Shutting the door behind her, I clench my hand into a fist and bang it softly on the door in frustration. With myself, mostly.
Because Blaire’s right. I am an asshole. I’ve handled this whole situation so badly. I shouldn’t have projected my worst perceptions of myself onto her.
I turn to face her, but she still has her back to me, drifting around the perimeter of the room, trailing her hand along a console table, the back of the couch, a chair, stopping to take in the view from the bay window. “It’s a lot like Blaire’s,” she says at length. “The view. The layout. The furniture is different, though.”
“I used a decorator,” I rasp, clearing my throat before I continue. “Blaire picked out her own furniture.”
She nods, still not looking at me.
We stay frozen like this as the minutes slip past, the time, the silence, the unsaid words, the unexpressed feelings weighing down the fragile thread that connects us, the pressure growing so unbearable that I fear it will snap if I don’t do something—say something.
Stepping forward, I lift a hand to reach for her but let it drop back to my side before touching her. “Viola, I—”
She turns, cutting me off with her outstretched palm and a shake of her head. “Let me speak,” she says. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have shut down on you. I was just …” She lifts a hand in a helpless gesture, finally opening her eyes to look at me, imploring me to understand the things she can’t put into words. She presses her lips together and firms her resolve before continuing. “My mom has very specific ideas for what she thinks my life should be. It’s been easier to go along with her. This is the first time I haven’t eventually given in and done what she wants. She was beside herself when I told her I was quitting my job to go on tour as the PA for Cataclysm. You were right when you said that she thought I was following in Blaire’s footsteps, because I very literally am. Her job.” She gestures at me. “Her relationship, at least one of them.” She makes a wider gesture around the condo. “Now, I’m staying in her condo.”
I suck in a breath, wanting to interject, but not knowing what to say. She’s not done, though, so I say nothing and let her get everything out, hoping she’ll give me the chance to say my piece before she leaves again.
“The thing is, though … the thing is that I’m not Blaire. But I’m not whoever it is that my mom has decided I should be, either. And even though she thinks I’m doing this out of spite, it’s actually the first time in my whole life that I’m doing things because I want to do them.” Her voice wobbles on the last sentence, and a stream of tears flows down her cheeks.
It takes everything in me not to pull her into my arms, to wrap her up in my body and tell her that I understand. More than anyone, I understand what it is to not fit your parents’ ideals for your life and how hard it is to buck that.
But I can’t. Because instead of understanding, instead of giving her the time and space to work through how to set healthy boundaries with her family and supporting her need to keep her parents in her life, I lashed out at her. And then I abandoned her.
“You are all the things she worries about the most, you know,” she says. “Tattoos, parties, drugs and alcohol”—she waves a hand up and down, encompassing my body—“the whole rock star vibe you’ve got going on.” Her hand drops, and she shakes her head. “But that’s not all of who you are.” She presses her hand to her chest. “I know that about you. Even though that’s who you tried to show me for so long, you made the mistake of showing me who you really are. And I fell in love with you.” Her voice cracks on the word love, and so does my heart.
She loves me.
Holy shit. She just said she loves me.
Once again, I open my mouth to speak, but she keeps talking before I can say anything.
She swipes at her eyes, but the tears keep coming regardless. “You’re right that she said horrible things about you that day on the phone. But you missed the part where I defended you. Where I told her about how caring you are, how you do all the little things you do to take care of me, how much you matter to me. And when you came at me, throwing everything she said in my face, I couldn’t take anymore. I shut down. I grew up with professors for parents, where all assertions had to be backed up with documented sources, and emotions have no place. And right then, I’d been reduced to nothing but raw emotion. I had no sources but my feelings. And I’d just been told that wasn’t enough. So I shut down in the face of your anger.”
She pauses to swallow, her throat working. “I should’ve told them about us before we showed up in the entertainment news. But I naively thought that no one would really care that much about me, despite all your and Kendra’s warnings to the contrary. And I also thought that my parents were too highbrow to pay any attention to celebrity gossip stories.” She looks down, fidgeting with her sleeve. “I was wrong on both counts,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I never meant to keep you a secret. I didn’t tell them because I didn’t want to hear their bad takes, not because I was ashamed of you. Of us. I’ve missed you for days. And I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Once again I’m reduced to breathing her name. “Viola.”
She raises her watery eyes to mine.
I swallow hard.
