Page 106 of The Other Side of Paradise
“Ugh.” The one of Stella masturbating on my couch? Not happening. But a million others in hopes Stella might look? In hopes she might see them and think of me? “Yeah.”
“Youaregood at it. I’m sure she’ll notice. Maybe she’ll saydamn, what a cool painting, let’s have video sex.”
“You’re so annoying.” Well… that was kind of what already happened, just without the video part. I got shivers. “That’d be nice. I, uh, I don’t think it’d happen, though.”
“A girl can dream,” she said with a dry laugh, looking up to the sky. I’d been doing the same—watching for planes. I refused to let myself look at the flight tracker, trying not to be so… attached. But that just meant they occupied more of my mind, constantly wondering if Stella was still on the island at this moment or if she was in the air.
“A girl can… hopelessly daydream,” I muttered.
“You like a little romance. Nothing more romantic than a hopeless daydream.”
“Who are you to talk about romance?”
Brooklyn closed her eyes with a long sigh. “Shit, I shouldn’t have just let her go like that.”
“Yeah, this is what I’ve been telling you.”
“Should have… at least asked. Would have been better to get brushed off and lose it knowing I’d at least tried.”
“Yeah…” Maybe I should have asked, too. Just… never felt like I’d had the right.
Maybe I never would.
Chapter 27
Stella
Was this really the life we were right back to? After all of this—after having a few glorious days of being my own person, having some real family connections, and being together with someone who just feltrightin every way, I had to go back to this?
The airport gate was about as friendly and welcoming as a prison cell. I’d forgotten just how many people we’d brought along, the whole extended family and everything, packing in all together, and I felt like there were a million of us and I knew zero of them. I sat next to Ryan, who looked as miserable and small and broken right now as I felt, and I wanted to scream at all the assholes who were giving her dark, judgmental looks from the other side of the seating arrangement. Aunt Helena, mostly. Fucking Shane Austen, worst of all, who kept trying to make eye contact with her, and I wanted to claw his fucking eyes out.
But the worst of it all was the nothing—was nobody saying anything, this oppressive silence where you knew everybody hadplentyto say but it was staying in whispers at best. Everybody too scared to actually start anything, to actually say anything. Me too, apparently. I wanted to stand up right now, shout them alldown, tell them Ryan deserved some basic dignity and dammit so did I, and if anybody had any issues with her being bisexual, they had issues with me too.
But then I’d have to sit next to them on a flight. Fuck my life. Maybe I’d throw down with them once we’d landed. Or maybe by then, I’d have crashed, this churning and desperately sad feeling in my stomach ever since I’d finished driving away from Allison’s house and parked the car in the resort parking lot, slumped back against the seat, and spent an eternity looking up at the car roof willing myself not to cry.
I was just fucking sad and lonely already and sick to death of everyone’s bullshit, so I was absolutely not in the mood for it when Grandma muttered icily, “Well, that’s the last vacation I go on.” She said it quietly, just not quietly enough for it to go unheard. And I think she did it on purpose. Aunt Helena, the perpetual suck-up who’d stopped being Grandma’s favorite daughter when Mom had kids and had never forgiven it, turned to her with a desperate look.
“Mom, please don’t say things like that. This was just a one-off event. We’ll make sure everybody behaves next time,” she added, with a deadly look at Ryan, and I fucking lost it. I stood up, my head hot, legs moving before I’d known what I was doing with them, and everyone stopped, looking at me.
“Can we not with the passive-aggressive remarks?” I said, my voice thicker and heavier than I’d wanted, and Grandma made a face.
“Oh, and that’s what we need right now, is it? To crown things off with an argument at the airport?”
Mom cut in, her voice antsy. “Mom, please. It’s just been a lot for everybody. Don’t pick on my children.”
Aunt Helena snorted. “Picking on?Your children getting held accountable ispicking on them?I guess you never change, Elizabeth.”
Mom strained her voice. “Helena. I know you’re upset—”
“I’m notupset,” Aunt Helena said, that stupid smug voice making me want to break something. “I just don’t think you have any damn right to act like just because you have children, they’re always right, over our own mother.”
Mom started saying something, but I couldn’t take it anymore, something breaking like glass in my chest and words tumbling out of me before I could catch them. “Leave my mom out of this, Auntie,” I shouted, voice loud enough the whole fucking airport turned to look at me, but I didn’t give a damn. “We all know you’re just taking out your anger that James didn’t want kids—”
Aunt Helena and Grandma both paled in unison, Aunt Helena speaking over her as they both chided, “Stella,” but I didn’t see why fucking stop now.
“And we know Grandma is just angry that Ryan is bisexual and not sticking to her ideals of a miserable housewife,” I started, before Aunt Helena stood up too, her voice thick and heavy and full of stupid fake tears and self-righteous indignation.
“I can’t believe you’d say that,” she said, squeezing her husband’s hand. He didn’t take the invisible request for aid, looking past us into the middle distance. Aunt Helena ignored it, her voice peaking. “This whole family onlyexistsbecause of your grandmother and everything she’s done for you—”
