Page 3 of Take It Till You Make It
There is only the slightest of hesitations before she agrees and tells me to keep a lookout for the meeting links.
When we wrap the conversation up, I end the call and stare at my phone. Did that really happen? Was it real? It seemed like it. But I don’t always feel part of the real world these days.
Glory gapes at me. “Did you just get discovered?”
I look up at her with doubt clouding my features. “I think so.”
“Garçon!” she yells, pumping her hand into the air. A young waiter looks at her askance from a couple tables down. “We need sparkling cider.”
The guy shrugs. “I’ll tell your server.”
She beams at him. “Thank you.”
“We don’t have anything to celebrate yet,” I grumble.
“Come on, Ari. You know you have to celebrate…”
“All the things.” I finish with her.
“And girl, you’re overdue for a little celebration.” Glory grins at me while her gaze is gentle and understanding.
I nod. She has a valid point.
When we have our flutes of sparkling cider, we raise them into the air, and Glory says, “To becoming a famous movie star, finding love with a Hollywood hunk, and forgetting this year ever happened.”
I clink my glass against hers, knowing that not one of those things is likely to happen.
Chapter Two
I dropthe box I’m carrying onto the floor of my new bedroom and rub my aching muscles. Walking back out to the living room, I stare out the picture window. A single-level row of condominiums is between us and our view, but there, in front of the flat-roofed building, is the ocean. The breeze ruffles the tops of a few palm trees, and waves curl across a vast ocean toward a beach hidden from view by the apartment building in front of ours.
I’m numb. It hasn’t even been three months since Gordon Talent Agency called me. How can we have changed our lives so completely in such a short time? My heart aches for my best friend, now two thousand miles away. I didn’t realize missing her would feel akin to missing Dad. She’s still alive and well. We text a million times a day. Yet the loss is too acute.
The never-at-rest action of the Pacific seems to add to my own restlessness, so I go back into my room where the only view is the alley between buildings. The room is the size of a postage stamp. Barely larger than my twin bed and dresser. Mom’s isn’t much bigger. We’ll be sharing a bathroom, which ordinarily I would think was a problem. I imagine the medicine cabinet and drawers bursting with our essential beauty products. But Mom has been in full hermit mode since losing Dad, so she rarely takes a shower and never does more than throw on sweats and a t-shirt.
I drop onto my unmade bed and bury my fingers in my hair. Was this the right decision? At this moment, it feels like this is the worst decision we could have made. We. That’s laughable. There’s no “we” about it. I don’t think Mom could agree to the movie role fast enough. It feels like she’s relieved to have someone else take responsibility for me. And the fact that I’m going to make more money than she’s ever seen just puts the cherry on top. Because now she can curl up in her new room and not worry about a thing. Just like she was doing at home, but with only the insurance money to keep us going. Now, at least, we have the proceeds from the sale of the house as well as my surprisingly lucrative income.
Raking my fingers through my hair, I sigh dramatically and stare at the boxes stacked around me. In the last six months, I have learned how to make funeral and cremation arrangements, how to manage household expenses, how to drive towing a trailer, and how to sell a fricking house. But not how to pull my mom out of the well.
Tears track down my cheeks, and I angrily swipe them away. I’m so tired of being sad and overwhelmed. I just want to be a flipping normal seventeen-year-old. But that possibility ended the moment I opened the front door to that policewoman. Now I’m some angry, sad, terrified hybrid kid-adult who has no fricking clue how to proceed through life and is neck deep in a petrifying new life journey. And now that we’re here in this beachside hovel that I’m paying a gazillion dollars per month for, I realize how completely on my own I am.
I did not think this through.
I’ve never even been away from home without my parents before, but this…I glance at the wall separating my bedroom from Mom’s…this is like being on my own with somebody else’s toddler.
I pop up from the bed, straighten my back, and take a deep, shaky breath. That’s it. Pity party is over. Today’s, at least. I’ve got crap to do, because tomorrow I start my new job.
I rub my roiling belly as I march out of my room, knock on Mom’s door, and stick my head in. She’s in bed like I expected, all the boxes I unloaded still stacked along the walls. It was impossible to decide what to bring for her. One moment, she didn’t want anything, and then she’d freak out over the stuff I’d gotten rid of.
The first thing I did when we arrived yesterday was set up her bed and TV. Thanks to YouTube, I managed to hook up an analog antenna so that we can pick up a couple local channels. Cable won’t be installed for two weeks. She doesn’t really watch, anyway. I think she just needs the noise.
“Any special requests from the grocery store?”
“Cottage cheese. Some ramen.”
I close my eyes because both of those items will serve as their own meal. Mom barely eats anymore. Honestly, the cottage cheese request is a good one. “How about yogurt? You like the fruit at the bottom kind, right?”
“Yeah, yogurt’s good.”
