A Life More Complete(67)
“Yeah. He’s Trini’s lawyer.”
“Be careful.” Her tone clipped and slightly judgmental.
Before I can answer the waitress walks up and asks if we’d like anything to drink. Rachel orders a Diet Coke and I order water. She tells us she’ll be back with the drinks and she’ll take our order then. Rachel sends a text to Maizey asking what is taking her so long as we begin our conversation again.
“You should really drink water if you’re as hungover as I am because caffeine will make it worse. It depletes your body,” I say as Rachel looks up from the menu.
“You’re avoiding talking about him.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are,” she sighs. “I want you to take a good hard look at what you are about to do. He ruined you once and he can do it again. I can’t watch him bring you down again. He’s an * and you know it. You’re better than this.”
When I think back to the wedding, I recall Rachel being rather cold to Tyler. She greeted him appropriately, but not more than that. She has always felt indifferent toward him and that indifference grew while she lived with us. I always took it as nothing more than a personality conflict. Rachel is strong-willed and out spoken which can create trouble, but she’s never placed herself in a position to question my choices.
“Come on, Rach. I’m nearly twenty-nine years old. This is never going to happen for me with someone else. This is my choice. Tyler and I have history and it’s important to me to make it work, so I need it to be important to you.”
“Fine,” she says putting her hands up in defeat. “You’re an adult and it’s been like, what ten years that you’ve known him? You’d know better than anyone if it was meant to be, right?”
“Almost thirteen years,” I reply.
“Thirteen, no shit? Well, it’s your choice.” She sounds sullen. “When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t decided on a date. Really we haven’t even talked about it.”
“Well that’s good. Still time to bail,” she says, her tone mocking.
“Rachel, don’t be a jerk.”
“Sorry.”
Maizey shows up just in time to halt the conversation. I know Rachel is none too pleased, but this is where I stand.
Maizey apologizes for being late. She overslept. The best part of her arrival is the shift in conversation. We talk about her job and her husband. She is truly happy and even though she still struggles with feelings of relapse and her own inadequacies, her life is good. She met someone who understands her struggles and is supportive. She finished college and found a job working as a case manager for the Georgia Department of Child and Family Services, a job that she says is rewarding, yet it has made her jaded.
“There are so many bad parents out there. It’s so sad. Although our mother was a crappy mom, she has nothing on these people. Emotionally she f*cked us all up, but physically we’re fine. Most of these kids have more issues than you can even imagine.”
“I’ve always known it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. We grew up middle class. She was the problem and now that we’re away from it, things are better,” Rachel says.
I want to agree with her and I do in some ways, but it’s hard to think that everything is suddenly cured when we remove her from the equation. I still struggle.
The waitress takes our order and we talk about everything from Rachel’s wedding to my stupid job. No matter whom I’m with they always want to know about my glamorous PR job. I try not to dwell on how much I hate it, filling the description with the parts people find entertaining but still plugging in how demanding it is. Shortly after, the waitress brings our food. We finish up, but before leaving we decide to get together over Memorial Day weekend. Maizey and her husband have a vacation home on St. Simon Island about five hours from her house in Atlanta.
With that we kiss good-bye and the three of us head back to our lives as if we do this on a regular basis. It’s nice to have my sisters back in my life and I’m beginning to realize the importance of family.
The good news is my hangover is gone after consuming a mass amount of water and a bacon cheeseburger. It was either that or the fact that ninety percent of it was flushed from my body after I puked.
Tyler is still sleeping when I return so I put on some running clothes and my shoes. Heading out the door I slide my iPod case up my arm and put in my ear buds. My running schedule has diminished greatly since Tyler’s arrival. He won’t exercise with me and sees no point in doing something like running on the beach. He goes to the gym every day, a place that’s filled with sweaty, smelly people and time limited machines and pumped in cold air. I love the outdoors and even when I lived back in Naperville I ran every day regardless of the temperature. On the coldest of days and on the hottest of days I still ran, sometimes in the early morning as the sun was rising, other times late into the night to escape the sweltering heat. It’s one thing that keeps me from going completely crazy.