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“So, what’s stopping you?” she thundered back. “No one is making you stay here. You could go get a place of your own at any point. Oh, wait. You can’t. Because you don’t have a job anymore, because you quit.”
“I quit because my boss said that I was a mob plant!” I yelled.
“What?” Mom asked.
I hadn’t really gone through everything with her, and I didn’t really want to. Especially right then. It was as embarrassing as it was anger-inducing, and I would tell her on my own time, if I told her at all.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that matters is that you don’t have any respect for me. You just expect me to slide back into life at the pub and pick up your slack so you don’t have to hire someone to do the job.”
“My slack?” she yelled. “The slack your father left when he died? That slack? Because that’s what’s left now. I am working for two people, plus what we had left from when you left and never came back. I work from the moment my eyes open until I thankfully close them again at night and it’s never enough. I’m always behind. On everything. On work, on bills, on everything. Do you think I chose that?”
“I think you don’t want to hire someone else because you don’t trust anyone,” I said. “And because you feel entitled to Lena’s and my time. You just think we should be happy to run the bar, and not even to run it. To work in it. We should just give up everything either one of us ever wanted and be happy being bartenders and waitresses for the rest of our lives, just because the pub is what you and Dad wanted.”
Mom put the mug in the sink and laughed mirthlessly.
“You think this is what I wanted out of life?” she asked. “I didn’t care about this pub, not when your father was alive. I only cared about him. About you and your sister. About having a long, happy life with my husband and leaving a legacy for you children that would make sure you never starved. But are you grateful for that? No. You just complain about the work.”
“I don’t want this life!” I screamed. “I’m sorry Dad died, but his dreams and my dreams are different! I don’t want to put on an apron every day until I’m seventy and break my back carrying food to people who just want to get drunk.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Mom shot back. “We give people a little bit of a break from their lives. You just want the high life you’ve been living with that Hunter. Fancy cars that pick you up and drop you off. Expensive dresses and dinner at fancy restaurants and people making a big fuss over you. That’s what you want. But let me tell you something, Julia. Men like him don’t stick around, as you no doubt know now. You will age, your looks will fade and they will throw you away. And you will have nothing because you threw your family away first.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” I said. “The money, the cars, none of it. It doesn’t matter to me. I was inlovewith Hunter. What matters to me far more than anything he could give me is that I loved him. And I thought he loved me back. That’s why I’m depressed. That’s why I can barely get out of bed. And that’s why I don’t want to stay here, in the shadow of the building he owns, working my fingers to the bone serving drinks and remembering what it was like to have someone love me.
“I don’t care if I never ride in another fancy car or wear an expensive dress. I just wish I had Hunter back. Even if he was broke and we struggled, even if we both had to work here, under you, if I had him back, I would be fine with that! But I can’t be here, broke and sad and missing Dad and missing him and having nothing in my life for me. I can’t. I just can’t!”
With that, I stormed off to my room, grabbed my suitcase, and began throwing things into it. I wasn’t going to be able to stay. Not with her acting like that. Not with everything piling up on me. I had to get out, even if it was just for the night.
With my suitcase packed with a couple of extra pairs of underwear and socks, and not much else in my emotional state, I pulled open my phone and texted Caroline.
Me: I need to come stay there tonight. I just have to get out of this house.
The response was almost immediate.
Caroline: You have a key. I’ll bring home Chinese food.
Thankful to at least have a friend, I stormed out of the house and down the street to Caroline’s apartment. I had just enough in my bank account that I figured I could afford a week or two living at one of the motels nearby, but after that. I was toast. I needed a little time to figure out where to go and what to do. Staying with Caroline was the best option I had that didn’t involve living on the streets, and at least it meant I could avoid spending money while I made what little I could squeeze out of wherever I worked.
That was the thing, though. I had no source of income at the moment. All I could do was try to get a bartending job somewhere, if nothing other than I could probably start the day I got hired and make some cash. But I couldn’t work at a place that was competition to my own family. If I was going to work for tips, I might as well work there. The rational part of my brain understood that, even though I hated it.
I got into Caroline’s place with the key she gave me a long time ago, and brought my bag and suitcase to the living room, setting them next to the couch. Next, I went to her closet and grabbed a sheet and put it over the couch, yanked a pillow from the roughly ten thousand on Caroline’s bed, and curled up on the couch under a blanket Caroline’s mother made her when she was a teenager.
Finally, the tears started. They had been frozen inside after the fight, waiting for me to find myself somewhere safe before I could let them out. But now they were coming down hard.
My mind went back to Hunter. Everything I said about him was true. I missed him. I loved him. I wished I was still with him.
I felt all of that more than ever now.
I found myself wondering if I could have handled the accusations better. I tired putting myself in his shoes, and seeing it from his perspective. Sure, he should have believed me, but could I really blame him for being skeptical? It wasn’t like Dad’s penchant for letting mob folks meet up there was a secret. And it was hard to believe that they never, not once, talked business.
Maybe Iwastoxic to Hunter because of my family. Maybe he was right to move on without me.
But that didn’t stop how much I missed him. Or make it hurt less to know that my future, which should have him in it, was gone.
In that way, Mom and I were alike.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Hunter
