“But if I say no, I’ll hurt her feelings.”
“That’s on her, not on you.”
Shannon stared at her. “You’re incredibly strong.”
“Years of practice.”
“I guess.” Shannon handed over more pages. “I’m tired of being directionless, and at the same time I don’t seem to want to do the hard work to figure out what I should focus on. The days go by so fast. Suddenly I’m going to be sixty-five with a great 401(k) and a job I hate. I don’t want that.” She looked at Victoria. “If you know what’s wrong with me, I’d love you to tell me.”
“Sorry, I don’t have an answer, but I admire how you’re so brutally honest about your imperfections. I like to hide from all self-reflection and anything emotional. It’s probably why I’m not interested in being in a romantic relationship. All those feelings. It’s messy and potentially dangerous.”
“So we’re both flawed,” Shannon said. “That makes me feel better.”
“Plus we can blame our mothers. A little slice of joy in the middle of the day.”
Shannon laughed. “I don’t know if any of this is my mom’s fault.”
“You said she was a helicopter parent.”
“She did monitor me a lot, but maybe that’s on me rather than her. I was always willing to let her be responsible. I didn’t want to have to keep track of stuff like when a project was due or getting college applications in on time.”
“Before you beat yourself up, have you thought that you never learned those skills because Cindy was always right there, smoothing the path for you?” She held up a hand. “I’m not dissing her. I like her a lot. I’m just saying you were trained to not stand on your own and take charge of your own life.”
“Maybe.” Shannon sounded doubtful. “That would be better than it being a character flaw. Learning new things is easier than fixing the way the brain works. I doubt you’d have let Cindy take over your life.”
“Probably not. According to both my parents, which means it must be true, I was stubborn and difficult from birth.” She pointed to the scar on her cheek. “She would love me to get this fixed, but I won’t.”
“To annoy her?”
“Mostly. Sometimes I think it’s a badge of honor, but then I wonder where the honor is in living my life in anti-Ava mode.”
“You said you weren’t into self-reflection.”
“I’m not.”
Shannon laughed. “Yet you just explained your character and illustrated your relationship with your mother in five sentences.”
“Any self-knowledge is merely accidental.” She stapled more pages together, and they worked in silence for several minutes. “I’m writing a screenplay.”
Shannon’s eyes widened. “For real? That’s amazing. Good for you.”
Victoria waved away the words. “Come on, it’s LA. Everyone’s writing a screenplay.” She paused. “I’m on my fourth draft. My critique group says it’s much better, so I’m hoping it’s decent. We’ll see. But my point is there’s no way I’d tell my mother. Although I did have my dad read the first draft, so he probably told her, but we’re both pretending she doesn’t know.” She paused. “Wow, that’s twisted even for our relationship.”
“Is the stunt work about your mom?”
“Of course. I didn’t realize it when I signed up for the school. Mom had been looking at the colleges with the best cheer programs, but by then I was done with the sport. The stunt work was fun and interesting until it wasn’t.”
Shannon handed over the last of the pages and sank into a chair. “So you live your life to get back at your mom, and I’m totally enmeshed with mine.” She shrugged. “Aaron pointed out that knowing she was planning to give me up for adoption makes my responsibility for her happiness bigger than it was, which is probably true but not anything I wanted to hear. I want to be independent, yet I run to her every time I screw up. She’s the voice in my head.” Shannon stared at her. “I want to hear my own voice, but I worry the reason I can’t is that I don’t have anything to say.”
Victoria touched her hand. “Hey, it’s okay. Everyone is messed up. Let’s not forget all my issues.”
“You mean the fact that you’re an emotional coward who won’t let yourself feel things and that you hide behind a facade of bravery and independence when what you secretly want is to connect with people?”
Shannon’s tone was kind and supportive, but the words were like individual slaps to her psyche.
“Sorry,” Shannon said, looking guilty. “That was a little more than I meant to say. I wasn’t being mean.”
“No, it’s fine. I get it.” Sort of. Because she wasn’t secretly interested in connecting with anyone, and she actually was braveand independent. But she would accept the not-feeling-things because that part was true.
