Page 119 of You’re So Vein

“Stop!” I cry out. “Just, stop!”

Preeti drops her chair. Mamma’s brush catches in my hair. Everyone falls eerily silent.

I’ve never raised my voice with them before. But as they stare at me in wide-eyed horror, as if I’ve suddenly grown pakoras for ears, decades of expectations, resentment and people pleasing bubble to the surface and flow over my skin.

It starts as a simmer in my chest, an old, tight ache I’ve always labelled as guilt or duty or being “good”. Only now I recognise it for what it actually is – smiling and nodding when my jaw hurts and my neck aches, of being told I’m doing great as long as I’m doing what everyone else wants.

And I think of Augustin. Stoic, unflappable, impossible Augustin – who looks at me like I’m already enough, whose affection is never a transaction, who never tries to shape me to fit into his perfect idea of me, who loves the sharp, stubborn, unhinged parts of me.

The contrast stabs me right between the ribs like one of Alaric’s swords.

“Beta, what’s happened to you?” Mamma coos.

“It’s her nerves.” Beth rummages in her purse. “I’ve got a calming elixir that will help. Or, oh, if you hold this crystal and visualise yourself winning—”

“I don’t need calming elixirs or rocks, and I’m not nervous about the election. Right now I don’t want to be mayor at all, and it’s because of all of you!”

“Us?” Maisie’s lip wobbles.

“You’re not thinking about what’s best for me or Augustin or the village. You want what’s best for you! I believe I can make this town a better place as mayor, but I can’t do my job if you see me as an easy way to get things for yourselves. I’m done pretending otherwise to make you happy.”

“What’s got into you?” Mamma wrings her hands. “You can’t talk like this. You made a commitment and you can’t pull out now. You’ll upset Papa.”

“What have we done except support you?” Preeti snaps. “We’re all here on our one day off, getting chair splinters in our hands, for you.”

I swallow a few times, working furiously against my desire to backtrack, apologise, and chalk my outburst up to election day nerves. But I’m not in the mood. Maybe it’s time that everyone in my life knew how they made me feel.

“Thank you, Preeti. I know you’re all here for me. But that doesn’t give you the right to throw it in my face as if I haven’t spent the last five years showing up for you. I know you’ve gone through a horrible time, but so have I, and you never even talked to me about why I left the RAF. You just expected me to take care of everything for you, like always. And I let you, which is on me. But no more. You don’t get to make me feel guilty about asking for help. When was the last time I said something like that to you, Preeti, after I have the twins for a day and then make your coffee because you don’t know how to use the machine? Learn how to use the machine! Buttons aren’t that difficult!”

Preeti backs away, her mouth set in a firm line. “That’s not fair.”

“It is fair. You’re doing it right now. You’re trying to get me to finish the chairs because you don’t want to, even though it’s my day. You’ve done it our whole lives because you know you can sweet-talk Mamma and Papa into anything, but I’m not putting up with it anymore. Not from you, and not from my friends.”

My voice cracks on the final word, because I know they didn’t mean to hurt me. But I’m too worked up to stop now. I glare at the members of the Nevermore Coven. My pulse thumps against my ears. My hands tremble at my sides.

“We never took advantage of you!” Beth cries.

“Actually, we kind of did,” Maisie says. “I kept pressuring Komal about the Gazette budget.”

“I apologise for nothing. The garlic festival must go,” Arabella says stiffly. “But perhaps there was a better way to do it.”

“This is all his fault,” Beth growls. “Augustin. He’s trying to turn you against us—”

“Augustin showed me that I don’t need to bend over backwards to get you everything you want just so that you love me. And if that means that you don’t want to be my friend anymore, then…” I try to shrug, but my emotions get the better of me and I let out a loud sob instead. “… we both have to be okay with that.”

“But don’t you want to know your nephews?” Preeti shoots back. “You’re not going to have kids of your own, so you owe them—”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” I yell. “I don’t owe them anything but my love. I don’t owe them new toys or baths or bedtime stories or time they can’t get back with their mother because she’s taken on too much at work. You can’t use guilt to make me do what you want, because I believe it! For years, I’ve believed that I’m only valuable when I’m helping people, when I’m putting their needs before my own. I put my whole life on hold to come here for Papa, and that’s not enough. It’s not enough because I’m not married and I’ll never be a mother. It’s not enough because I’m not the mayor. It’s not enough because I’m not perfect Komal who has her life together anymore. It’s never enough!”

I’m breaking open, my ribs cracking and swinging loose, all my organs exposed. For the first time, I don’t shut myself down or make myself small. I let the words pour out of me because I finally understand that I’m allowed to have ugly feelings. I’m allowed to want and hurt and scream. I’m allowed to be inconvenient. I’m allowed to ask for love without earning it.

“I had no idea you felt like this.” Mamma’s voice cracks with hurt. “We thought you were happy here. You wanted to leave the RAF. You wanted to come home. You wanted Papa to find you a husband. And what is this about no grandchildren? No one asked you for these things.”

“But you did!” I cry. “In a hundred tiny ways, you ask and ask and ask. And I know I’m partly to blame because I never say no, and I have kept far too much to myself about what happened with Sam. Well, it ends here. I’m going to get up on that stage, and whether I win or lose, it will be because I did something for myself.”

Hurt faces stare back at me. I turn away. I don’t look. For the first time, their hurt isn’t my problem.

I know we’re not finished – I have a lot of work to do on myself to break my lifetime of people pleasing. But I’ve done the hard part. I’ve declared what I’m worth and what I’m willing to accept from others.