My Life in Shambles(4)

She shakes her head. “That’s not it. You just can’t be spontaneous.”

“I can be spontaneous,” I practically yell.

“No you can’t. You’re always trying to follow the straight and narrow. You’re too afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” I tell her, feeling the wine fuel my defensiveness. “How am I afraid?”

“You worry too much about doing the wrong thing,” she says. “You worry too much about what people think. Especially what Mom thinks. You work harder than anyone I know, yes even harder than Angie, and you’re harder on yourself than you should be. You just need to … let go. Throw caution to the wind for once and live a little.”

I open my mouth but she raises her finger to shut me up. “And before you tell me that you live in New York and throw all sorts of caution to the wind and that you and Cole were wild, no. That boy was not wild. He was a total sleezeball slimebucket, the kind that knows he’s got the world at his fingertips, the type that pretended to work for everything he has when in fact it was all bought for already. Val, when I heard you dumped his ass, I couldn’t have been more proud of you. I think it was the biggest bravest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Technically he’s the one who broke off the engagement,” I mumble. And seriously, if breaking up with Cole was the bravest thing I’ve ever done, I’ve got to reevaluate my life.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “If you were spineless you would have stayed with him, especially since it meant losing your home. But you kicked him to the curb. And I think, just by doing that, you’re opening yourself up to a world of opportunities … including coming to Ireland.”

“I’m going to bed, not Ireland,” I tell her, not wanting to talk about it anymore. I get to my feet unsteadily and hold my hand out to help Sandra up but she waves me away.

“I’m going to hang out with Angie for a bit,” she says, sipping her wine. “Maybe draw a mustache on her.”

I glance at Angie who is snoring with her mouth open and drooling.

“Okay, but remember Santa is still coming tonight and that might put you on his shit list,” I tell her.

“Oh honey, I’ve been on his shit list for years,” she says, slurring her words in a way that makes me think she’s going to spend the night on the couch. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” I say, pausing to admire the sight of my sisters and the gorgeous Christmas tree in the background, both happy and heart-warmed to be at home with family and insanely scared at the same time.

Because even though I don’t want to believe it or think about it, what Sandra said unnerved me a little, like it exposed a hidden nerve until it was raw and beating.

Have I been too afraid?

Do I really care that much what other people think? I mean, I know I do, I can’t help it. But I didn’t think it was holding me back in life.

And what exactly is all of this holding me back from?





2





Valerie





Christmas blazes on in a mix of nostalgia, good cheer, and total frustration.

Let’s face it, unless you’ve been blessed with one of those perfectly functioning families that never fight or have complications, Christmas can be a major fucking mess. Everyone is striving to be kind and nice and loving and giving, but that can only go on for so long. Sooner or later the masks slip and the tongue-lashings begin.

This year, my family made it until Christmas dinner when my mother had a little too much wine and my father was a little too critical of the turkey and Tabby decided cranberry sauce made pretty watercolor art when applied to her brand new dress she’d only unwrapped that morning.

Then the claws came out. My mother let it slip that I should have tried harder with Cole. I knew she was disappointed that it didn’t work out with him, not because she felt bad for me but because she thought Cole would be my ticket to a better, more respectable life. Naturally, it made me cry (the excess alcohol over the last twenty-four hours didn’t help either), which is something I usually do when I’m frustrated, and, well, I can’t help but be broken-hearted at the same time.

My tears made Sandra come to my defense which then made my mother go after Sandra for being too Hollywood and elite and forgetting where she came from.

Which then made Angie stand up for Sandra, and then everything came out after that. My mother, feeling righteous and with a never-ending quiver of arrows on her back, let it fly that she was disappointed in Angie for not trying hard enough with Andrew.

That was enough to make the entire table gasp.

See, Andrew, Angie’s ex and Tabby’s father, cheated on her repeatedly. In fact, he was caught, the other woman publicly confessed, and it was a scandal that rocked the Chicago political scene (to anyone who pays attention to that shit). Angie did the right thing and left his unfaithful ass, winning a big divorce settlement from him.

And yet I always knew that my mom hated that Angie left him. She was always so proud of her—not for going to Harvard, but because she landed a rich and powerful man. It was more important that he went to Harvard, not her. When Angie first told my mother that she suspected Andrew was cheating, my mother advised her to look the other way, and it had probably bugged her ever since that Angie did the opposite.