33. Nevaeh
Papa hands me some tape for the box I’m holding shut at the bottom. I release the flaps to find the beginning of the tape on the roll, groaning when I run my fingers over it five times without any luck. I give it back to Papa, who smiles at my incapability to do such a small task when a moment ago I was basically lifting half of my bed off the floor to look for a missing sock.
He instructs me to close the box again so he can fasten it for me. An unspoken question lingers on his features the entire time.
No, you started without me?Aileen signs, running over to me and wrapping her arms around my neck. I hug her back, smelling the familiar vanilla scent emanating from her. I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone with that sister of yours, she playfully complains, and I let out a short laugh as sadness creeps into my chest while she pulls me into another hug.
Leaving my family is the only bad thing about this move.
You’re always welcome to visit me when she gets on your nerves, I offer after stepping out of the hug to look at her. Her brown eyes filled with tears. Guilt consumes me in return. This is the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, but I hope they will forgive me for it.
How many times can I come to visit?she asks, and I chuckle. She spins around to look at my father, her black, curly hair almost hitting my face. Rob, you promised I could turn this room into a Nevaeh shrine, and I need you to keep your word, Aileen signs, and I almost choke on my own breath.
“Oh my God, what?” I ask, but my sister’s girlfriend waves my words away with her hand. She’s waiting for a response from Papa.
“Of course, I’m keeping my word. I’ll even help you build it,” he replies, moving his hands to form the words, and I grin.
You’re both so weird,is all I say before concentrating on packing my clothes and jewelry into a box.
Aileen neatly folds my things before placing them in my suitcase. I will be flying to Monaco tomorrow morning to drop off my things, then catch another plane to Australia in the evening. Luckily, Adrian and I both have a layover in Frankfurt, which means we will be traveling together from there on.
“Oh no, did I miss the fun part?” Nova asks once we’re all done.
She drops onto my bed, grabbing Aileen’s hand as she falls. My sister has never been one for physical touch to display affection, but it’s different with Aileen, and it makes me smile every time. Nova is so in love with her girlfriend, it’s the cutest thing in the world.
“Are you not taking your paintings?” Nova asks. I look at the art that had me in tears a few months ago.
“No, I won’t have space on the walls, and I don’t want to go through the trouble of sending a painting. It would be too expensive,” I explain, a pain shooting through my heart as I do.
Papa puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes to reassure me everything will be fine. The question from earlier is still on his face, and I finally cave.
“You’re going to get more gray hairs holding back what you want to ask me,” I say with a smile. “Not that it would be obvious, but—” Papa cuts off my teasing by tickling my sides. I jump out of his reach after letting out a horrendous squeal.
“You should show me more respect,” he says and signs with a glare I don’t buy.
You’re right. After all, you always taught me to respect my elderly,I sign back and run around the bed to get out of his reach. Nova and Aileen are crying from laughter, and I join them while my father smiles.
“It’s a good thing you’re moving out, Nevaeh. You’re too mean,” he complains but ends up grinning as he looks down at my boxes in front of him. It fades quickly as a serious expression causes his features to drop. “Your mother isn’t really at the nail salon,” he starts, and I feel my heart sink. Mama told me she couldn”t help me pack because she had an appointment. “She’s at Elena’s,” Papa says, making me sigh.
“Avoiding me,” I add, and he nods. “Why are you telling me that?” I ask, unable to come up with a good enough reason why he couldn’t just leave me in the unknown. It was painful enough before, I didn’t need to know this.
“Because I need you to do something for me, and you’re not going to like it.” I raise a brow. “You two need to have dinner by yourselves tonight.”
He’s right, I don’t want to do this. Mama is only going to tell me how disappointed she is, and I’ll have to convince her what a great choice I’m making.
Since she’s even more stubborn than I am, that’s an impossible task.
“Fine, but you owe me a big bowl of gummy bears,” I reply and lift my hair up to tie it into a ponytail.
Deal,he signs, and I look at Nova and Aileen, who are already staring at me. I widen my eyes and then roll them, making them laugh. I wish they could come to dinner, too, but Papa’s right. I have to be the one to talk to Mama without any distractions or influences from other people.
Mama hasn’t said a word to me since we sat down at the dinner table. I’ve tried making conversation multiple times, but she hasn’t responded once with anything other than an “mhmm.”
“Alright, Mama, I know this is incredibly hard for you, but can you put yourself in my shoes for one minute and see how difficult it is for me? After my injury, I was lost, and now that I’m finally doing well and starting to be happy, my own mother is solely thinking about herself. Why can’t you see that this is the right thing for me to do?” I ask while she watches my mouth move with every word.
“I think you’re being selfish,” she mumbles, picking at her broccoli and avoiding my furious gaze.
“And I think you’re being selfish. So, where does that leave us?” Her blue eyes lift back up to my face before she makes my blood boil with her next question.
