AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s not what I want, but when have things ever gone my way?
I’m eating lunch at the café across the street from work when my mother comes stomping up to me. The table has two chairs, and as always, she pulls up a third to represent my father’s absence. She sits down uninvited, and I have to physically bite my tongue to keep from telling her to go away.
She’s on the warpath today.
“What did you do to yourself?” she snaps, scowling at my forehead. I still have a bandage where I got stitches after breaking my window.
“Thank you for your concern, Mother. I had an accident.” My words drip with acid, but she just barrels on ahead.
“I have been attempting to contact Landon, and he apparently is no longer accepting my calls. I assume you’re behind this?”
That might be the first piece of good news that woman has ever imparted me with. My heart warms to Landon, knowing he hasn’t gone behind my back.
“You better believe I am.” I want to lean away from her and hug myself like a child, but I force myself to do the opposite. I lean toward her, hands planted on the tabletop, and her eyebrows jump with surprise. “After you told him your version of what happened to me in my teens. You had no right to do that. I told him we're through if he talks to you again.”
“He needed to know,” she says primly. “And it was after I told him and he didn’t leave you that I knew he was an appropriate choice for you. I did you a favor, vetting him like that. I’m not surprised that you don’t appreciate it, though, you never show the least bit of gratitude for all the things I’ve done.”
I just stare at her in astonishment. She really believes the things she says.
“I expect you to contact Landon and tell him that he may speak to me.”
“Why, specifically, do you need to speak tomyfiancé?” I ask her coolly.
“I am your mother, and you will not shut me out of your life like this.Ifhe still is your fiancé, after the way that you’ve been behaving,” she snipes. “I wouldn’t blame him in the least if he left you.”
I reach for my coffee cup, but my hand starts to shake. I can’t handle this right now. This morning there was no hot water, and when I called the gas company, they told me I was three months behind in payments, which is ridiculous. My payments are automatically withdrawn from my bank account. They claimed they’d sent me multiple notices, but I never received any. Yet one more thing to add to the list of oddities over the past few months.
I had to take a cold shower when my body was already ice.
Then I went to drive to work, but I had another flat tire, so I had to call a tow truck and an Uber. I was fifteen minutes late for work, and my first client was hysterical and complained to my manager.
I never used to worry about money, but I’m starting to get rattled. I refuse to take money from my mother because that means I’m instantly under her thumb—even more than I already am. What would happen if I lost my job?
I have several thousand dollars in my savings, but that’s not enough to live off for long. I have rent, utilities, car payments, student loans, groceries, wedding costs…
The more things that go wrong, the worse my anxiety grows. I’m especially uneasy this morning. I feel the hair prickling on the back of my neck. I felt like this the other day in my house and ignored it, and look what happened. I should have trusted my intuition, just as I tell my patients to do.
But what am I afraid of here in a crowded café in broad daylight?
Whatever it is, everything is building up inside me until I’m ready to explode. I’ve lost my tolerance for my mother’s sharp tongue.
“You attempt to sabotage me repeatedly during every conversation,” I tell her.
“That’s the kind of thing they teach you to say in therapy school.” She sniffs disdainfully.Therapy school?“You should have attended an institute for faith-based counseling, not one of those… radical liberal brainwashing schools. They try to break up families.”
I went to a Catholic university, and she knows it, but there’s no point in trying to muddle the argument with facts. My stomach curdles, and I stand up. “I’m not going to sit here while you attack me, Mother.”
“Very well,” she says with a tight, angry smile. “What wouldyoulike to talk about?”
“Bastien.” I choke on the word.
She stares at me in astonishment.
“What? Are you making some kind of sick joke?”
I’m staring across the room at a man who I’d know anywhere.He’s looking at me.
His face is completely different. It’s clear that he’s had major plastic surgery to disguise his appearance, and his hair is clipped short. The only thing that’s the same are the eyes. Intense, piercing blue eyes that seize control of my breath and burn into my soul. I clench my fists and fight the impulse to sink to my knees, to crawl to him the way he taught me.
