Page 110 of Be Your Anything
“Do you realize how often you critique me when I come into your office?” The scratching of her pen stops. “It’s practically the only things you say to me anymore. ‘Don’t grind your teeth, don’t make that face. Don’t slouch, cross your legs. That skirt’s too short, that dress is wrong for this event. Leave your fingernails alone.’ Jesus. If I’d known I was coming home to be degraded every damn day, maybe I would have stayed in fucking Paris.”
When my mother doesn’t take the bait and chew me out for my language, I realize she’s just staring at me, her eyes set and her facial expression neutral. It’s actually a little bit terrifying. And I immediately feel regretful.
“Look, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry.”
“Lennon, you’re just starting to build up your backbone. Don’t destroy all your hard work by apologizing.”
My head flies back up in surprise, wondering how there’s any possible way I heard her correctly.
“What?”
She signs off on the last document and then stands, smoothing out her skirt and stepping around her desk, holding the stack of paperwork against her chest.
“Something changed in you while you were away, or maybe it was something that was just…different about you once you came back. You used to be this mighty presence people took note of when you walked into a room, and at some point, you started to fade into the fabric, choosing to be a wallflower and asking for people to look somewhere else.”
She rests her hip against her desk, showing off her elegant frame, the Burberry dress and mahogany shoes accented with just a smidge of gold jewelry. Classically elegant—that’s my mother. As perfect as possible. Always.
“I’ve been watching you handle Ellison with gloves on, hearing about the situation with your little boyfriend and wondering when you’re going to come back to yourself and stop letting people walk all over you. Because I can promise you, I didn’t get where I am now by letting people treat me like shit.”
She steps forward.
“I demanded that they give me the respect onlyIknew I deserved. Only then did I truly deserve it. Only then did I receive it.”
I swallow thickly, wondering where this conversation is coming from, who this woman is.
“You need to thicken up that skin of yours, Lennon. Obviously. But you also need to start realizing when to put someone else in their place.”
This is one of the first real things she’s said to me in years, apart from conversations about work and family, bland things that have no emotional substance, that don’t truly mean anything.
“Why haven’t you ever said any of this before?” I ask.
She lifts a shoulder. “Because sometimes you have to learn things in your own time, and sometimes I don’t have the time to teach you lessons you should be learning on your own.”
My mother and I have had maybe five lunches since I’ve been back in Hermosa Beach. She’s been busy, swamped, tired…full of damn excuses about why she didn’t want to spend time with me.
Was that on purpose? Was she testing me?
My nostrils flare at the idea that she’s been playing games.
“I don’t appreciate being played with or manipulated for whatever reason suits you,” I say, crossing my arms. “If you want to teach me a lesson, don’t shut me out because you think I’ll learn something. That’s not the type of learning I want or need in my life, and if you want to be in it, you’ll remember that.”
My mother’s eyes flash, and I’m surprised to see it looks like pride, oddly enough.
Without saying anything else, I take the stack of papers from her and storm out of her office.
“Alright, it’s weekly review time,” I say, my small team gathered around the conference room table for our Friday afternoon meeting. “Let’s go over the week and get our to-do lists ready for Monday. Kerrigan? You wanna kick us off?”
My assistant nods then launches into a tally of everything she’s kept track of: catering confirmations, riders with signatures, reservations for tables, chairs, linens, and lighting.
“…and the full stack of invitations finally went out as well, including the added list of fifty that Mr. Roth requested,” she says, flipping through her notes. Her head pops up. “Did I miss anything?”
I look around the table. “Anyone else have something to add to that list?” A hand to my right has me working hard not to roll my eyes. “Ellison?”
“I took the liberty of confirming with Sugar Cookies Bakery for the dessert trays. They’ll be sending over an invoice this week to confirm quantity and secure a deposit.”
I tap my pen against the table, glad I’m not holding a pencil because otherwise it would have snapped in half.
“Do you not remember the conversation this team had two weeks ago when we all agreed Sugar Cookies Bakery would be the backup plan if we were unable to secure Miranda’s Bakery?”
