Mask Me (An Empyrean Novel)- The Atlas Collection- Book 1

Part 2

I roll my shoulders and stretch, trying to pull myself into the day. Stepping into the shower, my mind wonders through the thoughts that haunted me on the edge of sleep.

Life use to be simple. Get up, go to school, eat, party, repeat. The not so simple part was the constant push and struggle to succeed. My dad meant well but now he's gone. How will I know when it's enough? I am still numb, part of it still hasn't registered. Six months ago my cell phone rang at about 7:30 in the morning.

James announced my dad was on the phone. I thought it was odd he was calling me so early, but when I took the call, it wasn't him and I would never hear his voice again. His best friend's voice rang through the speakers in my penthouse, a place my dad had never seen because my success was not "traditional", it didn't come from a "real job" so I hid my entire world from him. Trying to make him proud through more 'traditional' types of success but was never to be.

I felt numb as I listened to Rob sob on the other end of the line, telling me my father passed away from an apparent heart attack. They'd been on their way to the hospital to visit a friend who'd had surgery, when he slumped over in the passenger seat, then he left. No sound, no words, life left him. The doctors confirmed at the hospital that the ending would have been the same even if he'd been standing in the Cardiac Care Unit. He was given a clean bill of health and then he was gone.

They always leave. First my mom during childbirth, and now dad's gone too. For weeks I'd been too numb to move, but Samantha helped me slowly focus on the things that were important. Her soft persistence, and sometimes not so soft demands, pushed me to get off my sorry ass and live again. Her outwardly pragmatic New Jersey attitude hiding her concern for my emotional and mental well-being. I knew she cared, and she was getting restless not being able to travel because she was carrying my load of the work too. It was my job to keep things running, while she had always been the social face, the person who would 'live it up' for publicity sake, though more times than not she did it because the guitar player of the bad was hot.

While I looked like I was heeding her words, inside I was only surviving but there were jobs that needed to get done and I was the one who needed to make it happen. As the managing partner for McKenzie Kingston, my emotional hiatus wasn't helping business, not to mention the fact the Empyrean club, an alternate adult lifestyle club, was rudderless without me at the helm.

All I ever wanted was to be a success for that man, to make him proud and I could never show him the things I'd achieved because they were so unconventional, frowned upon but right now they needed me. Each day I get further from the call, I feel more numb to it.

Writing has become harder but deadlines don't wait for life situations, clients at the PR firm don't care that your world is falling apart, only that you make sure their lives do not; and the club... ah the club, a place to escape from life that everyone seeks. At least it's an escape for the clientele.

Throwing myself into the many aspects of my complex life has helped me get through it all. On the outside I appear in control, together, aloof, standoffish and confident. There are other words that could describe me - intense, arrogant, overwhelming and intimidating, but much of it is an attempt to balance my private, introverted nature with the expectations of the rest of the world.

Over time I've attempted to find balance; though some people in my life would argue I've yet to find it. I think about my recent disagreements with Samantha and her constant comments on my general demeanor.

I wish I could be more like her, somehow tough and tender in the same instance. So open to new experiences rather than cowering behind the internally built walls; to be able to let go to an experience. Lately, however, it seems, more times than not, the intensity of my life is causing me to internally tamp down all the feelings that seem out of place for a woman who has it all together, but we all have our secrets and ways of dealing with pressure.