Page 15 of Lucius

Shewas the most important person to him.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be late tonight,” Sidney said after she’d waited a couple minutes for her mom to answer the phone at the salon.

“What?” her mom practically screeched. “I thought you were just going to be gone for the afternoon.”

“I was planning that,” she said. “But I also told you I was taking the rest of the day off. Which I think is pretty dang fair since I never get to take any time off in general.” Hell, Sidney couldn’t even recall any actual vacations she’d taken in the last year or two, not even a long weekend to do something fun. She couldn’t believe that a trip to a safari park seemed like a vacation. How pathetic was that?

“Well, I expected you back before the end of the day to help close.”

“Why? Itoldyou I was going to be gone.”

“It shouldn’t take that long to go on a stupid safari. Honestly, Sidney, you need to get your priorities straight.”

“Priorities?” Sidney asked, standing from the bench to pace because she was getting agitated and couldn’t sit still. “You mean the salon? That’s your priority, Mom, not mine. I want to draw.”

“Your doodles? That’s hardly going to turn into a career.”

Doodles?“Why can’t you be supportive of me? I’ve been supportive of you.”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“What? No, you can’t.”

“Well,” her mom said with a grunt, “then why do you keep dreaming about something that will never get you anywhere? The salon is the family business and I need you to be here to help me.”

“What if I don’t want the life you chose?” Sidney slashed the air with her free hand as anger and sadness twined inside her. “You want me to answer phones at a job I don’t like my whole life?”

“You could have gone to cosmetology school.”

“Mom! I never wanted to cut hair for a living, I want to be an artist. Your dream for me was for me to be a stylist, but that was never my dream. I’ll never really be happy trapped there.”

“Trapped?”

“Yeah, Mom. I feel trapped. You don’t pay me enough for me to move out on my own, so I’m stuck living in the apartment with you, and you constantly make demands of my time with the salon and belittle anything that I do with my art. Do you know that I’m good? That people buy sketches from my online store on that craft website?” Tears pricked Sidney’s eyes and she hated that she wanted to cry.

Her mom was so quiet that Sidney had to look at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected.

“Well,” her mom said finally. “I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

Sidney sighed. That was her mom in a nutshell. She would just shut down instead of finishing a conversation if it got confrontational. But the sucky part was that nothing would change. Come Monday, her mom would expect her at the front desk working hard and wouldn’t want to discuss this argument.

But Sidney was really tired of the status quo.

“I’m not done talking about this,” Sidney said. “We can talk tomorrow.”

“Well, I really don’t think there’s anything to say.”

“I do. There needs to be some changes. I…need to be able to live my life for myself however I want, and you need to do what you promised me when Dad died and hire a replacement.”

“I’ll see you tonight,” her mom said with a clipped tone.

“Don’t wait up,” Sidney said.

The call ended and she stood a few feet away from the security building that she’d been pacing in front of. Her heart was heavy. She hadn’t meant to get into an argument with her mom, but when she’d turned her phone on after Lucius went inside, she’d seen her mom had called and texted numerous times, wanting to know when she’d be back, so she’d decided to deal with it.

She and her mom were in some kind of dysfunctional relationship right now and her mom couldn’t seem to see that itwasn’t good for either of them. But Sidney coming to the park and meeting Lucius had given her a chance to examine herself and she’d seen the truth: she was locked up in a situation where she didn’t have any peace or happiness.

Even though she’d just met Lucius, she sure as heck felt peaceful and happy with him.

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