Nason follows me. “Have you spoken to their parents?”
I huff. “They’re adults, Nason. What do you think their parents are going to do? Ground them?”
Nason doesn’t answer for a second. When I’m on the other side of the bar, I meet his eyes. “It’s easy to say what I would do if I had two children and one was always down the other’s throat. I guess I don’t know what I’d do. I just feel like I’d dosomething.”
I’m reminded of the stories Lie told us when he came home from the shitty situation at college. When he got the ‘adults’ involved, things didn’t get better. They escalated. Became more threatening. They got to the point where Lie no longer felt safe enough to stay.
Sometimes, getting involved is the wrong answer. But what is therightanswer?
Chapter Seventeen
LIE
I scrollthrough the different career path options Kala has to offer, looking for something that might be fulfilling but not surrounded by people who might think it’s acceptable to snap their fingers to get your attention.
After the conversation with Laiken about options for what to do with my life, I feel a little more hopeful that I’ll find something. Maybe there’s something out there that I want to do, and I just haven’t found it yet.
Dad has never pressured me to commit to a career. I honestly don’t think he’d care if I told him I wanted to be a hermit and stay home for the rest of my life.
Mom doesn’t feel quite the same way. She wants me to work. She doesn’t care what the job is as long as I’m doing something responsible with my time and getting paid for it.
But I feel like I’ve been their responsibility long enough. They’ve been good parents to me for two decades. It’s time that they get to live their lives for just each other and not take me into consideration with every decision they make.
They had me when they were really young. Soon after they got married. Still in college. They didn’t have a chance to live with each other and enjoy being newlyweds without me. I think they need that opportunity while they’re still young enough to enjoy it.
But that means I need to find something I’m not going to hate, which is proving more difficult than I ever imagined. I’d gone to school with the idea that I had a couple years to explore different subjects and I’d find something I was passionate about.
I didn’t get to that point in school.
To be fair, I was naïve about the world. When I left for college, I thought that everywhere would be a different version of Kala. I wasn’t expecting the hate, bigotry, and persecution just because I like guys instead of girls.
When I enrolled in college, I went knowing that I wanted to explore my career options. Whatever I loved, I was going to pursue. Location wasn’t a factor. I’d follow a path that I loved, no matter where it took me. That’s changed now that I’ve gotten a glimpse of what life outside of Kala is like. I’m never leaving again.
Which, of course, narrows my options. I can’t be a chemist on Kala. That’s not the kind of industry we have here. Nor can I be an astrophysicist or something and study space. There are no observatories here.
Not that any of those had even been on my radar, but I’m aware they’re off the table now. But when my options are feeling safe and happy and loving who I love simply because I love them, or doing a job and feeling threatened, bullied, and prejudiced against for something out of my control for the rest of my life?
It’s an easy decision.
My options aren’t like three or four areas, either. There are a ton of different things to do. I’ve also been told that the Calloways are very open to hearing about expansion options if Icome up with something brilliant that we don’t have. Even with taking half the possibilities of career options off my table, there are still so many things I can choose from.
Yet nothing looks even remotely exciting.
Sighing with frustration, I set my tablet on the grass and let my head hang forward. I’m lying in the backyard on my stomach, hanging slightly off the lounge, tempting it to fall forward because my center of weight is closer to the top.
My feet kick. The lounge lifts a little every time one of my feet kicks toward my ass.
I wish I could say I’m lying on my stomach with my ass in the air to tease Laiken, but he’s not even home. He picked up a shift at a bar on Anapos that needed coverage today. My parents are at work. Cash is still asleep.
My phone rings and I grin. Hewasasleep.
“It’s almost noon,” I greet when I answer.
“It’s almost eleven,” Cash counters.
“Which is far closer to noon than it is a normal time to wake up.” He grunts in response, making me laugh. “You up all night with lover-boy, punk-rock drummer?”
Cash sighs. “Yeah.”
