by T. K. Leigh
You have a group project.
Anything to keep your mother’s secret.
Thankfully, he’s too consumed by his replacement wife, his replacement baby, his replacement family to even question it. He actually sounds relieved when you can’t come, which only solidifies your original thought that you’ve never been anything but a burden.
Somehow you make it through high school. All those hours you lay awake studying to make sure your mother didn’t choke on her own vomit means your grades are good enough to get a scholarship to a decent four-year school. You’re thrilled to have that fresh start you thought you were getting years ago.
The morning you’re scheduled to move into your dorm, you bound into your mother’s room, only to see she’s still drunk from the night before.
So you have to spend some of the money you saved for books to pay for a last-minute train ticket upstate. But it’s worth it. Because you’ll finally be able to close this chapter in your life. Finally have a place you feel like you belong.
Until you arrive at freshmen move-in and are surrounded by parents bidding tearful farewells to their children, telling them how proud they are of everything they’ve accomplished.
Your mother most likely hasn’t even noticed you’re gone yet. And your father probably has no idea you’re even enrolled in college.
You meet your new roommate. At least you were lucky enough to be paired with the jackpot of all roommates. Caring. Compassionate. Sensitive to the fact that there are clearly skeletons in your closet you’re not ready to share.
For a while, things seem to get better.
You can focus on excelling and proving to everyone you can be successful.
You can leave behind your somewhat promiscuous adolescence and become who you were always meant to be.
You can fall in love.
Until you learn your mother lost her job because of her drinking. There’s no one else she can turn to, so you do the only thing you can in order to save her from losing the house, the only anchor you feel you have in your life.
You ask your father for help.
Except you don’t tell him the exact reason. Just that you’ve decided to leave college.
Of course, he accuses you of never finishing anything you start.
He has a point, but you don’t dwell.
You thank him when he says he’ll call in a favor to see if he can get you a decent job. Or at least one that will pay a little more than the local Starbucks.
So you go to work as a receptionist at a women’s magazine.
You’re starstruck the first time a famous actor walks in.
Even more so when he shamelessly flirts with you.
With all the drama at home, you welcome the attention. It helps take your mind off the fact that you’re not able to get your mother the help she needs. She promises she’s trying to get clean. You have no choice but to take her at her word, the pile of bills preventing you from babysitting her. Your low-paying job isn’t enough to afford rehab. You can barely pay the mortgage, but you refuse to let her lose her house. That may only make her drink more.
So you find a second job as a cocktail waitress, as ironic as that is.
The tips are good.
But the stack of bills gets even higher.
You realize you won’t be going back to school anytime soon.
You turn on the charm because it increases your tips. One night, a man with a designer suit and a Tag Hauer watch walks in. You make sure you’re the one who takes care of him. When he leaves you a one hundred dollar bill for a twenty dollar scotch, you turn on the charm even more to show your appreciation.
He mistakes the appreciation for interest and invites you back to his hotel. You say you can’t, that you have to get up early for work in the morning. As it stands, by the time you get home from this job, you’ll maybe only get three hours of sleep, but you’ve trained your body to function on less than that.
Since this man’s used to being able to buy anything he wants, he flashes his billfold, promising to make it worth your while.
You’re offended at first, wanting to hold on to the small amount of pride you have left. Then you remember the property tax bill that’s been taunting you. You’d never seen a bill with so many zeros before. Your mother tries to help. She’s been looking for work, but she’s being turned down left and right. Jobs she’s overqualified for won’t hire her because they want someone who won’t quit after a few months for something better. Jobs she is qualified for won’t go near her because word travels fast in her industry.
So, instead of declining the man’s offer, you ask where he’s staying. You almost turn back nearly a dozen times. You try to convince yourself you don’t need to do this, that you’ll find another way. But the fear of losing the house pushes you forward.
When you knock on his room in a hotel you’d never be able to afford, he answers with a smile that sends a chill through you. But you swallow down the bile and walk inside, officially out of options. That night, part of you dies.
When he’s done, he leaves a stack of bills on the bed for you. It takes everything inside you not to break down and cry. You dress quickly and leave, not looking back.
You tell yourself you’ll never do that again, that there’s another way.
Then your mother’s house is foreclosed on, despite all your efforts to keep it, and you move into a tiny studio apartment in an area of town where you’re scared to fall asleep. But it’s all you can afford at the moment.
So you turn on the charm once more. Some men are interested in more of a girlfriend experience, so that’s what you give them. Some just want to have fun for a night, so you oblige. They bestow you with cash and gifts—jewels, shoes, purses. All things you can sell to pay your bills and hopefully save enough money to move into a better place, a nicer place…a safer place.
