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The idea sounds nice, but I know the comforting thought of it is just that; a thought, and nothing more, because my real life won’t leave me behind. In the real world, Mama doesn’t talk to me and then there’s my heartbreak, making any little escape impossible. I give Lili’s hands an affectionate squeeze but shake my head.
“I appreciate the offer, but all of my responsibilities don’t just disappear because I’m feeling bad,” I explain, pulling my hands away gently and standing. “Thank you for hearing me out, but I think I have to go home and figure out how to deal with everything and not just fall apart.”
“Okay. But if you change your mind, just call me, okay?”
“Of course.”
Seeing Lili was supposed to give me some perspective, and I guess it did, but now that I was alone and heading home a lot of the same awful feelings felt like they were still just waiting therein the wings for me to let my guard down. It’s getting late, and the temptation of just going home and drinking myself to sleep is all too obvious. It seems like just as good of an idea as anything else.
Elise had said that Andries had gone to his family estate, which means that he was probably going to spend the rest of the holiday there. It also means I won’t be able to see him until he comes back for class, and while it’s technically only in a few days, it feels like an eternity. I want this whole thing resolved. I want closure, and I want it right now.
On a whim, I try to call Andries again, but as I expected there is no answer. It’s another little jab to my heart, and my mind is nearly made up to just go home and call it a night when I get a call.
Adrenaline courses through me at the brief thought it could be Andries, but my heart dies a little more when I see it’s just Poppy. My first instinct is to ignore the call and let the cab continue to take me home, but once the first call ends, Poppy immediately calls again, and I give in and answer.
“Sorry to bother you,” she opens with, most likely knowing that I’m not exactly having the best day. “But I was wondering if we could go over a few things that I don’t think can wait…?”
Internally I’m cringing, but I tell her, “Yes, go ahead.”
“Okay! Great. Well, we’ve got Charlie’s NYE party coming up after tomorrow and he phoned earlier to say he wants a redhead, a brunette,anda blonde—”
As Poppy goes on and on, I let the manager side of me take over, even if it feels exhausting. I hold my phone over my hand so Poppy doesn’t hear me, and quietly tell the driver to take me to my office instead. There’s nothing else to do about it. Work doesn’t wait for grief, it seems. Even when you are the boss.
3
V.D.B estate, December 31, 2021
Andries
There isn’t really anywhere elsefor me to go but home for the New Year. Of course, there are dozens of parties and soirees back in Amsterdam, but none of them hold any interest for me. So, like the pathetic mess I am, I migrate back to the family estate, spending my hours alone in my darkened room like the depressed poet my fifteen-year-old self always thought I would become.
Spending the holiday at the Van Den Bosch estate holds a few benefits—I’m not technically alone, even though I feel like I am. I don’t have to subsist off takeout, because God knows I’m in no shape to be cooking three meals a day for myself. And most of all, there’s no way that Roxanne is going to travel here to harass me in front of my family. She’d be arrested before she could even draw her first breath after stepping onto the property.
The last point is by far the most important: I still don’t trust myself not to give in and talk to her if I had remained in Amsterdam. Here, I’m safe not only from her persistentaffections but from my own untrustworthy habits too. It’d be ludicrous to say that she isn’t still invading every crack and crevice of my mind. I’m obsessing, and not in a way that can be thought of as hopelessly in love.
I’m obsessed with Roxanne in that dark and dirty way that polite society would sneer at. When I sleep, I dream of her, all pale limbs and soft skin, and when I’m awake I’m overcome by horror at the things I had discovered about her. The dichotomy of it is slowly driving me insane, and I don’t know how long I can live with it before my mind well and truly shatters.
Everyone says the same thing: time heals all wounds. Well, time is passing, but these mental wounds are just festering day by day. There is no healing in sight, at least for the near future, it seems.
So, the positives are my isolation. The negatives are that my family, no matter how good-intentioned, refuse to accept said isolation. Every hour there is someone knocking on my door; a sister, the housekeeper with a small snack, my mother wanting to talk about school or life or, God-forbid, business school. Worst of all is my father, with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he shuffles his feet, making stilted conversation with me about whatever safe, masculine topic he could pluck out of thin air. It seems he just remembered that I fenced, so that was the current safe conversation he has been falling back on recently, and I am curious to know what he will replace it with once that wheel has run dry.
Everyone knows I’m suffering, and everyone but the children know why. My situation is so unique and strange that no one knows quite how to deal with my grief, though, and they have all become painfully frustrating distractions while I try to work through the tangles of my mind.
Elise borders on tolerable… maybe because we are so close in age, or maybe because she has been more involved than anyonewith the split between Roxanne and me. Though even she has begun to wear my nerves thin. I’m tempted to pack a small bag and leave for a hotel, but the moment my family thinks I’m having some sort of mental break, they will follow me to the ends of the Earth to get to the bottom of what is going on with me. If I thought they were obsessed with me now, I know it would be tenfold if I disappeared on them.
Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and my grandmother has just arrived for the celebration. The normal huge bash that would be thrown at the estate is to be more subdued than usual tonight, for which I’m relieved, but now there’s a chance I’ll have to go through my entire story another time for Grandma… I sigh. I love the woman, but I’m well and truly exhausted.
The sights and sounds of the New Year’s Eve party being set up are all around me. Even if I close myself in my room completely, I know I’ll have to face it, eventually. The clinking of glasses, the never-ending cacophony of footsteps going to and from, and the increasingly frazzled butler coming to my door with outfit suggestions for the party tonight… It makes it impossible for me to prepare myself mentally for wearing the mask of the “well-adjusted Van Den Bosch son.” So much of my life in recent years has been spent wearing that mask for my parents and all their peers, that I don’t even know what it would be like to go in front of them being my honest self. My parents would be in shock if they knew about their poet son; the one who had been living under their roof all this time masquerading as a business major.
I honestly can’t believe they still haven’t figured out my secret, but I’m not about to shout it from the rooftops for them.
My biggest worry tonight is Grandma.
If my mother is shrewd and calculating, then Lady Margaret is all that tenfold. She can extricate secrets from people without them even knowing what happened, and all of us grandchildrenhad confessed things to her that we never planned to share. I have no plan to tell her about being an English major, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it spilled out of my mouth. I’ll have to limit my alone time with her tonight, even if her company is much more tolerable than the rest of my family’s.
There’s another secret I’m harboring that I need to keep close to my chest tonight… and it’s about how much I’ve been relying on alcohol to get me through this breakup. Looking at the perfectly tailored, casual gray suit in my closet, I can’t help but pull the flask I had been hiding under my pillow. The whiskey isn’t the aged vintage I’m used to, and the rough burn of it in my throat is hard to ignore, but I need all the numbness the drink can provide if I’m actually going to make an appearance at dinner.
So I drink, cap the flask, and go to the closet to change. My stomach is burning, and I can already feel the slight haziness settle over my brain. From here on I swear that I will drink no more tonight. I have to ride the edge of comfortably tipsy and drunk, so I don’t go sharing my sins with the entire dinner table, or with Grandma, if she manages to corner me and ask the tough questions.