“It leaves us with this question: are you moving to Monaco because of Adrian Romana?”
I’m going to lose my mind before this dinner is even over. Right now, I’d actually love nothing more than to be with him, but I won’t tell her that.
It’ll only convince her that she’s right.
“Adrian didn’t even come to mind when my bosses offered me the job in Monaco. My life doesn’t revolve around men, Mama, even if it may include them.”
She scoffs at my response.
“Please, you’ve let them control your actions and decisions for years.” This makes me sigh, and not a surface-level sigh either, but a deep one that has been brewing since I first told her about my move.
“How? How have I done that?” My curiosity gets the better of me, and, for now, I let it. I’d like to hear whatever story she has come up with in her head.
“You started pursuing tennis because your father told you you’d make it far. You allowed Lincoln to control your emotions for years and only recently, it made you disrespectful toward guests in this house, young lady. Now, that Adrian guy has you moving to Monaco, doing free-lance type of work when you should be working in a team, and a lot more you probably don’t tell me about.”
Wow, that’s a lot of imaginary facts to take in. I swallow down the angry words lingering on my tongue.
I neatly place the cutlery next to my plate, taking another deep breath.
“I started pursuing tennis because I was in awe of the strength the women showed in their battles for greatness. I didn’t let Lincoln control my emotions. It was pain and anger that did. Lastly, I am not, and listen closely here, moving to Monaco for Adrian Romana. He and I are friends, just like I’m friends with Valentina and Gabriel.” I push my chair back and stand up, my heart aching from her negativity.
Mama’s eyes flood with tears, but she still glares at me.
“You can lie to yourself all you want, but your selfishness will be your biggest mistake. When you realize that, when you want to come home begging for forgiveness because you messed up, don’t count on me being there. I’ve warned you, and you have decided to ignore me. You choose this path, and I’ll not wait around for you to come crawling back, which you will. Your father may baby you and hand-feed you as if you were still a child, but I won’t,” she says.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I ask, but my mother just shakes her head.
I take a deep breath to fight back my anxiety. There’s a reason I hate confrontation. That reason is standing right in front of me. My entire life, I’ve never been allowed to be upset, angry, my own person outside of this family. I’ve been told to be a good child who does everything she’s told because my father had an image to protect. Being in the spotlight of Formula One means he has a reputation he carefully crafted over the years. If one of his daughters were to do something stupid, like discredit herself as a journalist for falling for the most beautiful and seemingly perfect Formula One driver, it would reflect badly on him.
And it isn’t just this, it’s everything we did as kids. It’s throwing a tantrum in a grocery store. It’s not wanting to dress up in outfits that made me feel like I was dressed in layers of duct tape. It’s not finding a job for months after I’ve finished university.
My fear of failure isn’t something my mind invented as a fun way to mess with me. It was born out of familial expectations, taking away things I wanted and replacing them with things I was supposed to want.
My mother used to yell at me and send me to my room as a child when I didn’t know what to do with all of the feelings I had. For a long time, I thought parents were supposed to do that, but after going to therapy, I realized it wasn’t. Parents aren’t supposed to punish their children for having feelings they don’t agree with. They aren’t supposed to punish their children for not playing the role that they came up with in their own heads. They aren’t supposed to send you away when you’re telling them you’re upset because they hurt your feelings. But they did. Even with Lincoln, they dismissed my hurt and focused on how I wasn’t the perfect daughter who just got along with a family friend.
So, I stopped being honest with my mother. I shut my mouth and fought my hardest for a job I didn’t even want because they kept pushing me toward it. They were the ones who told me to apply. I would have been fine finding something else, a job not in my field while I waited for a journalism company to open a spot in my department.
But they didn’t want me to waste my time in a retail position. And I didn’t want to risk disappointing them.
If my mother wants to blame anyone for the decisions I’ve made over the course of my life, she can blame herself because all I’ve ever done, every decision I’ve made, was in accordance with what they deemed was acceptable for me to do.
“Mama, I don’t want to fight anymore. Can we please find a way to figure this out?” I ask, watching her stand up.
“You’re sick of fighting? Well, how do you think I feel? You’re the one who’s breaking my heart and all you can talk about is yourself. I gave up everything to raise you. My job, my time, and this is the thanks I get. An ungrateful daughter who just leaves,” she says and starts crying as she storms off without speaking to me again.
This isn’t the first time she’s given this speech either. Like I asked her to give up her life to raise me. Like I forced her to. I almost laugh at the absurdity of her throwing this at my head when I’m doing everything my parents ever wanted from me. I’m making a name for myself. I’m succeeding, in a way, at my new job. I’m doing what I thought they wanted me to, so I can’t fathom how she could be so angry with me.
I love my parents, but, sometimes, I never want to see them again.