Her Swedish Billionaire's Baby(3)
Samara had grabbed her stuff and gone without a second thought. She heard Alison’s quick sob, saw the disbelief on her face. Alison had seen their family broken once before, and it was like she was living it all over again. Samara knew that was probably the worst part of it for Alison, that Samara didn’t hesitate for even a second before walking out the door, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Not even for Alison.
Samara took out her phone and stroked the contact list with her thumb. Alison. Samara hadn’t missed Dad once since she left, but Alison .... Alison had been a constant presence since she could remember: sometimes frustrating, sometimes sweet, frequently annoying, but always there. Alison had been like another limb. Samara almost didn’t know how to function without her; she felt naked, vulnerable, like ... like no one had her back. Well, she would just have to learn how to live without her. She wanted Alison to come with her, but Alison would never get into UCLA. She hated school. She couldn’t challenge Dad, not like that. Alison loved the life of a hustler. Alison loved Dad and Samara pretty much equally, Samara figured, so the tie-breaker was what she wanted to be doing, and she wanted to hustle.
Samara tried hard not to feel betrayed by Alison staying behind with Dad. Samara was the one who’d made the big, life-altering choice. Who was she to expect her sister to make it with her--without any warning, even? Samara had thought not having any warning would be the best, that Alison would come with her if only out of desperation, to try to talk her into going back to Dad, and once she was away from it all, she would see how great it could be .... If she had told Alison her plans earlier, she was afraid Alison might succeed in talking her into staying, maybe out of guilt. She’d tried to harden her heart--she’d had to, to be able to do it--but the consequence was that now it felt soft as bread. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she thought how nice it was, to be able to sit and feel what she felt, without Alison there calling her a sissy for it and Dad hissing that she’d better toughen up if she hoped to survive that night’s hustle. She wasn’t tough, not like that. Not like them. She couldn’t be.
Maybe it was better this way. What a black sheep Samara was--in a family of black sheep--had been the elephant in the room for as long as she could remember. Alison tried to pretend it wasn’t like that, Dad alternately yelled at her for it and loved her all the more for it, but there was no getting around it. Samara loved them, loved them like she loved to breathe, but they didn’t get her at all.
Everything she valued and loved and wanted to talk about was stuff they didn’t even recognize as real: science, philosophy, art--everything colleges were all about. Maybe here, at last, she could strike up a conversation with someone about an amazing book she’d read or an incredible theory she’d heard and they would respond with something other than a blank look and a question about the state of something in the arsenal in the trunk. She tried not to think it, but she couldn’t help wondering if Alison and Dad would be happier without her there casting a gloomy cloud over their happy hustling with her perpetual dissatisfaction and disapproval of their lifestyle, their ignorance and their values and everything else.
If she didn’t know better, Samara would think she was someone else’s child. Dad and Alison were like peas in a pod ... or, at least, Alison had been able to change herself into a pea that would fit in Dad’s pod, which was something Samara had never been able to do, try as she might. Maybe, deep down, they were glad she was gone, the way on the surface she was glad she was gone and deep down she wished she was still back home pranking Alison and rolling her eyes at Dad and calculating what she could get away with saying to him without setting off a firestorm in the Cadillac.
Samara hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on Alison deciding to come with her until she walked out the door and Alison didn’t follow right after her. She almost couldn’t believe it, standing around in the dark on the street for a little while, waiting to see if she would change her mind, but she heard Dad ranting loudly about Samara and heard Alison trying to talk him down. From what was said, Samara could tell Alison had made her choice, so Samara, after taking one last look at her through the curtains, wandered out to the road and held out her thumb.
That had been the worst part: walking away from Alison. Watching Alison make that choice. Knowing Alison thought that was the choice Samara was trying to make: to leave Alison, when really, it was everything else she meant to leave, and take Alison with her away from that life they’d both been forced into when they were just children, that life no one should ever have to live.