Chapter 31 #2
“Like turning a ten-year-old loose in the world for all that I knew about how to manage the critical everyday parts of life, with the added bonus that the entire world knew I was suddenly on my own,” she says.
“They thought I’d come running back to them and promise that I’d quit protesting and that I’d finally finish the next college degree program and that I’d go work for the company like Margot did so that they could look like the big, happy, money-making family that we were. ”
“But you didn’t.”
“Fuck them. If they didn’t want me, then I could want me enough to be my own whole family.”
It’s not lost on me how much more I have in common with Daphne than I ever would’ve dreamed.
I didn’t lead protests to… I don’t even know what all she’s protested in her lifetime. Can’t begin to guess, in fact.
But I know this trip, my life, my future—this is a big fuck you to my parents.
“What did you— How did you get through it?” I ask.
“I’d made a friend in a couple classes. She let me move in with her.
She taught me how to drive—better, I mean, when I didn’t have money to pay for those speeding tickets—and how to cook the most basic stuff ever.
She helped me find a job. She taught me about money management and paying bills and how to clean up after myself, and she didn’t make a fuss about the fact that my aging dog kept crapping all over the carpet when she had enough else to worry about in her life. She saved my life.”
“She sounds like a good person.”
“The. Absolute. Best.” She giggles softly.
I slide another look her way.
She shakes her head like whatever’s funny, she’s not sharing.
“I realized about two years ago—my parents cutting me off was the best thing they could’ve done for me.
I still don’t want anything to do with them, but it’s not because I’m mad anymore.
I mean, no more angry than anyone would be over parents dumping a kid they hadn’t prepared for the real world.
Maybe I’d feel differently if I had to see them regularly, but I don’t sit around fuming about what they did anymore.
I’ve realized they don’t deserve me, and that’s a good thing. ”
“Healthy attitude,” I murmur.
“Or incredibly egotistical and self-centered.”
She’s wrong, but I don’t correct her. I’m already feeling too close for comfort with her today. “Margot didn’t help you at all?”
“She offered. Tried to insist on it, in fact. I told her no. Because once it was all gone, it was—well, terrifying and horrible for a little bit, but after that, I realized I was stronger and smarter than I’d ever given myself credit for.
Making it on my own—it’s—I can’t fully describe the satisfaction that comes with knowing that everything I do in my life, every change I make in the world, every personal interaction I have that makes someone else happy—it’s like I finally understand why I was born.
What I’m supposed to do. And it’s—it’s magic to know that it’s me.
Powerful, I think, might be the right word.
I was never supposed to be able to take care of myself, and here I am, operating a budget and holding down a real job and having real friends who like me for me, goddess only knows why some days, but they do. ”
Dammit.
I shouldn’t have asked.
Shouldn’t have brought it up.
Because now I’m sweating.
I’m sweating and heading toward a panic attack because Daphne Merriweather-Brown, my ex-fiancée’s chaos-loving, criminal-record-holding, tattooed, multicolored-hair sister, is not only living the life I want, but she’s owning it.
And that’s sexy as hell.
It’s like my entire libido has been asleep since my father was arrested, and it’s now awake and remembering women exist, and Daphne is the only woman on the planet.
“You wanna lighten your grip on the steering wheel? Feels like you’re trying to drive the car into the ground.”
My fingers flex instinctively at her suggestions, but my knuckles are stiff.
“Your parents put you in a box too?” she says.
I don’t answer.
Not because she wouldn’t understand. She clearly would.
But I’m not ready to say it out loud yet. Even a simple yes is too much.
Especially to Daphne.
I can’t be like her.
I cannot have more in common with her right now.
Not when feeling like we have so much in common is dangerous on a level I don’t want to analyze.
“Sounds like you did a bang-up job filling in for your dad when he was in the slammer.”
My eye twitches.
Good.
Good.
Reminders of what I did every day for the past few years is helpful.
She clears her throat. “Sorry. It’s habit to irritate you.”
“After three days?”
“No, mostly after how I grew up. I never go back to the city because I don’t like who I was before.
And bad things happen when I go back to the city.
Like thinking I’m going to talk to someone for five minutes in their back seat when their driver shows up and instead falling asleep while I’m waiting, only to wake up in Pennsylvania because I have shitty timing. ”
This is helping. Breathing is getting easier. “And shitty assumptions.”
“Like you wouldn’t get back together with Margot.”
I grimace and start to sweat again. “Once again—I have no interest in getting back together with your sister.”
“Why not?”
“Our lives aren’t compatible anymore.”
“How?”
I glance at her again. “Are you serious?”
“It’s not like you’ve told me your life plan. All I know is we’re driving ten hours today, possibly deeper into the South, and you don’t want anyone to know where you are. Where do they think you are, by the way?”
“Vacation.”
“Without security.”
“I gave my security team large bonuses to not ask questions when I left.”
“So what’s after…vacation?”
We enter a charming little town with old-fashioned storefronts lining the main street. I debate how much I want to say as we approach what appears to be the lone stop sign in this village.
Two days ago, it would’ve been absolutely nothing.
I wouldn’t have wanted to tell Daphne a single word about my plans.
But now—she’d get it.
She’d get it more than Archie could get it.
She’s lived it.
She’s thriving in it.
“Stop stop stop!” she screeches.
I slam on the brakes, sending both of us thrusting forward into our seat belts about three car lengths from the stop sign.
My heart hammers in my throat.
Two people outside a diner to our left openly gawk at me.
Someone behind me honks.
“Oh my god, pull over! We have to go in.” She tugs on my arm and points to something on the right.
I ease off the brake and let the car roll into one of the angled parking spots lining the road in front of an old brick building with giant metal flowers and an ancient wooden rocking chair sitting in front of the large glass picture windows.
“What are we stopping for?” I almost get the sentence out without gasping for air.
Daphne unbuckles her seat belt and flings the door open. “I can’t believe I almost didn’t see it!”
She’s squealing like we’re about to find the holy grail.
Actually, she wouldn’t squeal about that.
She’d squeal about—
“Look, Oliver! Just look. Isn’t she beautiful?”
A brass statue of a polar bear on an iceberg.
She’d squeal about a brass bear in an antique shop off a rural highway somewhere in northern Mississippi.
Her brown eyes sparkle up at me. The blue and green highlights in her hair shimmer in the summer sunlight. And pure joy radiates off her.
Joy over a nine-inch statue in an antique shop.
“Every road trip needs a mascot,” she says.
I get it now.
I get why Margot used to say Daphne wasn’t the troublemaker everyone thought she was.
She simply had her own way of looking at life that didn’t line up with what was expected. Her own ways of finding joy that came from different places than where the rest of us looked for it.
I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling right now.
Jealousy at how much she’s clearly thrived in her life.
Or bone-deep attraction to it.
Rather than dig deep on that, I do the only thing I can do.
I walk into the antique store.
Because I’m buying that polar bear for her.