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CHAPTER ONE
Prue
“CongratulationsonanothersuccessfulBrazilian butt lift.” I raise my flute to Dr. Michelle Waldron’s.
“Cheers.” She clinks mine, and we both take a drink of our virgin mimosas.
Which is basically just orange juice.
It’s a ritual we repeat after every complicated surgery. Or after a streak of back-to-back cosmetic procedures. Heck, after a long day in general. Meaning every day when you assist one of the top plastic surgeons in the state.
Sometimes so much as up to six times a week, depending on her schedule. Thankfully, this week, this particular Friday, we also drink to kick off the weekend.
“I couldn’t have done it without you, Prue.” Michelle sets her flute on the mahogany desk in her office. “I don’t thank you as often as I should, but you should know how grateful I am for you. You’re the best surgeon assistant out there, and I’m lucky to have you all to myself.”
Heat climbs up my neck at her compliment. I snap the hairband from my wrist, pulling my long and wavy blond hair into a ponytail.
“You don’t have to say that. I…I…”
Stuttering. Just perfect.
I’m humiliated. This shouldn’t happen. Except I can’t take a compliment to save my life. Even when I earned it through hard work. Even when my adult life, at twenty-six years old, revolves around either my academic studies or my job and has ever since I was fifteen.
I have no issues whatsoever with words likebutt liftor discussing patients’ privates freely, but accepting a good word every once in a while?
No, not me.
I know my worth. I know the lengths I’ve gone to get to where I am today.
I would’ve thanked Michelle and not made a big deal out of it like most people would. Then again, I’m not most people. I was raised differently.
The housemothers at the orphanage I grew up in never failed to emphasize the virtue of humility.
Eighteen years of tough love. Of not praising me too much about anything, really. There weren’t any special celebrations when I graduated from high school at fifteen. No,Amazing, Prue, given how hard you managed to find the time to work at an ice cream shop at the same time.
No one bought a cake to celebrate me completing my undergrad in three years when I was eighteen. Not a single housemother applauded me for going out into the free world as a functioning adult.
Slaving over my school and pushing hard for a good future were supposed to be my rewards.
And they were.
Still are.
That’s it. I don’t do it for compliments or praise.
While I haven’t been living under the housemothers’ watchful eyes for the past seven years, I still feel their presence. Their strict upbringing can’t be turned off with a simple flip of a switch.
It’s become a part of who I am.
Regardless of how I try to be less of that person nowadays.
I might’ve donated my bible, haven’t hung a cross in my apartment, and stopped going to church on Sundays. And yet, I can’t get away.
The core values of my education linger in the back of my mind, forever to stay.
Or, at least, until I go to bed. There, my decadent dreams, wants, and wishes run free. They couldn’t care less that I’ve been taught they’re sinister and wrong. Of what good girls shouldn’t dream of.
But I digress.
