Chapter 47 #2
I suddenly felt like everyone at the table decided to give me their undivided attention.
I snuck a glance at my parents who looked to be holding their breath, quietly hoping they hadn’t raised me to be the kind of daughter who would turn her nose up at a polite gesture.
The longer I stayed quiet, the deeper the crease between my father’s eyes grew.
“No, I love it,” I broke the quiet, pushing out a dejected sigh.
The atmosphere around me that seemed to halt for my response came alive again.
My parents commended my boyfriend on such a thoughtful gift, and he readily accepted their praise.
It was Morgan, whose dark brown eyes found me amidst the commotion at the table, that gave me yet another knowing look for the second time tonight.
I could sense an oncoming conversation between the both of us once we got some privacy.
“Lauren loves that one song by her,” my mother assured, turning her attention to my sister. “Momo, how does it go?”
“I’m not so sure Lauren loves that song anymore,” Morgan replied to our mother, shaking her head with a wry chuckle.
As a dumbfounded look settled into our mother’s features, I moved my hand to cover my mouth, hiding the slight smile that threatened to come out.
Morgan shot me a wink, unwilling to hide her own smirk.
Rashad looked from me to Morgan, belting out a not so genuine giggle. “You two got a secret twin language, or some?”
Even though he was smiling, I could tell Rashad was less than comfortable with the possibility that Morgan and I might be non-verbally communicating about him.
Morgan shrugged her shoulders, looking at him as if he was a fly, invading her space.
She let him squirm under her analytical gaze before she finally responded.
“Yeah, we do.” My sister looked at me with a tilt of her head, silently informing me that if I had any reservations about going to the concert, now was my moment to speak up.
I bit my lower lip nervously and looked down at my half-eaten dinner.
When she realized I wasn’t going to seize the opportunity, she pushed out a sigh and said to Rashad, “I’m sure you two will have a blast.”
***
Morgan sat at the foot of my bed, watching me as I French braided the other half of my head at my vanity. In the reflection coming off my mirror, her eyes met mine for an extended moment of silence, and I could tell from the way she drew in one long breath that she was getting ready to lecture me.
“Why are you still with that clown?”
This wasn’t the first time someone had questioned my decision to be with Rashad today.
After I’d explained the sequence of events that ultimately lead to me buying Plan B emergency contraceptive at an out-of-town Walgreens, Dr. Eloise had asked a similar question with a tone identical to my sister’s voice now.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I skirted around the topic, no longer meeting my sister’s eyes in the mirror. In the several months that had followed my shooting, while it seemed like everything around me was crumbling, my relationship with my sister had only gotten stronger.
My almost dying had an interesting way of putting things into perspective for her. The relationship I had with my parents may have been changed beyond repair, but Morgan and I had never been closer.
“You don’t even like him,” Morgan stressed.
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to!” She stood to her feet and walked up closer behind me. “Every time he opens his mouth, you look like you want to shoot yourself in the face.”
“No, I don’t,” I disagreed.
“Look at me,” Morgan ordered, trying her best to look as tortured as possible. “That’s what you look like when he talks.”
I bit back a smile over her theatrics.
“Lauren!” she stressed. “Nobody is laughing. Why are you with that clown?”
With a shake of my head, I attempted to dismiss her opinions. “I like him, Morgan.”
“You like him the same way I like a migraine.” After making a grand show of rolling her eyes slowly, she muttered, “He’s not your type.”
“I don’t have a type.”
“Yes, you do.”
“What’s my type, then?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not Rashad. Shit, Rashad is more Dad’s type than anything—” Morgan stopped talking abruptly, having found the answer to her question on her own.
“You think dating a twenty-six year old man who calls our father ‘Governor Caplan’ unironically is what you need to do to be Daddy’s favorite again? ”
“I’m not trying to be Daddy’s favorite,” I muttered. I just want him to seem like he’s happy to see me from time to time.
My father had been behaving strangely around me ever since I came out of the hospital.
If he even bothered to acknowledge that I was in the room, he hardly ever looked me square in the eye.
Rarely did it ever seem like my father even wanted to be in the same room as me; forget holding a conversation longer than five minutes with me.
“Lauren…” Morgan rested two hands on either of my shoulders, staring at my face in the mirror’s reflection. She stood above my head, her eyes falling to me sympathetically. “Take it from someone who never really connected with Daddy in the first place… Our dad is not worth this much effort.”
How could she say that?
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Morgan squinted. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Before you linked up with Thug Bae—” I cringed “—you never noticed that Daddy and I didn’t really talk… like, ever?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Daddy was never really trying to hear what I was saying. I wasn’t as polite as you. My grades weren’t as high as yours. He couldn’t brag about me the way he could brag about you. You were his favorite.”
“Well, you were Mom’s favorite.”
“Lauren, please.” Morgan rolled her eyes. “Mom felt sorry for me. She gave me the attention Daddy was too busy giving you so I wouldn’t feel left out. But it’s not like Mom ignored you. I’m telling you—Daddy used to not even see me if you were in the room.”
My mind wandered to dozens of memories I had of Daddy not-so-discretely letting me know he preferred me over my sister.
Although, it never used to raise red flags because I’d always written it off as me being for Dad and Morgan being for Mom.
However, if I really thought on it, the fact that Mom had a slightly stronger bond with Morgan didn’t really make her behavior towards me noticeably different.
The same, however, couldn’t be said for our father towards Morgan.
Almost as soon as I made that connection, the years of hostility Morgan dished out towards me made sense. The past year of our improving relationship, while my relationship with our father struggled, finally made sense as well.
“And now the roles are switched,” I offered. “Now Daddy’s all about you.”
Morgan shook her head. “Daddy is all about whatever makes him look good at any point in time. Right now, that’s me because of your mess with Thug Bae—” cringe “—last year. But you can’t erase several years of blatant favoritism overnight, Lori. Our father is such a…”
“…politician,” I finished her sentence.
She chuckled at this, nodding her head. “Sure, let’s go with that.”
“How come you never talked to me about all of this before?”
My sister’s cheek turned up in a subtle half smile, sad in color.
“Because it’s one of those things you have to go through to actually understand.
If I walked up to Lauren two years ago and said, ‘Daddy is kind of cold and unloving,’ she would have rolled her eyes and said I wasn’t trying hard enough to connect with him. ”
I nodded, knowing that is precisely what I would’ve said.
“But now you know,” Morgan sighed. “I mean, look at you, dating some corny weirdo just so Daddy will know how devoted you are to keeping up appearances. You get it now…” She shook her head and repeated, “You get it now.”