Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
M y phone was dead, and even after I charged it, the screen greeted me with the telltale sign of discontinued cell service. My parents, in less than twenty-four hours, cut it off. They’d followed through on the threat I always knew they’d carry out, and they’d done so swiftly.
I knew I should’ve felt something at the no data signal. It was a symbolic way of realizing that contact with them was fully cut off.
But the truth was that though they were technically the people who gave birth to me, they were never there for me in the way a true parent should’ve been. They barely paid attention to me growing up, shipped me off to boarding school until the ninth grade. I couldn’t think of a single time they’d bought me a birthday cake. They were never parents; we were never a family.
The only reason the phone weighed heavily in my hand now was that I knew life was about to become hard. Very hard. And, in that moment, I was alone.
But not for long .
“I can’t believe I still remember your number,” I said into the cordless landline, cradling it between my shoulder and my cheek as I attempted to calm my hair into a somewhat “I’m at Nancy’s. Come pick me up?”
And just an hour later, there was a sharp knock at the front door. This time, I knew the visitor would be a welcome one. When I hauled it open, I found Destelle standing on the other side, her curls loose and wild. She didn’t even miss a beat. “You’re crazy,” she said emphatically, shoving past me and entering Nancy’s home. “Insane. Normally, I’d love that for you—you know I like it when you let your wild side show a little—but you’re crazy.”
I shut the door behind her. “I do have my moments.”
“Listen, am I disappointed in you for ruining all the desserts at the wedding and getting thrown out?” Destelle turned around. “Of course not. But you could’ve at least saved me a cupcake.”
“The icing tasted like chemicals. You wouldn’t have been impressed.”
“I fly all the way from California, and I didn’t get a cupcake.”
“I’ll buy you one,” I said, and then reality sunk back in. “Someday.”
Well, that was a mood killer.
Destelle shifted on her feet, looking around Nancy’s house. “I haven’t been in here in years ,” she murmured, walking up to one of the shelves and looking at the knickknacks. “That time we came senior year to swim in her pond was probably the only time.”
I slipped my hands into the pockets of my dress pants— because I still had nothing else to change into—and watched her. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”
And in a way, it was. We’d both been different people back then, but when I thought back to the type of girl I’d been senior year, it felt like a different life entirely. An alternate timeline, a different reality. When my future still had been everything I dreamed, not yet taken away.
Destelle’s thoughts seemed to be moving along the same lines. She reached out and traced her finger across a picture frame of Nancy standing in front of the Alderton-Du Ponte building. “Do you regret what you did last night?” Destelle asked in a soft voice. “Since it made your parents… you know.”
“Cut me off?” I finished for her. “No. I don’t regret it. In fact, I… I don’t know a different time I would’ve done it.”
“I am proud of you. I don’t know if I could’ve done it.”
“You did do it.”
She shook her head. “We already talked about how different it was for me. Me pushing the envelope wouldn’t have led to my world completely falling apart; back then, it just felt like it. You pushing the envelope, though… Yeah.”
Last night, I hadn’t so much as pushed the envelope as torn straight through it. “Yeah.”
“Nancy would’ve been proud of you, too.”
Yesterday, I’d had a hard time conjuring Nancy’s voice in my head, but now, I could hear her plain as day. “She’d say ‘took you long enough.’”
“‘I knew you had it in you.’”
“‘I guess you are smarter than you look.’”
We both grinned at each other, though the melancholy tone still clung to me like a second skin. We were quiet for a moment, both of us mulling over everything that’d happened in that silence. “What are you going to do, then?”
“Get a job, probably. Know anyone hiring?”
“I meant about Sumner.”
I frowned. “How do you know what happened with Sumner?”
“Uh, I think everyone knows what happened. Mrs. Astor has a loud voice when she’s angry.”
So Aaron had been telling the truth about Vivienne ripping my parents a new one. That was more than mildly satisfying.
But… Sumner. That was another thing that felt like a lifetime ago, being in Sumner’s arms. It hadn’t even been a full day. I thought of all the things I said to him last night, thought of the truth uncovered. I wanted to stick my head in the sand, to add him to the list of things I didn’t want to face, not yet. “If someone does something stupid,” I began, turning my attention out toward the back door, “does that make them a bad person?”
“Depends on the motive behind something stupid. We’re talking about Sumner, right?”
“Not him. Me.”
“You?”
My words grew quiet. “I shouldn’t have flipped the dessert table. As mad as I was, I shouldn’t have done it.”
It’d felt good in the moment, and even in the early stages of the aftermath, it’d felt sweet. But now, in the stark light of day, I saw how truly poor of a decision it was .
Destelle walked over to me and laid her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not a bad person,” she said, gaze serious. In her shoes, she was nearly as tall as me. “You aren’t a bad person, because you feel bad about it. Mean people don’t feel bad about the crappy stuff they do.”
“Like my parents.”
“Like your parents,” she agreed hesitantly. “And even if you didn’t feel bad about it, they deserved it. Maybe that makes me a bad person for thinking it, but they did. After the way they’ve treated you your entire life, they deserved a flipped dessert table and then some.”
Destelle reached up and smoothed the palm of her hand down the side of my head, like I was a little kid she was looking after. Even though we’d grown a part, went in our separate directions of life, now that we were back together, the connection of our friendship was still there. While most times, growing up, I’d been the one to comfort her. The tables turned now, and she finally got her chance to comfort me in return.
Comfort . To Nancy, it’d been sarcasm and quips. To Sumner, it was holding my hand. To Destelle, it was petting my head. It looked different for each of them, and I let myself feel it. Instead of pushing away the emotion, instead of hardening my heart to it all, I allowed myself to accept Destelle’s touches, and I allowed it to comfort me.
“Do you think you could take me somewhere?” I asked her. “I don’t have a car, at the moment.”
“As long as I can also take you shopping,” Destelle said, scrunching her nose. “Because you look like you’ve done the walk of shame.”
I looked down at my wrinkled pants and rumpled shirt, giving my head a shake. “Fine, but nothing fancy. Something… inexpensive.” The words hurt my soul.
And the next words Destelle uttered as she looped her arm through mine stabbed me with the biggest dose of irony. “How about Walmart?”