Page 132 of Like You Want It

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CARLY

In the wake of everything that happens with Fin, I’m surprised at my intensive upswing in life. At the way I’m able to prioritize not only what matters, but what I want as well.

Work. My friends. My family. And my little Etsy shop that I’m launching in a few weeks.

Dina and I finally go to that axe throwing bar and try to imitate that sexy viral video of Jason Momoa chugging a beer and throwing the axe.

We look like idiots but it’s still super fun.

Susie helps me by taking photos of my cards for Etsy. We also bake cookies at Dina’s and the three of us drink too much wine and go skinny-dipping in her hot tub.

Earlier this week, I did something different and took GP on a drive. When he was more independent, he talked a lot about the road trips he took with my grandmother, my mom in the backseat.

So I tried to recreate something for him and took him on a drive through Pasadena and across the Colorado Street Bridge.

“Remember when we used to go on drives with your mother, Jeanie?” he’d asked me, a big smile on his face. “All the trips we took to Balboa Island?”

GP took me there once as a kid, and mom used to talk to me about the trips they took when she was little. So I gave into his belief that I was my mother, talked with him about my mother’s memories, and his own.

He’d smiled the entire time, laughed as he shared silly stories about Balboa Bars melting in the summer heat and getting salt-water taffy stuck on everything they owned.

Later, when we’d returned to the Pasadena Village, and I held his hand as we made our way back inside, he turned and looked at me, a clarity in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“You’ve always been my favorite,” he’d whispered, kissing my cheek and then taking a seat in a wheelchair that Patty brought over to us. “Promise me you won’t tell your brother.”

And then he’d given me a wave as Patty wheeled him away to his room, a big smile on his face.

Knowing he remembered me that day, I’d cried the entire way home.

But focusing on my relationships with others isn’t the only thing I do to keep myself occupied. I also do some important adulting that has been much needed.

I open a savings account. Talk to my landlord and have Theo removed from the lease. And I go get my twenty-fourth birthday tattoo.

I have the artist put my sweet Oswald the Optimist on my wrist. A skunk on my wrist might not sound like a great idea, but I rationalize it in the fact that Ossy represents something to me. The fact that I can choose my happy every day. That I can stay positive. Believe in myself. Know what I want.

And then, the day comes around. The one I dread every year.

Mother’s Day.

I hate this day not because my mother is gone, but because my father makes the day nearly impossible to get through.

So, in the spirit of putting my own happiness first, I show up at my dad’s that Sunday, an hour before we’re supposed to have dinner, ready to go to battle.

Ready to finally put my foot down and tell him how I feel. About the years he has spent making me feel small. Unimportant. Useless.

I figure if we have it out before Caleb, Christine and Ari come over, I can leave without anyone else needing to be involved in the conversation.

But when I get there, no one answers the door.

I take out the key I haven’t used in years, put it in the lock and turn it, then step inside.

Something I’ve always loved about my childhood home is that you can see the back from the front. It made the place feel so bright, even though the finishing touches were fairly dark, because sunlight seeped through each end.

And from the front door, I can see my dad in the back, alone, sitting on the porch swing.

I close the door softly and walk down the long hallway, not wanting to scare or startle him.