Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Max, Now
“Did Daze kick you out?” Ava asks.
“No.” A hot spritz of grease hits my wrist, as if it’s punishing me for paying more attention to my phone than cooking. There’s no point in checking the device constantly. I only called late last night, and this morning was probably busy for her. I bet she hasn’t even seen the notification yet.
“Then why are you here?”
“You hadn’t mentioned you two were dating,” my mom says, not lifting her gaze from the paper’s politics section.
“You broke up with her?” Ava asks.
“No.” I’m not in the mood to talk—even less so with my parents sitting at the dining table.
“So you’re together?” Ava rests her elbows on the kitchen island to assess me.
Daisy didn’t tell me to leave, but I would have rather collapsed into quicksand than sleep in the casita’s guest bedroom again.
We avoided each other the rest of opening night, and after an awful, fitful slumber on the sofa bed, I packed up my stuff from her house and headed here, which was an added blow.
I wanted to go to Daisy, comfort her, and figure us out, but she made herself clear.
“Daisy and I…” What’s the best way to explain this to my teenage sister? “We’re taking a break.”
“Forever?”
My parents don’t chime in with more questions, but they both lower their papers and make eyes at each other.
“Can I cook breakfast without an interrogation?” I have a few hours before I’ll be on the plane, so I should try to get some food in my stomach.
I add the egg mixture to the other side of the pan, opposite the burned sausage.
Daisy’s so much better at cooking than I am.
“I don’t feel like having my love life analyzed at the moment. ”
“Ah.” My sister nods her head. “So she broke up with you.”
“Ava, hon,” my mom says in a honey-sweet voice reserved only for her daughter. “I think Max doesn’t want to discuss that right now.”
I flip the food onto my plate and turn off the burner. I might just make it down the hall before another line of questioning.
“Max,” my mom calls. I sink, wishing I could catch a break.
“Yeah?”
My parents whisper about something, so I set my plate down on the counter and prepare for complaints and nitpicking. Maybe they’ll admonish me for using the wrong detergent or leaving the bathroom light on overnight.
“I’m heading into the office,” my dad mutters, grabbing his leather briefcase and exiting through the garage.
“I, uh…” My mom clears her throat, unable to meet my eyes. “We—I owe you an apology. I was so impressed with your show,” my mom says. She really loves that word. “We—well, I didn’t quite know what to expect, but you did such a good job.”
“Oh.” I don’t know how to accept praise from her. I send a quick look to Ava since I suspect she put them up to this, but she shrugs. “Okay. Thanks, I guess.”
“Your father and I have been hard on you. The life of an artist, it’s…difficult. Money doesn’t come easily.”
I stab at the tasteless scrambled eggs on my plate. “Good thing life doesn’t revolve around money,” I say, bitter. “People can do things because they enjoy them. Art brings me joy. It always has.”
“I understand that,” my mother says.
“Do you?” I turn to the fridge for the creamer and am reminded that Daisy takes her coffee black, so I slam the door shut. “You two’ve treated art like an obnoxious hobby. I got a job right out of school, but you never cared. You were just…disappointed.”
“It might not have been our first choice of career for you.”
“I could tell.”
She shifts her weight in her seat, and I’ve never seen her so restless. Then again, I’ve never pushed back. But I need to understand why they treated me the way they did for so long.
“You didn’t attend a single showcase when I was a kid, and you never traveled out to see anything I ever did. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“It’s hard to watch your own child choose a career path that has such a meager success rate,” my mom starts slowly, “but we figured you needed to get it out of your system. That you would do art in high school but you’d select something more practical for college.
But you didn’t. You traveled around doing little museums, and then—”
“They weren’t ‘little museums.’” I should have expected this apology to be a double-edged sword. “Those pop-ups were my job. Legitimate work with people who’ve won awards.”
“Then you moved back here, and we thought this time you’d go a more practical route. Then you didn’t, and I saw…I realized that even on your own, you are very good at what you do. Passionate.”
“It’s more than the other night.” I shake my head, not ready to accept her apologies—not after a lifetime of wanting to please them and always failing. “You two’ve never really been there for me. Ever.”
“We had an idea in our heads, I think, of what we could accomplish as parents and what we dreamed of for our children.” My mother wears a pained expression and sets her elbows on the table.
“Especially as a woman in law, I felt this immense pressure to be great at everything—to have the high-powered job and the perfect family. And no matter what sports teams or clubs we put you in, all you wanted to do was run off and do your own thing, nose in a sketch pad. I kept…” She exhales, deep and heavy.
“I kept getting it wrong with you. And then Ava came along, and she—” She appears to search for a word. “She was needier.”
“Hey.” Ava pouts.
“Well, you were, honey. And by the time she was headed to kindergarten, you were a teenager.”