Finally, the clouds seem to part when you come home one day and learn your mother got a job. A good job. You want to burst out in tears at the relief of not having to sell your body anymore.
You go back to school. You quit your waitressing job. You move into your own place. You find out about a promotion at the magazine and put all your effort into that, even if it means doing a few questionable things in order to get it. The pay will be enough that you’ll never have to sacrifice your dignity again.
Then you take your mother to her AA meeting and smell alcohol on her breath. So you put your life on hold again, withdrawing from school in an effort to keep a closer eye on her.
You somehow convince yourself it’s all your fault. That you deserve everything life’s handed you. That maybe you don’t deserve to be happy, don’t deserve to be loved.
Then a man comes into your life and makes you believe that maybe you are. That maybe you do have worth. Maybe you do have value. Maybe you can be loved.
But you’re scared. What if he learns the truth of everything you’ve done? What if he learns of the lies you told? What if he’s able to see past the walls you were forced to build all those years ago and no longer likes what he sees?
Yet, somehow, he does. When you hit your lowest point, he stands by your side and helps lift you up. He doesn’t judge when he learns the truth. He doesn’t look at you in disgust. Instead, he sees something you never thought anyone would — strength. He doesn’t make you feel worthless. He calls you a survivor. Calls you strong. Calls you remarkable.
And those walls around you come crumbling down.
You let this amazing man in. You open up to him.
You fall in love.
Guardedly.
Timidly.
Hesitantly.
But you still do.
Then the bottom drops. Regardless, he tries to fight for you, says he’ll go to battle for you.
But you know his love will never win the war. You’ve lived your entire life on a runaway train, desperately trying to get it back on its tracks. So you do the one thing you can to control this situation.
You lie.
It’s not the first time. You’ve lied to everyone most of your life. About your mother. About where that designer purse you had days ago disappeared to. About the bruise on your arm where one of your new “friends” got a little too rough.
When your parent is an alcoholic, you become a master at deception, so much so that it’s hard to remember what’s real and what’s part of the elaborate façade you built to hide the truth.
You convince yourself you don’t need love, that love makes you weak, and you refuse to show even a hint of weakness.
You smile and tell your friends how thrilled you are when they find their own happily ever after that would rival even the cheesiest romantic comedy.
They joke and tell you that you’re next. You brush it off, saying you’re not interested in all the trappings of love, of finding your happily ever after.
But I did find my happily ever after.
Convincing myself I didn’t, convincing him I didn’t, is the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
I wipe my tired eyes, stretching my legs out in front of me as I read over what I spent the last several hours writing and rewriting, telling my story, not leaving out a single detail. Izzy was right. It’s amazingly cathartic to get it all down on paper. And maybe it will help other people who are just as lost as me, who feel just as worthless as I do.
Content with my work, I sit back, contemplating what to do now that it’s out there. But is it?
I’m not sure what comes over me, whether it’s lack of sleep or the peaceful glow filtering into my apartment in the predawn hours, but I open up my email and attach the document, then type a message.
To: Evie Fitzgerald
From: Chloe Davenport
Subject: Maybe?
Hey, E. Think Viv would want to run this in next month’s issue instead of the piece on the best celebrity Instagram accounts?
C
I hesitate, my finger about to click on the send button. Once I do, my friends will know all my secrets. After these past few hours of soul-searching, it doesn’t seem the cataclysmic event I once thought it to be. So I click, listening to the whooshing sound as the email flies into cyberspace. A part of me regrets being so rash.
Until Evie and Nora appear on my doorstep before seven in the morning, tears in their eyes. When they wrap me in their arms without a single ounce of pity or judgment, I’m confident this is the right path. That this is what I need to do to move forward, to turn that page on a new chapter in my life.
Even if Lincoln’s name doesn’t appear on any of them.
Chapter Forty-Three
A sea of black robes fills the lobby of a state-of-the-art theater, a post-graduation reception underway. Of course, this wasn’t the official ceremony, just one the journalism department puts on for its students. A more private affair honoring a few hundred graduates instead of the university graduation, which has several thousand.
I’d been uneasy about the prospect of attending. I’d planned on foregoing walking during my graduation ceremony altogether, not wanting to run into Lincoln. But my friends reminded me of all the obstacles I’d faced in getting to this point. I needed to do this.
That still didn’t stop me from nearly turning around and leaving a dozen times as the graduation coordinator had lined us up, unsure whether I could enter the auditorium and face Lincoln. Thankfully, he wasn’t among the rows of faculty members on stage.
With the ceremony over, I make my way through the lobby packed with people in the post-graduation celebration, searching for my friends and mother, which proves difficult due to my height. My path obstructed, I place my hand on the shoulder of a tall man in a suit in order to get his attention so I can squeeze through. He turns around, the jovial expression instantly falling from his face when those familiar green eyes lock with mine, cold and distant.
