Page 10 of Waiting for You

He lowered the paper and hummed. "Violet. How was the drive down?"

"Good." She took a half-step back and gestured at me. "This is my roommate, Sloane. The dorms are closed for spring break and she couldn't fly home. So, I invited her to stay."

He looked at me and offered a tight smile. "You're welcome here, of course. Though Violet could've given us the courtesy of a warning before bringing a guest."

My pulse quickened. His voice was calm but the sharp reprimand braided into the gracious welcome was extremely familiar. I'd grown up surviving a similar brand of warfare.

"I texted Mom," Violet reasoned.

Right on cue, a woman appeared in the kitchen archway. She was petite and fair-skinned, with bouncing strawberry-blonde hair and a light step, crossing the room with her arms already stretched wide.

"You must be Sloane!" She practically sang it, yanking me into a crushing hug before I could brace my feet. Her grip ran warm. "Welcome to our home. Please, treat the place as your own." She pulled back and gripped my shoulders to flash a blinding smile. "I'm Samara. Use my first name. Mrs. Paige makes me feel ancient."

The defensive tension in my shoulders eased a fraction.

Then Samara let me go and turned to Violet. Her slow gaze crawled over her daughter, taking her in head to toe like a disappointed judge and snagging at her hips like she was tallying a flaw.

"Doesn't it crush your self-esteem," Samara mused, "having to stand next to a girl like her every single day?"

The living room flatlined.

My first thought was that I'd misheard her. My second was the sick realization that I hadn't.

Violet's face stayed level, and that was the detail that broke my heart. It wasn't the venom in the words, but how she absorbed the strike without a flinch. Her jaw stayed loose, her eyes fixed dead ahead, and her features locked into a practiced neutrality that cost her nothing.

"What do you mean by that?" Violet asked, her tone smooth.

"Just look at her." Samara gestured at me with a detached appreciation, like she was critiquing a sculpture. "She's so wonderfully slim. She fits the standard." She paused and tilted her head. "I honestly thought by now you'd have done something drastic about your weight, sweetheart. I really did."

My eyes cut to Violet.

Violet wasn't fat. She was nowhere near it. She was lush and full-curved, with a magnetic body that bent the gravity of a room, a sharply cinched waist and hips that moved with their own authority. She was gorgeous, and I'd never given her body a second thought until that moment, when her mother turned it into a weapon.

I opened my mouth, a retort burning on my tongue.

Violet's hand shot out, found mine without looking, and gave my fingers one fierce squeeze.

"I'm going to show Sloane up to the guest room," Violet told her parents, already turning her back and heading for the staircase.

We climbed the steps in a thick silence. Violet shoved a bedroom door open, ushered me in, and twisted the deadbolt behind us.

"Don't give it a second thought," she muttered, dropping her duffel on the rug.

I sank onto the edge of the quilted mattress and watched my best friend hang up her denim jacket and straighten the items on the dresser, her hands in constant motion. She paced the room without stopping for a breath.

"Violet," I started.

"It's fine. She's been dropping lines like that since middle school." Violet spun around, her mouth pulling into a hard line before it trembled and gave. "You just get used to the sting."

I almost argued that getting used to abuse didn't make it okay, but Violet met my gaze with a worn-out look that stopped me cold, and she turned back to her jacket.

So instead of lecturing her, I started talking about my own parents. I laid out the truth about my father, a man who could drain the oxygen from a room by shifting his stance. I told her about my mother's talent for being physically present and out of reach. I spelled out what it felt like to survive in a house where love came strictly on the condition of obedience.

"What happens if you don't earn it?" Violet asked from her spot on the floor.

"You learn to stop needing it." I picked at a loose thread in the quilt. "Or you get good at faking whatever gets you through dinner."

She didn't reach for a silver lining or promise me it would get better. She just sat there and took in every gritty detail, nodding now and then, because she'd grown up under the same rules and didn't need a word of it explained.