AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Me:
Are you having second thoughts?
Christian:
Fuck, no. It just seems really dumb and over the top to me.
Me:
Yeah … me too.
Christian:
Sorry. But yeah, I’ll do whatever. Just let me know.
Of course he would. Our announcement photos could be of us launching ourselves out of a plane, and he’d do it. Still, I can’t get past what he said.
It’s dumb and over the top.
Itis.
Those are the types of things I’ve never been able to understand about my family; we operate under the illusion of wanting privacy, but we’re happy to broadcast all the family changes to the world. The carefully controlled narrative they spin is all bullshit.
My time in Amsterdam was chalked up to working abroad, when it couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d been hiding out, living in a tiny one-bedroom flat, making coffee and waiting tables to pay the bills and it had been amazing. It had beenreal.
Ithadn’tbeen a charity event charging five thousand dollars a ticket.
I chew my thumbnail—nasty habit,says my mom’s voice—and compare all the truths to the lies. This isn’t the world I want to live in. It’s not the impression I want to give people. Everywhere I go people are struggling and they look up to the people with the wealth and the power and the status. They seethese perfect fucking lives and aspire to reach these lofty goals, when what they’re reaching for doesn’t actually exist.
I’m part of that problem.
My sticking my head in the sand while in Amsterdam.
My posting from yachts and dinners in expensive suits that cost more than Christian’s monthly rent every time I’m in America or visit family in England. My absolute silence and scheming while people suffer.
Even the reminder that I’mplanningto do good doesn’t help. Instead, it has the slimy quality of a cheap excuse.
Pa’s will is ironclad. There’s nothing anyone can do to take my trustorthe money I’ll be entitled to. I’ve grown up so used to my every action being watched and judged and made to measure up to some arbitrary standard, when really … what can they do?
What can they do?
Sure, there are other ways they can cut me off at the knees, but restricting my access to the properties they own, the planes they use, the business I never fucking intended to run anyway—it’s all what I intend to estrange myself from.
Which begs the question … what am I waiting for?
If I don’t want to play their games anymore, then all I have to do is stop playing. Might as well start now as I intend to go on, and while my marriage will be nothing short of a sham, I can at least start trying to be honest about the rest of it.
Well,someof it.
There’s still the charity to consider, my sister and her reputation, and while I’m confident that there’s nothing they can officially do about Pa’s will, I’m not going to push them to contest it and tie the money up legally for any longer than it needs to be.
So, baby steps for now.
And the first of many will be claiming my engagement. Publicly.
In exactly the way I want.
Chapter 18
