Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
She rushed up, wrapping her arms around me with a broad smile. “I found the most perfect place in Brooklyn. I’ll have to show you pictures later.”
“That’s amazing. I’m sorry about Basil,” I added after a beat.
“Oh, it’s alright. He started getting really weird when I sold all those paintings. I think he didn’t like the idea that his work wasn’t selling and mine was. He started going on long rants about integrity and how real art wasn’t about money. It was like he wanted me to be sorry I got paid. It was just too much.”
“Well, good for you. He didn’t deserve you.”
She beamed, then shrugged. “Maybe not!” My dad swatted at her when she snuck a piece of bacon from the cutting board and popped it in her mouth. I noticed there was some fresh paint on her forearm.
“Working on something?”
“Something,” she said vaguely.
My phone buzzed and I considered ignoring it. It was probably someone from work asking about the news. But I decided to glance down at the screen. It was from Elizabeth, which got my attention.
Elizabeth: Sorry, girl. He was really persuasive. Please don’t kill me.
I texted back an appropriately confused response, then spent the next few minutes trying to puzzle out what that meant. Eloise joined in our game of dominos and the sounds of cooking grew more furious as dad got closer to finishing up the meal.
I tried to relax into the moment. Ever since I’d left The Squawker, I was trying to learn to enjoy the present for a change. I spent my whole life looking ahead, and now I saw the dangers in that. Life was about now. I looked around my childhood home and tried to enjoy all the decorations–the little signs that my favorite time of year was coming. Each decoration called me back to various moments of my past, like being six and discreetly rubbing the sparkly, fragile santa head that hung from the cabinet doorknob in the dining room. That year, I was hoping to get a gigantic toy horse for one of my dolls that I probably would’ve never played with, but at the time I wanted it more than anything. Or there was the star on top of the tree that had a seam running diagonally through it because it cracked when I asked if I could put it on top. I’d been twelve, and my dad warned me it was hard to get right, but I insisted. It started to tip off and I bobbled it, which launched it into the wall and then the ground, where it split. We superglued it and my dad put the star up every year after that.
I sighed. The old memories were nice, I guessed. But what about the ones I still hadn’t made? I wanted to make new holiday memories. Maybe part of me had hoped this Christmas would be the one where I made memories of cuddling into Dominic’s holiday sweaters and going to parties with him where we drove home late in the snow. I knew I eventually needed to move on and accept that those memories might be made with some other guy, but I just didn’t feel ready for that yet.
Dad set the table and brought a big bowl of pasta along with his self proclaimed “famous” Italian salad. I knew his secret, though. It was just a bag mix with Olive Garden dressing and his homemade croutons.
“So,” he said once he was settled. “What are you working on at The Coast this week?”
He had taken to shortening The Union Coast to just “The Coast” even though nobody who worked there did that. I hadn’t had the heart to correct him on it. “Well, I wrote about some new research in psychology. It was something about gender, I think.”
He frowned. “Something about gender? You don’t remember?”
“Well, that is actually what I wanted to talk to you guys about.”
Eloise paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and widened her eyes. We weren’t twins by any stretch, but I think we had a little sisterly telepathy going on. The look on her face told me she already knew what I was about to say and wished she could retreat upstairs before I did.
“I quit today.”
My dad’s fork clattered against the edge of his bowl. He smiled, like he thought I might be joking. “Sorry, what? I don’t understand, Darcy.”
“I wasn’t happy there,” I said. “The Union Coast was your dream, Dad. It was always just your dream. I told myself I might want it, too, and I went after it. But I was happy at The Squawker. I had a voice there. I could actually research my own pieces and I had creative license. The Union Coast was just… It was like a factory assembly line. The research lands on my desk and I put the words down. No emotion. No creativity. It was mind-numbing and soul-crushing.”