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I looked at the door again. Brayden wasn’t coming back tonight. Tomorrow, I’d have to pick up the pieces. I wasn’t looking forward to telling my mother to stop planning our wedding. She was a lot happier about it than I was, and she’d be outraged tomorrow.
Running Away
Naelle
When I woke up, it was totally dark. My mother loved to stay up late, and I couldn’t hear any noise coming from the party.
I looked at the glowing numbers of my clock.
Four o’clock.
There shouldn’t be two four o’clocks in one day.
Yesterday came back in a rush and I wished that I hadn’t woken up yet. I had to tell my mother that her vision for my future wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t have grandkids on the way in two years.
All I wanted to do was hide under my covers until the whole mess blew over.
I couldn’t bear the thought of the pity from my friends and my parents’ friends when they heard what went on.
And Jenny.
We were college roommates. We’d both spent a lot of time with Brayden.
I knew that she had a crush on him, but I had no idea that she would go so far as to cheat on me with him.
Her betrayal cut deeper than Brayden’s. I didn’t care about Brayden very much. Even if we had gotten married, we knew that we’d leave each other alone most of the time.
But Jenny…
We’d been best friends for so long that I could barely even remember when we met in preschool.
How had I missed the signs? Everything had been going on right in front of me.
I curled up in my blanket, but I knew that my mother wouldn’t let me stay there for too long.
I just needed a break from my life.
I didn’t even have a job yet. I was planning on staying home and having a full-time job on the boards of several different charities.
My mom had pushed me into volunteering everywhere my whole life. I was always working on her cause du jour.
I never enjoyed any of it, except for once.
I thought about the mission trip that I’d taken in high school down to Quito to work with the Timmy Foundation at an alternative school that specialized in autistic children.
It had been one of the most meaningful experiences of my entire life. I’d rubbed elbows not with the hoi aristoi of DC but with normal people, people who were happy with what little they had.
They lived on a few hundred dollars a month and were still happier than most of the Americans I knew.
I pulled up Google Flights to look for the next flights down there. I could either connect in Houston or Miami. It was dirt cheap, for some reason.
When I had graduated from college, I had fulfilled the terms of my trust fund. I had enough money to go anywhere in the world. I could party in Ibiza if I wanted.
But I didn’t want to hang out with the spoiled rich kids who didn’t have to work. I wanted to go somewhere where people were real.
So I threw a bunch of clothing into a suitcase, my guidebook to Ecuador that I bought a long time ago, and some shoes, and I was out the door before the sun rose.
Before I walked out of our tastefully decorated house, I pulled out a note.
