Chapter 12 Maria #2
“Uma Thurman comes to mind,” he said, grinning. When he saw that I wasn’t grinning back, he became serious. “All right. There’s Senator Simon Thurman. He was in the news for a long time. That’s not your father, is it?”
I shook my head.
“All right. I’m lost.”
“Think harder. He’s been in the news, but it’s not Senator Thurman. Senator Thurman is forty-one. He’s not old enough to be my dad anyway.”
“You did say that they’re from Maine. Thurmans from Maine. Let me think. There’s Thur-Maine Lobster, the guys who ship lobsters all over America. That’s not it, right?”
I nodded. “Alan Thurman’s my father. And he’s nothing like the guy who appears in those ads.
He’s hardcore, almost a fundamentalist. You think your dad’s strict.
You don’t know my dad. He won’t hold a gun to your head or nothing like that, but he’ll make you believe there’s no escaping him. The man’s practically God in Maine.”
“Jesus,” Elio said, sighing. “So this whole thing that you’re doing in New York—that’s basically you being defiant?”
“In a nutshell. When I was living with them, they expected me to become another Thurman. Go to the right schools, marry the right person, get involved in the family business, attend the right dinners, shake the right hands, and eventually become some polished little socialite who could smile at a fundraiser and pretend everything in the world was wonderful. My father wanted me in politics eventually. My mother wanted me married to someone respectable,” I said.
It hurt to recount this, but if I was going to be vulnerable with him, I had to be honest.
“You hated how it stifled you,” Elio said quietly. “I get that.”
I nodded silently, then continued, “They wanted a daughter who could sit quietly at the dinner table and never embarrass the family. The problem was, I was never particularly good at sitting quietly. I liked getting into things I wasn’t supposed to get into.
I liked asking questions that made people uncomfortable.
I liked sneaking out, getting into fights, driving too fast, poking my nose into things that had nothing to do with me.
There was always this part of me that wanted to see what happened when I pushed something too far.
My parents called it a rebellious streak. ”
“I guess that’s one way to explain how you’ve been so on-board with everything that’s happened since we met,” Elio said, chuckling. But there was no mockery in his laugh. Only understanding.
I smiled sadly, saying, “They tried to beat it out of me, in their own way. They gave me more rules, more supervision, more expectations. So I learned to hide it. Journalism gave me somewhere to put it. I could chase dangerous people and call it a career. I could walk into places I had no business being and tell myself I was doing it for a story. Maybe I was. But maybe I just finally found a respectable excuse to be exactly who I’d always been.
I had to reject their version of me so I could become this. ”
Elio smiled. “Look at you, you’re a reject like us!”
Okay, that made me smile genuinely, no longer out of sadness. More importantly, it made me feel like I belonged somewhere.
“I guess it’s true what they say. Only the rich can really afford New York,” he said, teasing me.
“Excuse me, I paid for everything myself. This whole apartment—”
“Come on. Be real. Your college tuition and everything until you graduated, who footed that bill?”
I pursed my lips and looked away.
“You can’t be saying that, then,” he said, laughing. “Whose name is on the lease of this apartment?”
I didn’t say anything. He was right. I had grown up in privilege. And the only reason I was able to attend an Ivy League school, and then move to New York, was because of the privilege my parents had given me. But that privilege had come at a terrible price.
“The name on my lease is mine,” I said. “I could have resigned myself to a life wherein I accepted their beliefs as mine, and I’d have lived as a multimillionaire brat.
I chose to stop that. I’m not making millions here as a journalist. I’m barely getting by.
My parents lord it over me that the invitation to come back and join them is always open.
They mock, deride, and take away all comfort if I ever get in touch with them.
So yeah, I grew up in privilege, but I’ve also learned to get by on my own without it. ”
“What about your job?” he asked, taking the nearly empty bottle of Coke that we’d been drinking with the pizza and draining it empty.
“I had to literally work six months for free, shadowing editors, chasing leads that led nowhere, doing coffee runs for disgruntled journalists, and only then was I able to get my foot through the door. My parents would have thrown a fit if they’d seen their daughter do all that menial shit.
