“If there is something you feel like you have to do, you need to go and do it,” I interrupt her right back. “We are here for you. We want you to live your best life, no matter how trite that saying is. You are young. You have the luxury of time and money. Why not?”
I never talk to my mom in this manner. It almost feels like she's a friend. I have never talked to her about her hopes and dreams, mainly because she has never been so vulnerable with me before. In fact, this is probably the first time that I’ve ever felt close to her in that way that you do to an old friend.
I'm not exactly sure what she's getting at and when I press her, she doesn't make it any clearer. She does say that she admires my work and how passionate I am about it and wants something like that for herself. I give her a warm hug.
Dad gets home a little bit later just as we’re finishing an episode of a show on Netflix. They're both a little tipsy. After making a little bit of small talk, he heads straight to his office. It's getting late, but I know that he'll do another few hours of work before he's done.
“Hey, am I interrupting something?” I ask, knocking on his door.
“No, of course not. Come in, come in.”
“How's everything going?” I ask.
“Busy. Big case. Lots of expert witnesses. Not enough time to really prepare.”
“You never think there's enough time to prepare,” I joke.
“There never is.” He walks over to the bar at the far end of his office and pours himself a glass of bourbon.
He offers to make me one, but I show him that I am still nursing my glass of wine.
“So, when are you going to give up all of your foolishness and come join me in the firm?”
The question takes me by surprise, though it shouldn't. It's something he always jokes about, but only half joking of course.
“You know that I haven't gone to law school, right?”
“I know I know,” he says, waving his hand. “You're just the smartest person I know and I hate the fact that you're wasting your time writing.”
“Writing is important.”
“I guess,” he says, “but law is writing put to use.”
I nod. I've heard all of this before.
“How's everything going?” he asks.
I open my mouth to tell him about the article, but then I hesitate.
He has never been someone who I could freely talk about my problems with because he tends to be the kind of person who offers solutions rather than just nodding along and listening.
I really don’t need a solution. I need someone to be here to listen to me. I need to vent. Besides, his solutions tend to revolve around me giving up writing, which isn't really an option.
“How long are you staying?” he asks.
“For the weekend, if that's okay.”
“Of course, stay as long as you want. I don't know how you live in that little apartment of yours.”
“I like it,” I say.
He shakes his head and says, “No, you don't.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I'm just being objective.”
“How's that possible? You are completely denying the fact that I could actually like my apartment.”
“I'm just being honest and you are not,” he says, taking a sip from his glass and then putting it down on the table.
I like having these back-and-forth things with my father. Feels a little bit like a dance. He challenges me, calling me on my bullshit. I used to hate it when I was a kid, but now I know that it’s something he does only with people he considers equals.
“So, you think I'm lying?”
“I know you are.”
“I know that it is small, but it's comfortable.”
“It's small, dark, and surrounded by concrete with no view.”
“Well, not everyone can afford a place like this,” I say.
“That's a whole other conversation,” he says, sitting back in his chair. “That's not what we're talking about.”
I tilt my head back and smile.
Again, I consider telling him about Liam and everything that has been going on, but when he starts talking about his case, I decide to stay quiet.
Instead, I think about all of the traffic and the horrendous commute that I'm going to have to face on Monday and the fact that it may be a good idea for me to get a gun.
Later that evening, alone in my room, I lie in the bed and try to formulate a plan. I need to find him. Things between us are so unresolved and even if we never speak to each other again, I need to have some closure. I need to know that this is a break. I need to know that we want different things. Do we though?
I don't know what I want. The only thing I want is for him to forgive me. The only thing that I want is to have the chance to explain what happened.
I grab my phone and realize that I actually don't have any pictures of us together. It's almost as if our relationship doesn’t really exist.
Can I even call it a relationship?
Of course, it's forever memorialized in an article that will live on the Internet forever, but there are no pictures of us and I sort of wish that there were.
“Hey, what's going on?” A green text appears on my screen. It's from Alex.
“What do you want?” I write back.
“Just want to see how you are.”
“Happy to be single,” I write back after a pause.
“That's mean.”
“You cheating on me was mean. This is just me being honest.”
I don't know where Alex is going with this text, but I have my suspicions. He has reached out to me a few times and I know that he wants me to give him another chance, but I can't. Alex and I are over. I realize that he is a liar and that I should have never trusted him.
Thinking about him it suddenly occurs to me that there's a strong possibility that Liam thinks about me the same way. What if he thinks of me as nothing but a mistake? I lied multiple times, but so did he.
Then again, he was under no obligation to tell me the truth. He knew I was a journalist and he was hiding his true identity.
I curl my hands up into fists. Suddenly, I'm so angry at myself for everything that has happened. I feel like all of my interactions with him have been built on sand and that I'll never be able to recover.
How do I go on? How do I move on and live my life without him?
“It should not be a problem to do that,” I say to myself.
We don't really know each other very well and yet, it feels like the world might fall away if I don't see him again. It feels like he may be the only person who ever made sense for me.
The following morning, I find Harvey Durand's information and give him a call. He is the private investigator who Corrin told me to get in touch with to help me uncover some stuff about Liam.
Harvey immediately wants to video chat so that we can see each other face-to-face. I wasn't expecting that and feel a little underdressed and unprepared, answering the call without even a little bit of makeup.
I glance at my expression in the little video in the far right-hand corner. I look pale. My eyebrows are impossibly thin. I usually fill them in a little bit with eyebrow gel, but this morning he sees me without it. My hair is tossed and sticking to one side of my head in a precarious manner.