Chapter 21 #2
I have that problem sometimes after a hard week whenever I let myself think too much about the uncertainty that comes with not having a trust fund anymore, with the satisfaction of building my own retirement account—slowly, so slowly—and the fear that I’ll lose another job and have to swallow my pride and take help from Margot, who would help me in an instant if I asked, except maybe not once she hears about this road trip.
And after those worries set in, then the insomnia comes.
Followed soon thereafter by the panic attacks.
It was easier to hide them before Bea moved in with me after she had a rough breakup a few months ago, but having her in my apartment made me panic less.
Not always sleep better, but definitely panic less.
Until Margot started talking about taking Oliver back when his dad got out of prison.
And then I’d panic about why I was panicking.
And I think I’ve finally realized what my issue was.
I don’t talk to my parents anymore. No relationship. None.
It’s not that they took away money that I didn’t earn.
It’s that they did it in a way that left me completely vulnerable to the world because of who they were too. There were people who would have hurt me because of my name, and they no longer cared that they were part of the reason that I wasn’t safe.
And then they didn’t call. They didn’t check in. They showed me, in no uncertain terms, that they didn’t care.
I was a problem, the daughter who failed to live up to expectations, the daughter who would never add to the bottom line of the family coffers, and since I was useless, I was no longer their problem.
Margot calls. Margot visits. Margot offers to help me.
But she still works for the family company.
She still has dinner with them sometimes.
She’s still in that world. In their world. As their good daughter.
When she started talking about taking Oliver back, now that his life would be returning to normal, it was one more thing that made me feel like she was returning to who she was before I was disinherited.
The idea made me terrified that I’ll lose her too. That eventually, she’ll quit straddling this line where everyone knows she sees both of us, and she’ll pick them over me.
And that—that wouldn’t just hurt.
That would wreck the tenderest part of my heart. The part that even Bea, in all of her amazing wisdom and freely given love, couldn’t fix for me.
Dammit.
Dammit.
The panic attack is coming.
Even if she wants him, he’s not getting back with her, I tell myself. She’s not going to abandon you.
It’s not enough.
But you know what I have?
I have a guy in this room who can tell me that for himself.
And it’s not like I don’t mind annoying him.
Far better that than letting him know I’m asking because of how much it matters to my entire life.
“Oliver?”
“What?”
“Why did you break up with Margot?”
Great.
Now I can’t hear him breathing at all.
My question has murdered him, and this is where they’ll find his body, with my Lava Cheese Puff fingerprints all over the crime scene.
“Don’t give me that bullshit answer that you didn’t want to drag her down because of what your father did either,” I add. It’s what she told me he told her, and neither one of us believed it. Not completely. “I want the truth.”
After what feels like seven eternities, he starts breathing again.
I think that’ll be my answer—him breathing—when his voice drifts through the semi-dark, too-chilly room.
“Once I was living the life we both thought we wanted—me running M2G, her running Aurora Gardens—it became rapidly clear that it wasn’t what I needed, and she wasn’t what I needed either.”
Is it possible to feel slapped in the face on someone else’s behalf at the same time that relief floods your body for yourself and worry pops up for him? What does that mean, she wasn’t what I needed? “Did you tell her that?”
“As clearly as I could at the time.”
“She told me last week she’d take you back,” I whisper.
He sighs.
This one sounds defeated.
“Why are you pushing this?” he asks.
“Because I want to know what to tell her when I get back home if she ever finds out about…this.”
“You won’t tell her anything.”
“But—”
“Would it make any difference at all if you found out your last boyfriend couldn’t put into words why he didn’t want you in his life anymore?”
I snort. “I’d have to date for that to be an issue.”
Dammit.
He tricked that out of me. Swear he did.
“You don’t date.” He says it like he’s repeating my assertion that the sun revolves around the moon.
“We’re discussing Margot.”
He thrashes about on the bed again, this time turning so he’s facing me. I can see his outline. The tilt of his head toward me. The drape of the white sheet low across his stomach. “That subject is closed. Why don’t you date?”
I could tell him it’s none of his business.
Except—
Well, it sort of is.
If he’s going to assume a brand-new identity whenever he gets where he’s going, if he’s going to never again claim any link to M2G, then it’s kind of my job, as part of our agreement, to tell him.
Give him a heads-up on how fucked he might be.
And honestly?
I probably need to talk this out too, if I’m ever going to work through why I don’t date, why I have panic attacks at the thought of my sister eventually abandoning me, and why I often have insomnia.
It’s all related.
All tied together.
And no matter how much work I’ve done on myself in the past four years, there’s more to do.
“Because the people who know I was rich only want to date me because they think I’ll come back into money—it’s hardly a secret that Margot would prop me up for life if I ever asked her to—and the people who don’t know I was rich haven’t been people I trust deeply enough to let them find out.”
Silence settles thick in the room.
Oliver’s not me.
He’s smart.
Not that I’m not smart, we’re simply…different smart.
He’s the boring kind of invest wisely and have a backup plan smart.
I’m know how to get yourself out of trouble when it inevitably comes calling smart.
We’re opposite smart.
Though it was definitely smart to tell him all of that.
Because my own breathing is evening out, and I’m feeling better for having said it to someone out loud.
“Are you going to tell people who you really are?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish no one had known who I was.”
“Why?”
“There’s freedom in being nobody. No expectations to live up or down to. It took a long time for me to figure out how to accept that there will always be expectations, but that doesn’t mean I can’t just be. The only expectations that matter are my own. Not anyone else’s.”
It’s a great sentiment that I’m still trying to put into practice, and it will never be entirely true.
Bea’s expectations matter because she matters.
I asked her one time how she could tolerate me when I felt like a disaster more or less every day.
And she told me she was a disaster herself, so I made her feel less alone.
I didn’t believe her. I still think I was one more stressor in her life when she didn’t need so much as the toilet to flush wrong a single time or the power to flicker during a thunderstorm.
But now, now that I’m making it mostly on my own in ways I never thought I was capable of—now I get it.
It’s normal to feel like a disaster even when the world tells you that you should keep your shit together.
It’s normal to feel like you’ll never get ahead of the issues that pop up and that you’ll never handle them with the right kind of grace and humor and proficiency that social media and the world tell us we should.
We’re in this together.
She’s my anchor, and I believe her now when she tells me I’m hers too.
And that’s enough for now. As enough as it can be with all of my other worries about Margot one day abandoning me too.
Oliver’s staring at me in the darkness. Even if it were completely pitch black, I’d know.
He gives intense scrutiny.
He didn’t use to. But he does here.
“That’s unexpectedly helpful,” he finally says.
He doesn’t add thank you.
Boring old Oliver would’ve.
But this Oliver doesn’t.
“Wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t full of surprises,” I say.
He grunts in acknowledgment.
And three minutes later, his breathing regulates, slow and steady and deep, and I know he’s out.
Hopefully for the night.
If I’m lucky, I might sleep some tonight too.
I need it if I’m going to get through the next two days.
And hopefully longer.
Until I convince him to go back home.
Back to being CEO of Miles2Go.
Back to where maybe he and Margot could have a relationship, professional or more.
To where whatever he does will continue to affect my life, good or bad.
Dammit.
Definitely not sleeping again tonight.
Because I’m certain there’s not a chance in hell that I’ll be successful.