But for me it was character-building stuff.
A real way to purge myself of my pride,” I said.
“Look at me, and then look at me again. Does anything about me scream rich parents’ spoiled brat? ”
He gave me a once over, face pulled into varying expressions comedically. Then he looked up at me and shook his head. “I think you look just about like everyone else in the city. Scrappy, overworked, underpaid, stretched thin.”
“Cost of freedom,” I said. And then I pointed at the wall clock. “Which reminds me, I have to be at work in an hour. I’ll probably get off early if there’s nothing for me to do, and then we can go looking for a place for you to live.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” he asked, eyes innocent like a lost lamb’s.
“You’re Elio Romano. There are a thousand things you can do.”
“I think I’m tired of doing a thousand things. I’ll still be here in my boxers, playing PlayStation, relieving your fridge of its beers,” he said, yawning. “Or maybe I’ll tag along.”
In the end, he decided to tag along. I told him that he should reconsider, but he said that there was something about a nice morning walk that was going to do his soul good, whatever the hell that meant.
But I needed to admit—this was something else.
For the first time, I was not alone as I walked to my office.
I always walked. Taking the car to my office two blocks away was not a wise choice, especially in this economy.
There was also no parking space next to the office.
“Can’t believe that’s how you start your morning every day,” he said, taking in a deep breath.
“New York in the morning. The traffic’s yet to clog the streets, the air’s clean, you can almost smell Central Park from this far away.
And there’s quiet. New York, quiet? That doesn’t make sense, and yet it does.
Maybe we need to go to Coney Island next. ”
“Can’t do that,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “Work, remember?”
“Maybe I’ll go to Coney Island on my own.”
I felt a pang of anger, but I kept my cool. The guy was going through it. I wasn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“All right, then. This is it, my office,” I said.
“Can I kiss you?”
“You want to kiss me?” I asked.
“I mean…if you don’t mind.”
He stood there looking so charming and relaxed in his sweatshirt and shorts, not at all like the guy I’d accidentally bid on.
I leaned closer; he leaned even closer, putting his arm around my waist, and then kissing me with his mouth open—a proper passionate kiss at eight in the morning, our tongues colliding, the taste of pizza and Coke lingering in his mouth, the taste of my lip gloss smearing on his lips.
“Wow,” I said, feeling turned on, my legs quivering a little.
I hadn’t had a guy kiss me on the sidewalk like ever.
I was pretty sure several people had just watched me do that.
But there was also a belonging in the kiss.
Something powerful about the way he pulled me close and kissed me as if he missed me already.
“There’s more where that came from,” he said, grinning. “But I shall not waste any more of your time. You have work and work is important.”
“Thank you,” I said, letting go of his hand. It was funny; I was already beginning to miss his presence. Was this Stockholm Syndrome of some variety? Or was he just that important to me now? I turned around, and he was there, watching me go inside the office building, smiling at me.
I smiled back and waved at him as I went inside.
Thankfully, it was a busy day at work with plenty of articles that needed my proofreading.
At one point, I even forgot that I’d been abducted yesterday.
And I hoped that the whole thing would slip out of my memory.
But that’s not how these things go. Around the time it was time for my noon break, I came crashing down with a terrible episode of PTSD, one where I could see myself roped up in the same chair, not knowing if I was going to live or die, and the crazy Dresden Harrow cutting up a lamb in front of me as a display of his power.
“You’re not doing too well, Thurman,” Mr. Raymond said, stepping into my office. “Didn’t take a lunch break, didn’t come out of your room once, and you’re doing all your work on time. I think it’s got something to do with the fact that your paths have crossed with Elio Romano.”
There was something so warm and affectionate in a fatherly capacity about him that I couldn’t help but burst into tears and tell him everything. By the time I was finished, he was sitting next to me, consoling me with a hand on my head and offering me tissues.
“That’s it, Maria,” he said quietly. “You need some time off. Paid time off. I can’t have you working here while you’re still dealing with such a traumatic episode. I don’t want to see you in the office for another two weeks. You got it?”
“But work’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane,” I protested, wiping my eyes.