“So, because I was independent and had different interests than you expected, you stayed hands-off?”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I’m not saying we were right.” My mom struggles to keep her chin high. “But once we realized it, the damage had been done. I’m sorry.”
As much as I want to hear these words from her, I can’t bring myself to celebrate. I’d love to know what Daisy would think of all of this. I wish I could walk over to the casita and tell her.
Taking my time with a bite of breakfast, I consider whether I could eventually forgive them. Or at least one of them.
“What about him?” I ask, my chin tilting to the door my dad left through.
She sighs. “He’s not there yet. Our mode of tough love turned out too tough, I guess, and somehow he became his own father. He hates himself for it, but…he needs time.”
I never understood my parents, and it turns out they never understood me, either. How they raised me affected my life, my everything—including the way I felt in this very town. If things with Daze hadn’t imploded on Thursday, maybe I could handle this, but now I can only rub my eyes in frustration.
“I need to…I’ve gotta sit with this for a bit. And—” I glance at my phone. No missed calls. “I should get ready.”
“Okay.” My mom grabs and refolds her newspaper. “Just know that I’m glad I came out. What you made with Desert Daze was all your own. Well, you and Daisy.”
Her name sends a piercing pain through my chest.
“So…” Ava trails off. “You’re just gonna leave her with it?”
“I’ve got assistants on duty this weekend,” I say through big forkfuls of bland food.
The turnaround time with Tate was faster than expected.
Antoine reached out on his journey home, and he looped in his assistant.
Within twenty-four hours, they’d secured me a flight for this afternoon to London.
I’ll spend a few days getting familiar with the role and fly back with barely a chance to beat the jet lag.
A whirlwind tour, all to entice me to join their team.
Daisy insists I take it, but right now, I wish I’d never heard about this fucking job.
“Tate Modern, then?” my mom asks. “Well, clearly you’ve proven you can make Desert Daze work. So, if this was simply a stepping stone for something you care about more, then so be it.”
That’s precisely how I’d viewed Desert Daze when I conceived the idea, but now I don’t care about anything other than Daisy.
My phone buzzes, but it’s false hope—just a message from the driver Antoine’s team arranged. I text them a reminder to avoid Camino del Alma at all costs while I think about how, only months ago, that was where I laid eyes on Daisy for the first time in eight years.
My mom trails me to the front porch, wishing me well.
She looks uncomfortable, like she wants to say more, but what she said this morning gives me plenty to process.
It’s no “I’m proud” or “Good job,” and it doesn’t undo the hurt, but I get some peace thinking that she isn’t simply saying something I want to hear.
Ava walks out with me to the black town car in the driveway. I wrap one arm around her, tucking her into my armpit. “Stop.” She giggles, and I let her get some playful punches into my ribs. “Your shirt’s on inside out.”
The stitching on the hem of my basic tee faces outward. I put on clothes like a zombie this morning.
“I’ll fix it in the car.” I squeeze her. “So was that you? You talk to them or something?”
She shakes her head, and I narrow my eyes at her.
“I’m serious. Maybe someone talked to them, but it wasn’t me.”
Daisy. She’s the only person who could have convinced them. Only Daisy understood how much it would mean to have them there.
“Progress though, huh?” Ava says, slapping my shoulders. “Exciting.”
“Are you excited for me?”
“Sure.”
“Convincing.”
“I mean, whatever.” She escapes my grasp, giving a timid smile to the driver as the woman plucks my suitcase from my hands. “It’ll suck not having you around again. But it’s no big deal. I can handle it. I’m an adult.”
“Oh, really?”
“I practically am.”
Something shifts inside me as I see this odd similarity between her and Daisy. Both fiercely independent, both willing to sacrifice closeness with me for what they know—or think—is best for me.
But what if I don’t know anymore?
“You should call her,” my sister says, tapping my foot with hers.
“I…” The comment is a paper cut to my already bruised and battered heart, because I have called. I barely lasted twenty-four hours before calling her up last night and leaving a voicemail asking to talk. Begging. “I’m not so sure Daisy wants to talk.”
“Maybe not yet. But you spent years being obsessed with her, so it seems lame you’d call it quits like this.”
“Obsessed?”
She looks at me and emphasizes the word with a single nod. “Obsessed. Don’t give up if you really don’t wanna give up.”
If I do what Daisy wants, I’ll be halfway around the world. If I go against her wishes, she may never let me back into her life. My throat constricts at the thought of never hearing her or seeing her again.
“C’mere.” I squish my too-wise sister into a hug. “Text me.”
“Obviously. Have fun in Londontown.”
I make it ten minutes down the road before I pull out my phone and stare at her number, wondering if she’ll pick up this time.