“God, Eliza, if you cared about my future you’d understand!”
She stomped her foot. “Idocare, which is why I’m pissed you passed on the Cristo internship! I’m pissed at you for rolling over to what your parents want! They don’t know you, they don’t know what you want to do!”
“And you know me better than my parents?” It was a cheap shot but that’s what people did when they were in the wrong, they got defensive.
“I don’t know! I’d like to think you had the balls to go after what you want, not bow to their every demand.”
“They pay for this, sorry I’m not as lucky as you and have all of my school paid for!”
She took a step back. “Lucky as me?Lucky as me?I fucking earned the scholarship. Me. I put in the work. Sorry you don’t know what that looks like!”
“I work like a fucking dog! I am beholden to my parents!” I admitted. “Did you know I almost went to school across the country? To work on historical buildings? But it wasn’t good enough for my parents, so they wouldn’t pay for it.”
“Why didn’t you just go?”
“Because they would hate me like they hate Jude and I just can’t deal with that. I thought about going. I could have taken out the loans. But the way they look at me Eliza, just with disdain and disappointment, it wasn’t worth fighting them over it.”
“You never struck me as a coward,” she said quietly.
“I saw what they did to Jude. How it affected him. He’s the fucking black sheep of the family and I fucking envy his ability not to care. But I do care. Did you know I had ulcers as a teenager? When Jude left, I made myself sick with anxiety and worry. So excuse me for feeling like I’m trapped. I am a fucking marionette and my parents pull the strings.”
“So cut them, Trask! Cut the strings they hold. Be your own person! You’re not a teenager beholden to them now. You have fucking perspective. You have goals and dreams and you don’t need their help to make it happen. You’re a few weeks shy of a degree. You have opportunities. You don’t need to stay on their good side to be successful anymore. You can be your own person!”
“You don’t understand!”
“What don’t I understand?” she asked.
“What it’s like to have a family!” I ran my fingers through my hair. “You don’t understand what it’s like to have to meet their expectations, to be beholden to them. You don’t understand that I’d do anything to keep a relationship with them. You don’t have a family! You don’t get it!”Fuck. I didn’t mean it. Not like that.
Her lip quivered and she bit it so hard I thought it would bleed. “I thought I did. For a minute I thought I had a family.” And she left.
27
ELIZA
There were several things in the following weeks that made the break-up hard. I say break up because I’d thoroughly ignored Trask since our little spat. I could barely look at him. He hurt me and I overreacted. Sure, we could make up and move on, but then what? If I was ever pitted against his parents, he wouldn’t choose me. Why go through that hurt? Why prolong the inevitable?
“Eliza, please, let’s fix this!” he said, cornering before one of my classes.
“What’s the point?” I asked. His eyes were intense, and I tried to avoid eye contact. It was hard seeing him like this. I felt like shit.
“The point isus! We can work through this.”
“I will resent you.” I tried to shoulder past him. “You’ll always have to choose between them or me and I don’t want to resent you for choosing them, because you willalwayschoose them.”
There was nothing left to do except avoid him in class and vent to Rosalie.
“He’s an asshole,” Rosalie said during one of our “drink and spill your guts” nights. Sweet Rosalie, always on my side.
I laughed. “No, he’s not.”
Rosalie cocked an eyebrow at me. “What do you want to hear?”
I fell back onto the couch, staring at the stained ceiling. “I want to know that I did the right thing by breaking it off when I did. That I’m not missing out on anything and that he isn’t worth the heartache. But he’s not an asshole, he’s a really sweet guy and—” A lump in my throat blocked the rest of my words.
“I can’t tell you that,” Rosalie said. “He is a nice guy. You were happy. I hate that he hurt you. And I bet if you stayed with him and worked this out, he’d hurt you again. But he didn’t destroy you. You’re not a shattered shell of yourself. You’re still you. So I guess you need to decide if the occasional bruise or scratch is worth it in order to be with him.”
I snorted. “You and your shitty analogies.”