Wildfire (Maple Hills, #2)(16)
EMILIA BENNETT
Omw
You good?
Yeah
You getting the feeling scaries?
Yeah
You wanna sleep in my bed?
Yeah
The feeling scaries is what Emilia calls the moment of clarity you get after you’ve left a situation you were wrapped up in. It’s the sinking feeling in your gut when the anxiety sets in and you consider whether you did the right thing. It’s a moment like now, when I’m alone with only the thoughts in my head to keep me company. When I weigh up whether what I just did made me feel better or worse. Whether I’d have done that if I’d stayed off my phone and minded my business. And how long that hit of validation and feeling wanted is going to keep me going before I’m looking for the next place to get it. Then finally, whether any of this really matters either way when nobody cares what I do.
The feeling scaries isn’t necessarily regret, it’s reflection and I personally prefer to be distracted rather than reflective.
EMILIA BENNETT
Why are you moving really slow
Are you in a car?
Aurora are you walking!!!
Don’t you dare get murdered
I’m so mad at you
I’m almost home
“You’re a clown,” Emilia says as I climb into bed beside her. “Stop playing chicken with your safety because you’re too impatient to wait for a ride.”
“Noted.” Maybe if I’d managed to get a ride I wouldn’t have spent the entire walk home thinking of the guy I just left.
“Your pizza is in the kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
Emilia sighs heavily. “Go to sleep. You’ll need the energy to break up your parents’ brawl.”
“Are you sure you want to go for breakfast?” I don’t get a response, just a cushion launched in my general direction. “We could just fake our own deaths.”
“Your mom would know. You really need to sleep, Ror,” she says through another yawn. “Just think, a whole summer without sharing your location in the middle of the night. Just weeks and weeks of keeping small children alive and uninjured—and self-development.”
“The dream.”
Chapter Six
AURORA
Nothing on this earth inspires the same pure, unadulterated despair as having to spend any prolonged length of time with my parents in the same location.
It sounds dramatic, but honestly, Chuck and Sarah Roberts are the poster couple for “sometimes divorce is a blessing.” There’s just something about them being within six feet of each other that turns them both into monsters.
With that in mind, I should probably count myself lucky that Dad hasn’t showed up to the goodbye breakfast he promised he’d to be at before I head to Honey Acres sleepaway camp to work for the summer with Emilia.
The most annoying part isn’t being consistently let down by a man who is supposed to be one of the stable pillars in my life, it’s the effect his absent parent bullshit has on Mom, who, if anything, I could cope with being a little more absent.
“Why don’t you try him again?” She watches me over her orange juice with a sad pout. “Have you tried his assistant? Or Elsa? Your sister can always seem to reach him.”
“He’s not going to answer; it’s fine.” It is fine, because you can’t be disappointed by someone you have zero faith in. “Our plans clearly weren’t his important ones. What were you saying?”
Reaching for my glass, I gulp down my water and free my throat from the metaphorical brick lodged in it. The one that gets slightly bigger every single time I say the words “it’s” and “fine” in the same sentence.
“I was about to ask if you thought any more about moving home when you get back?” Give me strength. “Don’t look at me like that, Aurora. I literally made you.”
You’d think after twenty years I’d be used to the incessant probing and the not very discreet attempts to remind me that she’s the reason I exist and yet—here we are. “I, uh, Mom, you know we’ve signed the lease for next year already. Dad already paid the full year upfront . . .” What’s a polite way to say, “hell will freeze over before I voluntarily live with you again?” “You can’t expect me to commute from Malibu every day when I have a perfectly nice home right next to college . . . I’d spend half my day sitting in traffic.”
“There are children in other cultures who live with their parents forever,” she says in a hushed tone. “Your sister is in London. You take three days to return my calls. Don’t act like I’m the unreasonable one for wanting to see my daughters regularly. It’s not even far.”
God forbid Sarah Roberts ever be accused of being the unreasonable one.
“I think my parents’ worst nightmare would be me moving home,” Emilia interjects, forcing a chuckle to lighten the increasing tension.
Emilia Bennett is the perfect roommate, best friend and occasional human guilt shield. Two years studying public relations and six years playing emotional babysitter to my mom and her turbulent mood has turned her into my own personal crisis manager.
“I’m sure they would love it if you moved home, Emilia,” Mom sighs dramatically. “I’m sure their house feels huge and lonely without you.”