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BEFORE…
There’s something so final about watching everything you know in life fade away from the small window of an airplane.
The California coast grows smaller and smaller the higher up we travel, and yet I can’t help but feel pulled in a different direction. My eyes wander to the far off horizon, where the vast, golden foothills eventually meet with the Pacific ocean somewhere too far for me to see.
Squinting my eyes, I strain, trying to catch a last glimpse of the best part of my life and it hurts more than I thought it would. I wonder, not for the first time if they’ll miss me the way I already miss them.
Summer is my season, the most wonderful time of the year and every single time we’re forced to return to our real lives, a small part of my soul remains on the coast.
I can picture them now—my River and my Luca, waiting at the docks for a sixteen-year-old girl who’ll never come back. Not next year, or the year after that. My time with the boys of summer has come to an abrupt end.
They were my everything.
Now, I’m their nothing.
Nora
My heart is racing, but not from anxiety. I wish it was just anxiety, at least that would be a familiar poison. I honestly can't tell what I feel more, excitement or terror. Both probably. Yeah, it’s definitely both.
Stopped in an intersection staring down at my phone, I try to let my mom’s words sink in, but all I keep hearing are two other voices. Voices from my past. They’re laughing at me, telling me I might as well not even bother getting on that plane my mom just booked for me. They tell me to stay in New York since I so obviously wanted to be here instead of with…them.
Several cars honk, jolting me back into the present, and I send the taxi drivers a half-hearted apologetic wave, to which they just flip me the bird. I’m only a block from home, so I break into a light, fast walk as my mind races.
We’re moving. As in leaving New York forever. After seven years, my mom finally met someone that convinced her to marry him, and now we’re following him to California. In three days. Three whole days until my entire life changes…again.
I’m twenty-three, so yes, technically, I could stay in New York if I wanted to, but Mom and I have always been partners in crime. She’s been a nanny for the same family since I was a kid, and I’ve never had a reason to separate from her. The idea of watching her fly off to the other side of the country without me hurts too much to even contemplate, so that’s not even remotely an option. Call me a momma’s girl, but I own it. She’s the best person in my life.
She’s been alone for too long and despite the happy face she puts on for everyone else, I can see behind it. She focuses too much on work and not enough time on herself, which makes me feel guilty sometimes since so much of her money goes into paying for my dance classes. But trying to convince her to let me pay my way is laughable. Mom’s the least selfish human being I know, which is why this news is so shocking.
Married? It’s all happening so suddenly, and I’m confused. Where is this all coming from? Who the hell is she marrying?
I race down the New York City street, suddenly realizing that this might be the very last time I get to call myself a New Yorker. Not that I really am one, but for the last seven years, this has been home. I love it here…right?
Working as a live-in nanny for the Pembrokes has been an amazing adventure for both me and my mom. We’ve lived with them since I was a kid, and they’re all I’ve ever known. Well, at least the part of my life that I choose to think about. Everything before that is kind of a blur.
She’s so good at her job that it was like we became a part of the family. We get free travel, free accommodations, a built-in family and not to mention I’ve benefited from free tuition at the same private schools as all the Pembroke children. My private schools in New York were amazing. I’d taken up some dance classes senior year with my mom’s encouragement and now have a pretty booming online following making YouTube choreography videos. New York is an amazing place for the artistically inclined to network and pretty much immerse yourself into the community of starving artists.
I guess that’s all about to change now,I mutter as I make my way through the front door of the Pembroke’s loft where I live with my mom and my dog, Cat. To call it a loft might actually be a gross understatement. It’s more like a penthouse. Mr. and Mrs. Pembroke actually own this building—this nine-story monstrosity of a building that houses their six-person family on each floor with my mom and I on the top floor.
Mr. Pembroke is some sort of app developer, but he comes from old, old money which helped to launch his company sky high. He and his wife decided somewhere along the way to squeeze out multiple children, so here we are, the beautiful and wonderful Elena Blair and her only daughter, here to help raise their children.
For the first time in well over a decade, I’m faced with the fact that this setup isn’t permanent. I mean, I guess I always knew we’d eventually leave and move on to a new family in need of a nanny, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept, no matter how excited I am.
“Tell me this is some kind of sick fucking joke.” My heart leaps into my throat as my bag drops to the floor and I place a hand on my chest, catching my breath. Lounging on my bed is my best friend Jax Pembroke, the oldest son of the family Mom nannies for. He already sounds pissed. My stomach sinks, the excitement ebbing away. “I just got off the phone with my dad and he told me your mom just put in her notice.”
“You really need to stop doing that, Jax, fuck, you scared the shit out of me.”
Cat squeezes around me and jumps onto my queen-size bed next to him. Jax stretches out all six feet of himself, taking up the entire mattress and runs a hand along Cat’s fur as my traitorous dog sighs happily.
Jax has a habit of coming into my room whenever he wants and it scares the crap out of me every time. He thinks he’s hilarious, but one of these days, I'm going to take a swing at him and he’ll regret it… Or, I guess those days are over now, aren't they?
“Stop stalling, Nora. When were you planning on telling me, when you’re already flying down the fucking runway?” Scooting up against the headboard with Cat following him, he leans against it, still glaring at me, waiting for me to tell him that this is all just one elaborate joke, which it obviously isn’t. “Your silence is telling,” he mutters.
“Jax, not right now—”
“Then when?” he cuts me off, folding his arms over his chest. “This couldn’t have come out of nowhere. You’re moving clear across the country without any warning and I’m seriously the last to know?” His blue eyes appear darker than ever before, clouded with hurt that has me feeling guilty. But guilty of what?
“Shit…” I walk toward the bed leaving my things scattered on the floor. “I swear I just found out literally ten minutes ago. Mom called and dropped the news like it was the goddamn weather. She’s boarding a plane tonight and I’m supposed to catch mine in a few days.” The phone call lasted less than five minutes before she had to go and I was left reeling.
