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“But you really like Drew,” Samiah said, her voice still dialed to annoying.
“I do.” London sighed. She dropped her head against the back of the couch. “Fuck. What is wrong with me?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out since you told us you weren’t looking for anything serious with him, even though he’s funny, rich, and gives good dick,” Taylor said. “Why do you insist on keeping this casual again?”
If she got into the complicated emotions surrounding her feelings for Drew and how they were weirdly tied to her dad, both Samiah and Taylor wouldreallythink she’d lost it. But she couldn’t just write those feelings off either. They were too close to the center of this absurd push-and-pull thing she had going when it came to Drew.
London sat up straight and cleared her throat. “This is a no-judgment zone, right? Well, slight judgment is allowed because Lord knows if either of you were to share what I’m about to, I would judge the hell out of you.”
“This sounds juicy.” Taylor planted her elbows on the coffee table and set her chin on her fists. “Go on.”
London rolled her eyes. She could not believe she was about to admit to this, but if she couldn’t share her twisted teenage thought processes with her two best friends, who could she share them with?
“I will start by saying that I know how warped this is,” she began. “As someone who prides herself on being sensible and pragmatic, it baffles me that this has remained an issue all this time, but it has.” She clenched her fists, then flattened her palms on her thighs. “It’s hard for me to let go of my animosity toward Drew because I blame him for the strained relationship I have with my dad.”
Samiah frowned. “Is this about to go in a direction that will have me tweeting to Iyanla to come and fix your life?”
“Definitely.” London nodded.
“I am so confused,” Taylor said. “What? How?”
“You know what?” London said. “Why don’t we just forget I said anything?”
“Hell no,” Taylor said. “You both know about my daddy issues. Share, honey.” She made acome to Mamagesture with her hands. “Just let it out.”
London would give anything to put this toothpaste back in the tube. She now recalled exactly why she wasn’t a sharer, because she didn’t like having people all up in her damn business.
Fine time to remember that.
She reached over for the lemongrass and Thai basil cocktail Samiah had made for tonight’s meal and took a sip. She directed her attention to Taylor.
“So, you know how all this time you thought your dad wasn’t proud of your accomplishments, when, in fact, he was?” London asked her. “For me, it’s the opposite. No matter how hard I work and how much I achieve, I can never seem to make my dad proud.”
“Sorry, but you will not convince me that Austin’s hotshot, superstar pediatric surgeon isn’t the apple of her father’s eye.”
“You would think, wouldn’t you?” She shook her head. “But, no, I’m definitely not the apple of my dad’s eye. Or, if I am, he sure as hell hasn’t said anything to me.”
“What does this have to do with Drew?” Samiah asked.
London gulped more of her cocktail. She needed all the courage she could muster to get through this, and would gladly take it in liquor form.
“I busted my ass throughout high school to get good grades,” she said. “The only time my dad paid any attention to me was when he could brag on my accomplishments to his colleagues at his law firm. He wouldn’t even mention it to me. I had to hear about it from his secretary, Manda, who would tell me how Dad told everyone in the office about some award I received, or my straight-As report card, or whatever. I was so starved for his attention that I would email her with the most transparent excuses my little teenage brain could come up with, just to see if my dad had talked about me at work that day.”
London could feel the disgust building in her throat but managed to swallow it down.
“That’s…heartbreaking,” Samiah said.
“It’s pathetic is what it is,” London said. “And I will totally own up to being pathetic back then. That was life as Kenneth Kelley’s daughter. I clamored for any morsel of attention I could get from him, and if that meant being the best of the class, then I was willing to do whatever it took to maintain that 4.0 GPA.
“All was going great. I was sitting comfortably at the very top of my class, and then along came Drew Sullivan. Suddenly, life wasn’t so simple.” She huffed out a humorless laugh as she took another sip of her drink. “What really gnawed at me was how easy things seemed to come for him. He had everything. He was the cutest boy in school by a mile. He got stellar grades. He immediately joined the basketball team and became the star player. Ihatedhim,” London said. “And then when graduation came around and I found out that I would have to share the valedictorian spot with him?”
“Uh-oh,” Taylor said.
“It was supposed to be my crowning achievement. The one thing that would make it so that I would never have to wonder if my dad was proud of me. But who wants to brag about their child being ‘co’ anything? Not Kenneth Kelley.”
“Drew stole your thunder,” Samiah said.
“Yep.” London lowered her voice, even though they were alone in Samiah’s condo. “I will admit this only to the two of you, but for a millisecond I contemplated poisoning that son of a bitch.”
