The thought of her leaving makes it hard for me to breathe.
“I appreciate the offer, but I think you’ve helped enough this week,” she says wryly.
I’m wearing the robe she just discarded. I could get dressed, but I’d rather be enveloped in her lavender-citrus scent for a while longer. I lounge on my side, my head propped on my hand. I stay on my bed, willing myself not to get up and drag her back here with me.
Andi’s about to walk down the stairs when she stops. “We got sidetracked before. Why?”
“Why what?” I try to remember what we were talking about and when we got distracted.
“Why did you risk it all for me?”
I smile. “That’s easy. Because you’re worth it.”
Andi closes her eyes and inhales for a moment. Then she’s gone. I hear her footsteps run down the stairs. Then I hear the door open and shut. Her car turns over and backs out of the gravel driveway.
She’s gone.
I roll flat, staring at my ceiling.
She’ll come back.
She has to.
In the meantime, I contemplate never getting dressed and eating everything in my kitchen until I look like Thor, post-Thanos’s snap.
I picture Andi, sitting at my kitchen table with her list of things to do to try and save her career. She just got up and did things. She made things happen.
She’s like a machine.
Thinking about my multiple sessions with Watson Ross—damn, I’m probably going to have to find myself a new therapist—I evaluate Andi’s actions.
From where I’m sitting—er, lying—it’s easy to see that this is her trauma response. She shuts down and then attempts to control everything by micromanaging. I’m the opposite. I yell and scream and pretend nothing matters.
But now, something matters.
Andi matters.
I matter too.
With this new-found revelation, I decide to skip my self-destructive wallow-fest and do something. I get up and head downstairs. I dig through a drawer to find some scrap of paper. Seriously, does Andi carry paper on her at all times? Weird.
I start my list.
Fire Dad
Figure out what I want to be when I grow up
Okay, there’s not much to go on, but it’s a start at least.
I’ve got to be smart about number one. I scour my emails, trying to find all the accounts that my dad has started over the years in my name. Not an easy feat when you have over 10,000 emails, but the search bar is key.
Also, my dad may be the world’s biggest asshole, but he’s organized if nothing else. He likes making money, and he likes putting all those numbers in spreadsheets to add them up.
He also uses a financial advisor to manage all my accounts.
Bingo.
I’ve never signed a legal contract with my father to act as my agent. It just was, and no one questioned it. I signed whatever I needed to whenever I needed to. I log in to each and every account, double-checking.