Despite the boisterous voices filling the space, a strained silence, tense and uncertain, echoes in my ears. I’ve spent the past few weeks doing everything in my power to make peace with my past and move forward. But I can’t do that until I finally close this chapter in my life. And that includes apologizing and coming clean with this man.
“Lincoln,” I begin, my eyes soft.
He shoots up a hand, cutting me off. His jaw tenses, lip curling. “It’s Professor Moore,” he states sternly.
“Please, I just wanted to—”
He leans toward me, his harsh voice no more than a whisper. “No. You graduated. You got what you wanted. Now I never want to see you again.” He pulls back, straightening his tie. “Best of luck on all your future endeavors, Miss Davenport. But I doubt you’ll need it. You’ll do whatever it takes to get what you want.”
His biting words sting as they linger between us. Then he turns, the crowd seeming to part to allow him passage. I want to call out, tell him I love him, that I did what I did to protect him, but I don’t. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. Every action has consequences. And these are the consequences of my own actions. Ones I’ll have to live with the rest of my life.
Swallowing hard through the lump in my throat, I plaster a smile onto my face, continuing through the lobby, relieved when I see all my friends waiting.
“You did it!” Evie says, hugging me enthusiastically, Nora also getting in on the action before pulling back to allow my mother to embrace me and offer her congratulations.
I gaze upon my friends with a bit of envy as they stand beside the men in their life — Evie with Julian, and Nora with Jeremy. They both look so happy. I try to remind myself I never would have had what they do.
“Come on.” Izzy slings her arm over my shoulder. “Let’s go celebrate. I hear Camille’s been busy back at Julian’s making her famous chocolate soufflé.”
I peer in his direction. “Is that right?”
“Evie’s a sucker for it. And whatever Evie wants, Evie gets.”
“Don’t I know it.” I roll my eyes, following my friends out of the building.
Once we’re out of earshot, Izzy leans into me, whispering. “You okay?”
“Never better.” I flash a smile, but when she narrows her gaze, I know she can tell I’m not myself. I exhale a long breath. “I just ran into him.”
“Oh, Chloe…”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” I shrug it off, pretending to be happy so no one else can pick up on my unease.
“No, you’re not.”
I meet her eyes. “I know. But I have to believe, in time, I will be.”
After we’ve all stuffed ourselves with the delicious meal Julian’s housekeeper, Camille, prepared, my mother clinks her fork against her glass, then stands from the table. At first, I was hesitant to agree to have any Champagne here, but she insisted she didn’t want to ruin any more special moments in my life. I should be able to celebrate my college graduation with a glass of Champagne if I wanted. And to my surprise, she hasn’t even looked twice at a glass, drinking club soda instead.
“It’s not every day you can stand up in front of your daughter and all her wonderful friends to celebrate everything she did to overcome adversity and graduate college.”
I smile, grateful there are no jokes about it taking me ten years, like there would be with my father. But my mom knows the truth now, knows I dropped out to try to keep a roof over her head, keep her from becoming a statistic.
“You are a remarkable young woman, Chloe. And I’m honored to be able to call you my daughter. You may think this isn’t a big deal, that it’s just a piece of paper, but it’s so much more than that. You’ve proven you’ll never give up on your dreams. That you’ll fight for them and achieve them, regardless of how long it takes.” She lifts her glass, everyone at the table following suit. “Congratulations.”
Everyone repeats the word as we all clink glasses.
“On that note…,” Nora begins excitedly. “Here…”
She withdraws a t-shirt-sized box from a hiding place under the table and shoves it toward me.
“Guys, I told you no present
s.”
“You should know by now that we are horrible at actually listening to you.”
I tilt my head, pinching my lips together.
“Just open it, Chloe,” Jeremy says, placing his arm around Nora’s shoulders, his broad muscles dwarfing her slender frame. “You know how persistent Nora can be. You won’t win with her.”
Playfully sighing, I grab the box and tear the wrapping from it. When I open the lid, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. It’s a couple pieces of paper. One containing an airline itinerary, the other with information on the hotel in Hawaii where we’re all staying for Nora’s upcoming wedding. My name is on both reservations, but the dates aren’t what I’d originally booked.
“What is this?” I glance around the table, confused.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Evie begins, grabbing Julian’s hand. “But we took a vote, and the consensus is that you need a vacation.”
“I’m taking a vacation. For Nora’s wedding.”
Nora rolls her eyes. “You’re flying in Friday and leaving Sunday. The wedding’s Saturday. Doesn’t give you much of a vacation.”