Page 39 of Flawless

“Why didn’t you just reach out to your parents when things got so bad?”

Closing my eyes, I fight the tears that want to come.

“My father gave me an ultimatum at sixteen. If I stepped out of those doors to do the things that he did not approve of, I should never consider returning. He told me that if I left home, there was no home to come to.”

“Why didn’t you just wait until you were eighteen?”

“The opportunity was right there at my feet. It was something that I wanted badly after someone planted the idea in my head. Our family was on vacation in L.A. visiting my mother’s cousin. He and his wife thought I looked like a model. That planted aseed in my head, especially when they made the same comment a year later when we were visiting again for a family reunion.

“By that time, I was sixteen years old, and I expressed an interest in wanting to get an agency behind me. My mom’s cousin said that they would be willing to let me stay with them while I worked on getting with an agency. But they gave me three months to make it happen, or I would have to return home. It was summertime, and I was stoked. My dad was at a convention that year and didn’t attend with us. My mom called him jokingly and said that I would be pursuing a modeling career, and my dad agreed. Of course, they both expected that I would be back home in Charleston when the summer ended.”

“Apparently, that didn’t happen for you,” Zenon observes.

Shaking my head, I say, “No, I went to a few different agencies. Two days before I was scheduled to return home, I was finally accepted by L.A. Models. I signed with them and informed my family that I would be remaining in L.A. Of course, that didn’t go over well with Dad. When I refused to return home, he flew out to L.A. to talk some sense into my head. That’s when he gave me the ultimatum.”

“If Zílda were to come home and say, ‘Dad, I’m moving halfway across the country from you to pursue a career, and she had not finished school yet, I would be furious. The answer would be no.’”

“With no consideration?”

“Not at sixteen. No.”

“Well, unfortunately for me, I understand exactly where he was coming from now. I didn’t back then.”

“Would you do it all over again if you had the chance?”

“Zenon, part of my twelve-step program is owning the mistakes that I’ve made, and boy, have I made a lot. If I hadn’t gone through what I have been through, would I be the woman that I am today? No, I wouldn’t. My sobriety is sacred to me,and I put in the work every moment to maintain it. I wouldn’t appreciate life, clarity of mind, or be as cautious with people’s feelings as I’m learning to become had it not been for all that I’ve gone through.”

“Are you, though? Cautious with people’s feelings, I mean?”

“I would like to believe that I am. Only time will tell, huh? It’s not easy for me to sit here and tell you the things that I’m telling you. And even now, I haven’t told you nearly everything. The only thing that I’m trying to do is make amends by being a different woman than the one that you knew.”

“I loved that woman,” he says, ducking his head and looking at me from underneath his brow.

“You loved parts of her, Z, but not the whole. It was impossible for you to because she was fractured. You never met the other half.”

Zenon reaches his hand out to me, and I take it. “If you would have been open to letting me love you the way you deserved to be loved and the way that I wanted to love you, there would be no reason for those other parts of you to exist. They would have simply dissipated because they were all based on a superficial notion of life anyway. Those parts were nothing more than an alter ego you created to exist in this world. You didn’t need them. You only needed my love. I would have made you complete.”

“And yet, I can’t be complete with you until I’m complete within myself,” I say softly.

10 – ZENON

“What happened to you? I thought you would come back down here after you checked on your friend.”

The way that she says “friend” sounds like something deplorable, and she spits it out of her mouth like an expletive.

“I was tired after I left the bonfire. It had been a long day,” I say, wading into the water.

“Too bad. You missed out on a lot of fun. Some of us will be heading back home after this weekend,” Amaris says, taking steps into the water with me.

“Oh yeah?”

“We all can’t have the same vacations that celebrities might take, if you know what I mean. Some of us aren’t fortunate enough to not have to work,” she says, taking the volleyball she’d been carrying and tossing it to me.

“Who doesn’t have to work?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I doubt Danica has to do much work. From what I’ve seen, she hasn’t been on any of her shows in quite some time, and the network has pulled Sabrina Sims in for the rest of the season,” Amaris says, catching the ball that I send sailing back her way.

“Who told you that?”

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