Darcy
With classes starting again, I had to cut down on my workload at the family business. I was mainly handling bookkeeping duties during the semester, and it was beyond boring. When I didn't have school, at least I was able to go out on site and get some practical experience. I hated sitting in an office all day, even if that office was more figuratively speaking, since I worked from home.
I was beginning to resent the company almost as much as I resented my father.
After the divorce, I had agreed to continue working for my father, only because it was a job I knew how to do, and dad paid me well. For the amount of money I earned, I would happily tolerate all the hatred I felt towards my father. What did it matter that I wanted to murder him every time we crossed paths at the office, right?
Dad had plans for me to take over the business when he retired, which was why he suggested I go to uni for a business degree while simultaneously gaining work experience working for him.
But I began to realise more and more that construction work wasn't really what I wanted to do. It was all too straightforward, too standardised for me. I was craving something more creative.
I'd been looking into Architecture. Now, that was something I was truly interested in. Sure, even an Architect had to do tons of paperwork, but at least it meant I could create something that was truly mine, instead of just following set instructions. I wasn't quite sure how to run that idea by my father, though. I doubted he would like it very much.
At times I found myself envious of Ian, for whom life seemed to just flow seamlessly from one stage to the next. He never doubted any decisions he made, and in the end it all worked out for him.
I, on the other hand, seemed to struggle from one hurdle to the next, and as I got older, these hurdles seemed to grow higher and higher.
Of course I had the house which was solely mine, thanks to my grandmother, and I paid for almost everything myself, except for the university fees. Those, my father paid for. I was pretty well off compared to others of my age, but owning a house didn't mean I had my life figured out.
I shook off the dark thoughts and tried to focus on the work in front of me. I sat at the dinner table, a mess of papers strewn about. My laptop was making strange, strangled noises from being worked too hard, and the numbers on the screen were starting to stop making sense and instead made me want to scream and tear all my hair out. That was when the doorbell rang. Relieved to get a break, I got up to see who it was.
It was Allie.
“Ian's not home”, I told her. “I think he has class until eight.”
She looked a little shy. “I know. Can I come in anyway and hang out here for a while? It's always so freaking loud in my dorm room.”
I found myself saying, “Sure”, before my brain had even caught up to what she was asking. It was only after I'd let her in that I realised it meant I was going to hang out with her. Alone. Suddenly, things got awkward. We hadn't been alone since that night I took her home after dinner. You know, that time I totally freaked her out by holding her hand when I should have been gripping the steering wheel. I hadn't meant to do it. It just happened. I had only wanted to make her stop messing with my sacred radio, but when my fingers touched hers, it was like my brain short-circuited and all I wanted was to never let her go again. It had been seriously messed up.
“Do you want something to drink? Tea, coffee, anything?” I asked.
“That's alright, you don't have to babysit me. I can take care of myself”, she said with a smile as she followed me into the living room.
“Hey, I was just trying to be polite”, I said, “but if you're that independent, fine, next time bring your own cup and teabag.”
She laughed.
“Oh, sorry, are you working on something?” Allie looked around at the mess on the dining table.
“Just some stuff for my father”, I told her.
“What exactly do you do for him?” She moved closer, taking a peek at the papers on the table.
I shrugged. “This and that. Mainly paperwork whenever I'm at uni, but I go out with the crew when I can fit it into my schedule, too.”
“So, you're going to be the next boss of Brown Construction then, huh?”
I shrugged again. “I guess so.”
Allie immediately picked up on my lack of enthusiasm. She looked over at me. “You don't want to be the next boss of the company, do you?”
I sat down in front of my laptop, staring at the endless list of numbers on the screen. “Honestly, I don't know. If I knew for sure, It'd be easy. I would just tell my father that I wasn't interested, pack my stuff and leave, but I do enjoy working for him. Certain aspects of it, at least.”
“Well, which aspects?” Allie sat down across from me, placing her hands on the table in front of her, looking like a therapist with her 'let me look into your soul and help you with all your problems'-expression. It looked kind of cute.
“Seriously, I don't want to bore you with the details”, I said, gathering up some of the paper to make room for her.
“No, I want to know. Didn't we say we were going to start over as friends? Well, friends listen to other friend's problems. Tell me what troubles you, Darce.” She even adopted this serious, no-nonsense voice when she spoke.
“Why don't you tell me what troubles you?” I shot back.
I'd caught her out on it. Her demeanour immediately changed, and she looked guarded.
“I'm grand”, she said, but didn't sound all too convincing.
“No, you're not”, I countered. I'd known the day we went out for Italian food that something was off. I just didn't know what yet.
She stared at me and I stared at her. One of us was going to cave, and it wasn't going to be me. We made it a solid sixty seconds.
“Fine.” She threw her hands up in an exasperated gesture. “I think I'm too dumb for university. Happy?”
No. I stared at her, stunned. “Wait, what? You don't actually mean that. You're one of the smartest people I know.”
“Nice try”, she snorted. “And now that we have talked about my problems, how about you tell me yours?” She seemed desperate to deflect from her troubles.
“No way”, I said. “We barely touched yours. Why do you think you're too dumb for uni?” I couldn't believe she actually thought that.
