Page 2 of Let the Game Begin
I found myself at a crossroads: I could live or I could die.
I chose to live, but from that day on, I was never the same.
1
Selene
They say in life we have to make the right choices, but we don’t always have the ability to recognize them. Who establishes right and wrong? Does the right thing really make us happy?
I was lying comfortably on my bed and surfing on my laptop. I was supposed to leave for New York that morning, though I wasn’t enthusiastic about it. I lived with my mother in an apartment in Indian Village, a residential neighborhood of Detroit. At least that’s where Ihadlived until my mother had the bright idea to turn my life upside down overnight.
I hooked one ankle around the other and kept on scrolling through the gossip blogs about one of the most famous surgeons in New York, Matt Anderson, and especially about his partner, Mia Lindhom, the high-profile director of an important fashion house.
I carefully examined the photos of her taken at various moments in her day. She was all sophisticated beauty: tall, with a refined, slender frame. Her hair was the color of gold, her eyes a luminous gentian blue.
“He chose well,” I commented to no one as I chewed on my index fingernail.
Yes, Matt Anderson (also known as my father) had, after a series ofaffairs, finally decided to leave my mother for a younger, more beautiful and more famous woman.
I wondered if she had children too, but there was no information on the subject.
“Selene! Don’t pretend you can’t hear me!” My mother came into the room, huffy after shouting my name for several minutes. Still, I didn’t pull my gaze away from the pictures of Matt and Mia looking happy and carefree together.
“Since when does he like blonds?” I asked, scowling seriously as she walked around my room, gathering up the clothes scattered here and there. I wasn’t a neat freak like her.
“Since he met Mia, probably? Anyway, I have your suitcase packed downstairs,” she reminded me, though it was hardly necessary. I knew full well that my flight was scheduled for ten o’clock. I had already bathed and dressed, albeit reluctantly. I didn’t want to repair any relationship with Matt, much less become part of his life after he had been so completely uninterested in mine for so long. So, I kept opening random web pages, just to keep my mind occupied even as I could feel the anguish rising inside me.
Parents rarely understand how much their actions affect their children’s emotional state. My adolescence was marred by fighting and my father’s constant affairs. Indelible memories that I tried to fight against every day in vain. Going to live with him was a terrible punishment for me that was probably going to bring all sorts of unhealed wounds to the surface.
“Selene…” Mom sighed, sitting down on the bed beside me. She closed my laptop gently and smiled at me, finally getting my attention. “I just want you to try,” she said in an indulgent murmur.
Sure, she wanted me totryto accept a man who had long since ceased to be my father.
Four years had now passed since he left us to live with his current partner. Four years in which he had tried to call and talk to me but got no response. Four years in which, every time he tried to see me, I locked myself in my room and waited for him to leave. I sighed at those nagging memories and tilted my chin down to hide my pain from the only person I truly loved.
“I can’t do it…” Memories of her weeping and raving over the lack ofrespect shown by the man she’d married were embedded too deeply in my mind.
Matt had started off by sleeping with a nurse ten years his junior. One lover became two, three, four…until I lost count. Or rather, until Mia came along and took him away from us for good.
“Sure you can do it. You’re a bright girl…” She stroked the back of my hand and gazed lovingly at me. She believed in me, and I never wanted to let her down. Never.
“I don’t want anything to do with Matt,” I muttered like a wayward child. I needed to act like a woman, put on the mask of acceptance and display a certain maturity, but it was nearly impossible to act rationally when anger had taken me over inside.
“Selene, I know it’s not going to be easy. I don’t expect the two of you to get along right away, but I at least want you to give it a chance… You’ve refused to speak to him for too long.” She looked at me with the pained expression that inevitably corralled my pride. She was fully aware that her big blue eyes—identical to my own—had the power to make me surrender. Still, I tried to make my case.
“Mom, that man doesn’t deserve my respect.Youknow…” I answered, scowling, and it was the truth. After everything she and I had gone throughby ourselves, my mother knew very well how much it cost me to go along with her request that I live with a “father” who was nothing of the sort.
“I get it, sweetheart. But I’ve forgiven him for what he did. You should, too.”
I stared silently into her eyes. My mother had the enormous fortitude required to forgive that man’s wrongdoings, but I wasn’t like her. I didn’t have her strength.
***
The trip to the airport went by too quickly.
My mom waited with me until I had to go through security and spent the time reassuring me, even if her words were heavy and difficult to accept for a twenty-one-year-old. I once read somewhere that someone of my age was on the threshold of adulthood, but at the same time, lacked definitivematurity. That was probably why I vacillated between childish behavior and moments of utmost thoughtfulness.
The plane ride took about two hours. It felt like the longest flight of my life, even though I had outfitted myself with a couple of books that partially relieved some of my perpetual anxiety.
