Page 24 of Some Like It Hott

“Jenna was telling us about a breakthrough she made,” my mom says proudly.

“I can’t talk about the details yet,” Jenna says, blushing, “but it was a good week.”

“Yeah?” I say, cocking an eyebrow upward. “Congratulations.”

“We’re so proud of you, kiddo,” my dad says.

I know it’s not a zero-sum game—Iknowit’s not—but it still hurts sometimes to hear them say that to her. Only because they’ve never, not once, said it to me.

“Whatcanyou tell us?” my mom asks, and Jenna launches into a complicated description of the properties of a certain molecule when it’s supercooled.

Then it’s Marcus’s turn. He’s the founder/CEO of a start-up that was recently acquired by a multinational conglomerate. He’s been in Belgium working out the details, which will set up him and my sister for life. They could own a tiny house in every port.

My parents hang on his every word as he leads us through the series of ups and downs that resulted in his deal.

We’re almost to dessert before my sister asks, “What have you been up to, Nat?”

I don’t want to admit to myself how much I crave my family’s—especially my mother’s—approval, but the way my heart rate kicks up makes it hard to lie to myself. “I got a job,” I say, then hate how much I sound like a little kid. So eager to please.

“What kind of job?” my mother says.

“Activities coordinator at Hott Springs Eternal. I’m developing a whole activities schedule for the resort.”

My mother’s mouth pinches. If you didn’t know her as well as I do, you might not notice, but it’s like a flag waving in my face. It’s the patented Disappointed Face.

Once I asked my sister if she hated my mom’s Disappointed Face as much as I did.

She said,What disappointed face?

I love my sister, but we grew up in the same household in parallel universes.

“Oh,” my mother says. “What happened to that list I gave you, of careers in the medical field?”

“I’m not trained for any of that, Mom,” I say. “That’s why I have to go back to school.”

“So why this job, then?” she asks. “I thought you were planning to go straight back to school?”

“That was never the plan,” I say, keeping my voice calm with effort. “I don’t have the money for it yet. I need to save up.”

“Darling,” she says, covering my hand with hers, “let us pay for school.”

This again.

I cannot let my parents pay for school—for the same reason I can’t come home to live with them. Because I can’t stop feeling like they’re waiting for me to fail.

One night when I was a senior in high school, I snuck down to the kitchen for a midnight snack and overheard them talking in the kitchen.

My mom asked my dad,Whatdoeshaving fun all the time equip you for?and my dad saidNot muchand laughed.

I didn’t know yet they were talking about me. Then my mom said,It’s like she was born completely without ambition,and my dad said,She’s the one we’ll have in our basement till she’s fifty.

That was the moment I vowed I wouldnevermove back home once I left. Or ask them for money, no matter how desperate I felt.

The thing is, sometimes I’m pretty sure they’re right about me.

I went to college and got a communications degree. But I hated every job I got after that. I hated writing copy. I hated PR. I hated human resources.

Basically, I hated desks.

---