She waves her hands wide and looks at me with hard, angry eyes. “Exactly,” she says—scratch that—she yells. “Herein lies the problem. The kids are in school and Justin is going into his hundredth year playing this stupid fucking sport and I’m still waiting. When I told Justin I was going to look into going back to work when Jax started kindergarten, I was still somehow convinced to stay home. Why would I want to miss all the field trips? Who would go to the teacher conferences? Wouldn’t I feel terrible sending them to daycare after they already spent their day at school? Why would I want to miss any of this? I think it’s why I jumped at the opportunity to be the president for the Lady Mustangs. It was the first opportunity I had to talk with adults and make things happen. And even though Justin will never admit it, he loved it because it was still focused around him. Because once I started getting outside opportunities based on it, he suddenly had a problem again.
“I don’t know when the man I married became so keen on keeping me dependent on him. You know he called me selfish when I was working on the morning show?” she asks. I open my mouth to say something—something about what a dick Justin is being—but snap it shut when I realize she wasn’t looking for an actual response. “I think it’s a security thing for him, like I won’t leave if I don’t have a job. But what he doesn’t realize is I probably am going to leave and he keeps pushing me to it.”
She stops talking and her mouth hangs open, like her admission shocked her.
“Oh fuck.” She falls back onto the couch and stares at me with wide eyes. But instead of seeing sadness and anger in her eyes, I see fear. “Can I leave him?”
“I’m not going to answer that for you.” I twist my body so I can look her in her eyes. “I am going to say that life is too short to be unhappy. One day everything is fine, then the next day you’re diagnosed with cancer. And then you’re gone. If that happens. If, god forbid, you’re taken from this earth tomorrow, would you be happy with the life you lived? Would your boys at least have the comfort of saying, At least she lived her life the way she wanted to? No matter what your happiness looks like, you can not only do it, you deserve it. It’s your duty to show yourself and your boys how to live life to the fullest. And that happy life might be leaving Justin or it could be fighting for your marriage. But whatever it is, you’re going to do it. Because you’re still Lavonne fucking Lamar and you’re alive and a badass.”
“I’m a badass and I’m alive,” she repeats after me, and a fire seems to have lit from within her. “Damn girl.” She reaches for the drink she put down sometime during her rant. “You should be a therapist.”
“Well”—I mimic her and take a sip of my drink too—“with as many as I’ve gone to, I was bound to pick up something.”
Her eyes crinkle at the corners and for the first time today, a real smile crosses her face, but it falls away just as fast as it came. “I don’t get it.”
My eyebrows pull together. “Don’t get what?”
She seemed to just have the breakthrough. Is she already trying to talk herself out of it?
“You seem to love dedicating your time and energy to other people. Me, Quinton, from what Liv and Marie said, them. You just talked me through shit I’ve been avoiding for months in a span of—what? Thirty minutes?” She puts a hand on my arm and I’m not sure if it’s to offer support or keep me on the couch when she knows I want to run. “You said I deserve to be happy. That it’s my duty to be happy. But where’s that same energy when it comes to you helping yourself?”
Wait. Hold up.
How did she manage to flip this on me?
“I’m happy.” I gesture to the suite that we’re in. How can I not be happy and grateful for this? “My dad died. Of course that fucking sucks and I get sad. But death is part of life. I couldn’t do anything about that. So you know what I did? I changed what I could. I got out of a toxic work environment and found my dream job. I love my job and I have great friends. I’m happy.”
“You love your job? Really? The same job where some old man is threatening to fire you if you don’t get a grown-ass man to stop fighting for causes he believes in?” She purses her lips and the red painted on them no longer looks like the perfect shade she found at a MAC counter. It looks like the blood of the people who tried to tell her half-truths.
Damn you, Vonnie Lamar, and your soul penetrating side-eye!
“Okay, well obviously that’s not great. And some parts of my job suck.” Knowing that Mr. Mahler doesn’t really support Quinton is hard, but this is still a company and if it’s hurting his bottom line, that’s understandable. Money is still king. “But I’m working for the Mustangs! My dad can’t be here for this, but he would’ve loved this and that makes me happy. Even if Quinton drove me crazy sometimes, planning his launch party was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. And now I get to do another event for Mr. Mahler. I love all of that.”
“Okay, so what I’m hearing is that you’re trying to connect with your dad through work while not dealing with the emotional ramifications of losing him and that you like event
