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I jumped to my feet, a burst of anger shooting through me as I glared at her.
“Like you?” I hurled. “So, I could sit in a beautiful house surrounded by kids that I ignore and look down on anyone who doesn’t have a life that I think is suitable? That’s what I should have done?”
A look of hurt flashed across her face, but I couldn’t care.
“You wouldn’t be saying any of this if you knew anything about my life,” her words echoed in my mind as I continued on. I didn’t know why I said what I said next. Why the lie flew to my lips so easily. All I knew was that I wanted my mom to regret her words and her judgement. I wanted her to not think that I was wasting my life.
“I have a fiancé mom. Someone who, I promise, you would approve of. Not that you approve of anything else in my life, but at least there’s that.”
“You’re engaged?” My brother fired back, pushing himself off the couch and stalking around me so that he and my mother were within my line of sight.
“Yes,” I said, standing a little straighter. My heart was hammering with anxiety as I realized what I had done, the lie I had just told in an effort to get them off of my back. And now, I was going to have to double down on it. “Yes. I am.”
“Who?” Jourdan demanded.
“No,” I shook my head, scrambling for a way to save this mess. “You don’t get to come into my life and judge everything in it and then demand more of me.”
“Where’s your ring?” My mother asked.
“I left it at his apartment yesterday morning. I don’t like to wear it to work because I sell more paintings that way, and the turpentine might cause it to tarnish.” I was shocked at myself at how easily the lies were coming to my lips, how quickly my brain was scrambling to right whatever mess I’d just dug for myself.
They stared at me, my mother open-mouthed and my brother clenching his jaw as I could see them both trying to take all of this in.
“What do you even do in your job that causes you to have to be around turpentine?” Jourdan narrowed his eyes on me.
I could see what he was doing, poking and prodding at my story as he tried to find any chink in the armor. I couldn’t let him find one. I raised my chin high, holding his gaze with defiance as I was finally given a question I wouldn’t have to lie to answer.
“I help run and curate a gallery in Brooklyn,” I said with pride.
There was a pause, and I could see them weighing their options. I could tell they didn’t believe me, but as they shared a quick glance, I could see them trying to figure out if it would be worth it to press the issue and risk pushing me back out of their lives entirely.
“Then we will look forward to meeting him,” my mother said finally, turning her eyes back to me. “And soon.”
“I don’t know if that’s….” I began, but Jourdan cut me off.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “You ran six years ago, and we let you. But that’s not going to happen again. We can figure out how to interact with each other. It’ll take time. But we… I… am not letting you run again. I missed my sister,” he paused, swallowing hard before continuing. “We have a lot to make up for. But I’m not going back.”
A rush of emotion that I hadn’t expected washed through me, and despite myself, despite the fact that I knew it was a horrible, terrible idea, I nodded. They stood there awkwardly for a few more seconds before announcing that they had to get going.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets, not knowing how to say goodbye to them, and I was thankful when they didn’t go in for a hug. I think even they knew that they would be pushing it.
My family turned and walked out the door, my mother shooting me an almost shy glance and Jourdan giving me a quick, tight wave before closing the door behind them.
I collapsed back on the couch, chest heaving. The next time I spoke to Blake, I would have more than a few choice words to say to him.
CHAPTEREIGHT
BLAKE
The streetlight flickeredon when I walked under it, the sunset at my back slowly fading into the dark, winter night as I stepped out of the car in front of Nell’s building.
Dinner with Jourdan last night had been an interesting event, with me constantly stuffing down my guilt of everything that had happened with Nell and alternating it with comforting him over his own feelings about her sudden reappearance.
I hadn’t expected it to take as long as it did, so I had to send someone to deliver the heater for her, not wanting her to spend the night in the apartment feeling cold.
But now I was there, brand new radiator in tow that I was able to pick up earlier that morning, and ready to switch everything out.
I went to the back of the trunk, pulling the box with the radiator in it along with my toolbox out of the town car before telling the driver I would call when everything was finished and made my way into the building.
