AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, that wasn’t it. That just happened afterwards when I was waiting for the car…”
“So, who is the friend?” my mom insists, refusing to let that go. “Who did you go out with?”
“A friend called Tim.” A heat races through my body and hits my cheeks hard.
“A guy? You went out with a boy? You are screwing up your dreams for a man?” The fury screams from my mother. “Is this some sort of joke, Kayla? After everything that I did for you? This is just ridiculous. I don’t even know what to say to you right now. You are just lucky to be back right now where I can train you once more for your next job interview tomorrow. I managed to pull some strings and get you sorted out, but you can’t screw things up another time. We are going to spend the rest of the day training you…”
I have to stop this before it gets too far. She is getting carried away with a plan that isn’t going to happen.
“Mom, no, before you start…” The glare that she gives me chills me to the bone. But I can’t allow her to stop me. I have to keep going. “I actually don’t want to go to the interview tomorrow.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I haven’t ever heard her scream so loudly. Nor does she ever curse. Not at me anyway. I really have screwed up. “I worked so hard to sort this out for you. It wasn’t easy since you made such a mess of things, but I did. I’m not having you throw it back in my face again…”
“I didn’t ask you to do that for me though, Mom.” I feel like utter shit as I say this, but I need to make her see. It’s going to get ugly but that’s the way it has to be. “I don’t want that. I don’t want any of this. I never asked for any of it. There might be other things that I want to do with my life…”
“You don’t get to do other things with your life and still be a top lawyer. I have tried to tell you over and over again that it doesn’t work like that. You have to be smart; you have to be focused; this is important.”
“But that’s if I want to be you, Mom. I want to try and be my own person. I want to do something new.”
Mom is silent for a beat too long and honestly in that moment I’m sure that I’m going to collapse in a painful heap because of the anxiety. The tension is absolutely crushing me. I don’t think I can handle it.
“That is the most childish thing that I have ever heard coming out of your mouth, Kayla,” she finally replies coldly. “I would have thought that consider you are twenty two years old now; you would be ready to be an adult. I would have thought that after everything I have been through to help you, all I have suffered with you, for you, that now we’re finally in a good place, you would be happy about it. Not throwing your life down the toilet to go and doss around with some guy that you clearly just met. How does that sound to you? Like a recipe for disaster? Like something that you should clearly avoid when your life is about to come together?”
“I want to… to find myself…” I gasp, wondering why those words don’t sound as strong as they did a moment ago when I was in the car singing them to myself. “I want a break. Just a summer, that’s all. Then I will come back and do whatever you want me to. I will go to any interview that you want me to.”
“You can’t have time off. Lawyers don’t get time off. You have seen how I work, Kayla. It’s a job that lasts twenty fours hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year. You don’t get a break.”
The building blocks of stress weigh down on me once more. “I don’t know if I want that.”
The next time that my mother opens her mouth, the words come out and they don’t stop spilling. They flood over me like an all consuming tsunami and I honestly don’t know how to cope with them. I keep trying to intervene, to say my piece because I came in here knowing that I was in the right, but she continues to steam roller over me. All of a sudden, I don’t know if twenty four hours is going to be enough…“So, we are all sorted now?” Mom says softly as she strokes my hair. I lay back on the bed wondering where it all went wrong and when my eyes will stop being quite as puffy as they are. “You understand me?”
