I’m alone with only the thoughts in my head to keep me company. When I weigh up whether what I just did made me feel better or worse. Whether I’d have done that if I’d stayed off my phone and minded my business. And how long that hit of validation and feeling wanted is going to keep me going before I’m looking for the next place to get it. Then finally, whether any of this really matters either way when nobody cares what I do.
The feeling scaries isn’t necessarily regret, it’s reflection and I personally prefer to be distracted rather than reflective.
EMILIA BENNETT
Why are you moving really slow
Are you in a car?
Aurora are you walking!!!
Don’t you dare get murdered
I’m so mad at you
I’m almost home
“You’re a clown,” Emilia says as I climb into bed beside her. “Stop playing chicken with your safety because you’re too impatient to wait for a ride.”
“Noted.” Maybe if I’d managed to get a ride I wouldn’t have spent the entire walk home thinking of the guy I just left.
“Your pizza is in the kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
Emilia sighs heavily. “Go to sleep. You’ll need the energy to break up your parents’ brawl.”
“Are you sure you want to go for breakfast?” I don’t get a response, just a cushion launched in my general direction. “We could just fake our own deaths.”
“Your mom would know. You really need to sleep, Ror,” she says through another yawn. “Just think, a whole summer without sharing your location in the middle of the night. Just weeks and weeks of keeping small children alive and uninjured—and self-development.”
“The dream.”
Chapter Six
AURORA
Nothing on this earth inspires the same pure, unadulterated despair as having to spend any prolonged length of time with my parents in the same location.
It sounds dramatic, but honestly, Chuck and Sarah Roberts are the poster couple for “sometimes divorce is a blessing.” There’s just something about them being within six feet of each other that turns them both into monsters.
With that in mind, I should probably count myself lucky that Dad hasn’t showed up to the goodbye breakfast he promised he’d to be at before I head to Honey Acres sleepaway camp to work for the summer with Emilia.
The most annoying part isn’t being consistently let down by a man who is supposed to be one of the stable pillars in my life, it’s the effect his absent parent bullshit has on Mom, who, if anything, I could cope with being a little more absent.
“Why don’t you try him again?” She watches me over her orange juice with a sad pout. “Have you tried his assistant? Or Elsa? Your sister can always seem to reach him.”
“He’s not going to answer; it’s fine.” It is fine, because you can’t be disappointed by someone you have zero faith in. “Our plans clearly weren’t his important ones. What were you saying?”
Reaching for my glass, I gulp down my water and free my throat from the metaphorical brick lodged in it. The one that gets slightly bigger every single time I say the words “it’s” and “fine” in the same sentence.
“I was about to ask if you thought any more about moving home when you get back?” Give me strength. “Don’t look at me like that, Aurora. I literally made you.”
You’d think after twenty years I’d be used to the incessant probing and the not very discreet attempts to remind me that she’s the reason I exist and yet—here we are. “I, uh, Mom, you know we’ve signed the lease for next year already. Dad already paid the full year upfront . . .” What’s a polite way to say, “hell will freeze over before I voluntarily live with you again?” “You can’t expect me to commute from Malibu every day when I have a perfectly nice home right next to college . . . I’d spend half my day sitting in traffic.”
“There are children in other cultures who live with their parents forever,” she says in a hushed tone. “Your sister is in London. You take three days to return my calls. Don’t act like I’m the unreasonable one for wanting to see my daughters regularly. It’s not even far.”
God forbid Sarah Roberts ever be accused of being the unreasonable one.
“I think my parents’ worst nightmare would be me moving home,” Emilia interjects, forcing a chuckle to lighten the increasing tension.
Emilia Bennett is the perfect roommate, best friend and occasional human guilt shield. Two years studying public relations and six years playing emotional babysitter to my mom and her turbulent mood has turned her into my own personal crisis manager.
“I’m sure they would love it if you moved home, Emilia,” Mom sighs dramatically. “I’m sure their house feels huge and lonely without you.”
The only reason Mom’s house feels huge and lonely is because she sold my childhood home and used the divorce settlement to buy a huge “fuck you” house on the beach.
Her eyes land on me and it’s a look that I recognize: expectancy.
She expects me to want to be home as much as she wants me to be home and she can’t understand why I’d rather work all summer than spend it with her. It was never a problem when I was the one sent to camp, the problem started when she realized I was much happier there than with her.
We travelled around a lot when I was a kid, moving from country to country depending on where Fenrir, the Formula One team my dad owns, was racing that month. Following the team around the world was always Dad’s top priority, never stability for his daughters and wife.