Claire
Thank you.
I stared at them for a long moment. They were a lie. I wasn't thankful, I was devastated. But they were also safe, and right now, safe was all I could manage.
I sent the message and dropped the phone onto the couch.
The apartment was dark now, the last of the daylight faded to black. I should eat something. Shower. Try to sleep. I should do any of the normal human things that normal humans do after their lives have imploded.
Instead, I curled up on the couch, pulled a blanket over myself, and let the silence press down.
You have choices now,my own voice reminded me.Real choices. Not obligations or debts or desperate attempts to prove your worth. Actual freedom.
The word tasted strange. I'd never had freedom before, not really. There had always been someone to take care of, something to prove, some invisible scorecard I was frantically trying to balance.
Now the scorecard was clear. Nathaniel had wiped it clean with a wire transfer.
The question was: what did I do with a blank slate?
You could walk away,my mother's ghost suggested, fainter now, retreating to the corners where old griefs lived.Start over. Find someone easier to love.
Or,my own voice countered,you could stop running. Stop trying to earn what should be freely given. Stop treating love like a performance review.
You could choose. Really choose. Not out of fear or obligation or desperate need, but because you want to.
I closed my eyes, exhaustion dragging me toward unconsciousness.
Tomorrow, Eleanor would call again, and I would answer. Tomorrow, I would have to face the wreckage of my public humiliation and figure out how to rebuild.
Tomorrow, I would have to decide what freedom actually meant.
But tonight, tonight I let myself feel the full weight of what I'd lost.
Millie's laugh.
Nathaniel's eyes.
The terrifying, wonderful possibility of belonging somewhere.
My phone lit up one final time. I didn't look at it. Couldn't bear to see another message that might break me further or, worse, give me hope.
But as I drifted toward sleep, one thought crystallized with painful clarity:
Nathaniel had given me freedom. Complete, uncomplicated, expensive freedom.
What he didn't realize, what I was only beginning to understand myself, was that freedom meant nothing if you didn't know what you wanted to do with it.
And I was starting to suspect that what I wanted wasn't freedom at all.
It was them.
The question that would keep me awake for hours, that would haunt me through the long night ahead, was brutally simple:
Was I brave enough to choose them?
16.Claire
Iwoke up the morning after the worst day of my life to discover that my face was everywhere.