“What do you want to do with your life, if you don't want to take over your father's business?” She wasn't going to talk about herself, so I decided to let her have her way for now.
“Fine”, I relented, mimicking her gesture from earlier. “I would like to go into architecture. Happy?”
She smiled. “Really? I can see that. You have that architectural air about you.”
“Don't mock me”, I said. She'd barely been here five minutes, and I'd already told her far too much. I couldn't help it, though. She had that effect on me.
“I'm not. Really”, Allie reached out to take my hand, and I let her. The nerve endings in my hand literally went into overdrive.
“I truly do think that you would make a great architect. Why didn't you go into that field in the first place? It's not so far off from what your father is doing.”
“My father”, I said, “wanted me to get a business degree so that I can take over the company one day.”
“But that's not what you want”, Al concluded.
I pulled my hand away. “It doesn't really matter what I want. He is still paying for it, so he gets to decide what I study.”
“Bollocks. The only person who should have a say in what you study is yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on, who is really free in their decisions about their future? Only very few people. Most of us have some kind of obligation. Be it a family business, parent's expectations or the need to simply show the world how amazing we are by having a fancy job.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“So”, I continued, “only people who truly don't give a toss about what others think of them follow their passion.”
“Maybe you're right”, Al said. “So just ignore other people's opinions and expectations and do whatever makes you happy.”
If only it were that easy.
“Well, why don't you go speak to my father, then?”
Allie cringed. “I haven't seen your father in years, but from what I remember, he scares me.”
“Exactly”, I said.
“That doesn't mean you should live your life depending on him and his rules, though”, she went on.
“Wait, so you're scared of my father, but are telling me not to be? That's a bit of a contradiction, don't you think?”
Al lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Alright, alright. I won't say any more. Just...I really think you should be allowed to do the job you want to do. It's the twenty-first century, after all.”
“Yeah, I hear equality is really big right now.” I sarcastically shot back.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Allie rolled her eyes at me. “I mean it.”
“Okay, and I meant it when I said you're one of the smartest people I know”, I said, turning things around again.
Allie lowered her eyes to the table and mumbled, “Maybe I'm not stupid, but maybe I don't feel like the subject I chose is the right one for me, either.”
It surprised me to hear that. “Why would you say that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don't know. Just...sitting in labs all day, listening to professors talking about statistics and shit I don't understand...all of it, really. All of it is making me miserable to the point where I don't even want to get up and go to class in the morning.”
She sounded so bitter saying this. I wanted to take that bitterness away from her. She was supposed to be enjoying her newfound freedom, look out onto her future with hope, not sadness.
“But the lab work is only part of the job, right? There are so many other things you can be doing, like going out on these boats and diving and all that.” Not that I knew a whole lot about marine biology. “You've only been studying it for a few month. Give it some time.”
“You sound like Ian”, Allie said, clearly not impressed. “If I wanted his advice, I'd go talk to him. You're supposed to be the honest one. The one who isn't afraid to tell the truth even when things go down the drain. And clearly, you're thinking of going into a different programme yourself, so why can't I?”
She was right, of course, but I was afraid she was simply giving up on her dream because the first few hurdles seemed too much to conquer. It had taken me a year to come to the conclusion that I wanted to study something else. She'd barely gone through a month of lectures.
“Yeah, I want to change programmes, but I wasn't crazy about the business degree from day one. I only did it because my father pushed me to. You, on the other hand, have been dreaming about going to study fish in the ocean for years. And now you want to throw it all away? Mind you, if that's what you want, I'll support your decision one hundred percent. I just don't want you to make a mistake and regret it later.”
“Well, what do you think, though. Think I'd be better at something else?”
“I can't tell you. That's something you have to figure out for yourself.”
Allie sighed. “Well, thanks for being my honest friend”, she said sarcastically.
“Well, what do you want to hear from me? That everything in your life will magically make sense and you'll have it easy as long as you follow the path? Because while that may be true for some people, most of us still don't know what the purpose of our lives is when we are fifty and looking forward to retirement. That honest enough for you?”
To my surprise, Allie started to laugh. It was only a few giggles at first, and she tried to hold it in, but it soon became a full-on couldn't-stop-even-if-I-tried laugh.
“What's so funny?” I asked. I didn't get it.
“Nothing”, Al finally got out, struggling to catch her breath, “but if I don't laugh, I might actually start to cry.”
So there it was: women were truly crazy. I'd always known it, but proof was hard to come by. Her laughter was kind of infectious, though, so it didn't take long for me to catch on, and soon we were both laughing so hard, I'd forgotten what it was exactly that I didn't find funny at all.
“Right, glad we had this talk”, Allie finally managed to say in between bouts of laughter. “And glad to see that we're both still totally incapable when it comes to basic life skills.”
“Yup, just like old times, huh?” And then we just laughed some more. It was the most fun I'd had in a long while.
Allie stayed until Ian came home from class. As she gave him a kiss, I felt an unwelcome sting of jealousy inside me, which I tried to ignore as best as I could.
The two of them eventually left to go see a movie at the cinema, leaving me behind to wonder whether I could do it. Could I be brave enough to go against my fathers vision of my future?
Chapter 4