One
When I was a little girl,I collected personalities. For me, becoming someone else was an art form and a secret challenge, like a competition with myself that I always won. The less I was myself, the easier it was to blend into the different social situations I was forced to experience.
And the longer I lived, the more I realized most experiences were of the horrific and traumatic variety. Or at least the experiences that left the biggest mark. The longest scar.
But I relied on those alternate personalities, my chameleon ability to blend in so seamlessly. That collection of personalities had saved me over and over again. It was the one constant thing I could rely on when I was a kid. And it had followed me into adulthood as I navigated the rough waters of living and working and struggling to breathe through everything.
For my dad, I dressed up in princess gowns and greeted grown-ups with handshakes and tiny curtsies. I tolerated the late-night business meetings he dragged me to by pretending I loved to sit and stare at walls for hours. I smiled at his balding, middle-aged friends that had more money than was good for them and pretended their uninvited wandering hands on my butt didn’t bother me. I played the perfect daughter. While he played the negligent self-absorbed father.
For my mom, I wore party dresses and high heels and laughed at all the bawdy jokes I didn’t understand. I played off her bad decisions and supported her unhealthy addiction to my dad. I skipped homework so we could hang out with her wild friends. I didn’t mention the school plays she forgot or the ballet recitals I had to skip because she wanted to drive to the beach for the weekend. I was the best friend in her life, not her child. And she loved me more than anything else on the planet. The feeling was mutual, even if the hard truth of our relationship was only remembered by me.
At school, I got straight As and answered every question when called on. I was on student council and the senior class vice president. I tutored. I was the basketball team captain. Like every teenager, I stole my mom’s cheap liquor and my dad’s cash paid for all our shenanigans. I said yes to everything. Boys and parties and drugs. A life of endless fun and zero responsibilities. Even when I wanted to say no.
And when I did say no, nobody listened. I had said yes too many times to be taken seriously. I played my party girl role too well.
I played all my parts too well.
Dillon Baptiste, the girl everyone liked because she was the girl no one knew.
Not really.
By the time I graduated high school, I’d lived a hundred different personalities for a thousand different people. And I hated who I pretended to be.
Because they weren’t me.
The worst part was, I didn’t even know who I was.
Still don’t.
Depression hit hard those first few years after school. I lacked direction because I didn’t have a purpose. And I didn’t have a purpose because I didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t know what I wanted because I had no idea who I was or how to even figure that out.
And then my dad got sick.
There wasn’t a therapist in the world who could have untangled the mess my mind became. My thoughts were overrun, watching a man I equal parts loved and hated, succumb to a disease he couldn’t pay to go away.
Those were dark, dark years.
Ezra had shown up because he cared about his father. Like a white knight in gleaming armor, he rode into our broken mess ready to fix everything—including me.
Maybe especially me.
Our dad was too sick for Ezra to help. But I wasn’t totally irredeemable. I, at least, had my health.
And so he’d started the slow, arduous process of pulling me out of the black abyss I’d let myself fall into. I didn’t latch onto him like I had every other person in my life. I studied him. I learned from him. And eventually, I tried to become him.
Not literally, of course.
I liked his mannerisms. He was detached. So effortlessly aloof. He didn’t come from money, but he walked into my world like he was meant to be there. He looked down on everyone except me. He was intolerant of incompetence and bullshit and knew how to get what he wanted.
More importantly, he knewwhathe wanted.
I was enamored with this new older brother of mine that selflessly took care of other people without letting them touch him in return.
I wanted his… armor.
Ezra already had a life before he walked into mine. He loved food. It started with his friend Killian and their foster mom Jo—his small, trustworthy tribe, the only people he let in. And I experienced them at their most open and candid when they were creating and making good food.
Later, Elena showed up. I had hated her from the beginning, but too afraid to push my new brother away, I had kept my mouth shut. When he married her, he’d disappeared for a while. They had a restaurant to open. They had a new life to start. There wasn’t room for a spoiled brat of a half-sister that was lost in grief and confusion and couldn’t name one thing she actually wanted for herself.
