"What would you do if you had a second chance to make things right?" Julie Carson has been running from her past for as long as she can remember. From leaving her little town (more importantly her controlling mother) and repressing the heartbreak of...
Dedicated to a special reader: CupcakeeBhadd!I wish I could dedicate my chapters to all my loyal readers but for now I'll take it one at a time like I hope you all do! Don't think I don't notice you because I really, really do.
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY FAMILY WAS ON THE COMPLICATED SIDE.
For the first few months after I moved to New York it felt like we were in a stand-off.
I had gone almost a full year without talking to anyone from my family saved for the occasional odd-text from my sister. I didn't blame Kathy for not reaching out to me around that time, my mother was more than just a little upset with my choice to move away for school.
It wasn't easy for me to move to a new state knowing no one or nothing about New York City. There was no support from my family. I was basically on my own, constantly half-tempted to call it quits to head back home, but I was also half too prideful to admit I had possibly made a mistake.
There were countless nights I spent quietly crying in the bathroom stall, too sad to sleep but unable to muffle my tears from my sleeping roommates. Legally, I was an adult, but for the past 18 years, I had been under my mother's roof. Suddenly, I had been thrusted into a new life completely independent for the first time and incredibly homesick.
On the particularly hard nights, I would hover my finger over the "Call Mom" button. I knew what she would say. I could already hear her voice, boastful and full-of-it because she was right: I couldn't make it on my own. I also knew afterward she would console me, instruct me on my next steps on booking the next flight home, and I would be back in my bed in my town with my family again. I wasn't sure if that was exactly what I wanted either, but the thought of it beat the loneliness sometimes.
"Julie, haven't you had enough?" Kathy whispered over our first phone call in what seemed like a century. "Mama is worried about you. She won't say it, but she hasn't been eating and she barely sleeps since you've left. Just come home already."
I was sitting on the steps of the New York Public Library thinking about how my mother would have a heart attack if she saw me sitting on those dirty steps, sipping my coffee from a vendor cart that sold stale pastries and feeding the occasional sooty pigeon. The sky was a cloudy kind of gray with hints of sunlight peeking through. The streets, littered with pedestrians rushing by and parents tugging along rambunctious toddlers, were unlike the quaint and quiet ones I spent strolling around in Northwick.
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"I can't come back," I told her.
"Is this about your pride? Mama's not going to break and call you first if that's what you're thinking." Kathy stated as if that wasn't common sense to anyone who knew our bull-headed mother. She was never one to first make amends. "Julie, don't be like this. You should be home."
I bit into my cream cheese bagel. "This is my new home."
I could hear Kathy's frustration through the phone. "You've lived there, what? Eight months? What's that to eighteen years?"
