Deal With It ✓

Fifteen: The Gala Pt. 2

Song: Memory (From The Motion Picture Soundtrack "Cats") // Jennifer Hudson

Thanks to Powerbluess_ for their comments.

Enjoy (;

Also, I've attached a pic of Dylan's suit if anyone was wondering what he wore (T. Hiddleston man, fuck me).

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I resented my mother.

I didn't hate her. I don't think I could hate her, she was still the woman who raised me. She was still the woman who showered me with love as I grew up. She was still the woman who'd console me after I had a nightmare.

But she was also the woman who initiated every unnecessary fight with dad. She was the person who'd emotionally abuse him by refusing to believe in him and his vision. She was the one who fled because my dad wasn't using his money the way that she wanted him to.

Elise, unlike dad, was born into a family that was well-off in terms of money. When she broke the news of the engagement to her parents, they didn't support their relationship, let alone the thought of marriage. She didn't care though and married him nonetheless. She cut off all ties with her family and friends saying that it didn't matter, that we were the only ones that mattered.

And we did. Matter, that is. We mattered up until when she reunited with her friends once again and that was the same time that dad started his business– when he started investing the money he worked hard for to make his dreams come true.

And although she never spoke about it, I could tell that hanging out with her old friends with rich spouses made her jealous and nostalgic. She must've missed her old lifestyle and dad couldn't provide her with the luxurious and lavish life that she was raised in. So we mattered up until the point where she realized that she cared more about the money and what she wanted than dad and I and his slowly growing empire.

So the fights started, and they always started with her. She'd complain about how dad rarely bought her anything anymore and she'd repeatedly compare him to her friends' husbands. Dad would try and convince her that once his business took off, he'd buy her all the diamonds in the world, but she didn't believe it ever would take off.

When dad surprised her with the romantic getaway, she was over the moon until she realized that she wasn't going to Bali, or the Maldives or Paris. She went along with him anyway, and they came back the same– nothing had changed in their relationship, she was still unsupportive and dad was still trying to get her to believe in him.

One night, I heard her complaining to her friend about dad again, but this time, she told her that she was leaving him in a week. She never got around to that, though, because she found out she was pregnant with another child. Dad was ecstatic with the news but she wasn't, and I knew it was because it foiled her plans to leave him.

Nine months later, Amber was born and the day after Elise was released from the hospital, she packed up and left. Dad wasn't home at the time so he didn't know, and she'd thrust Amber into my arms and told me to 'keep her quiet' while she walked through the front door of our house.

And at that moment, I resented her. How could she leave us with a baby? How could she leave dad because he wasn't rich like her friends were? How could she leave me– her first-born? I'd begun questioning her love for dad and me because no one in their right mind would leave their loved ones. No one was cruel enough to not believe and support the alleged love of their life. And as Amber grew up without a maternal figure because dad never remarried, I resented her even more.