Page 2 of When the Walls Come Down
“Yep, and today is officially that day. Congrats.” I laughed as we walked through my apartment to my bedroom.
Short of my water bottle and a jumbo bag of road trip Blow Pops on the counter, the place was a ghost town. The movers had come a week ago, which had left me sleeping with a pillow and a blanket on the floor because I’d refused to spend seven days at Heath’s listening to his nagging. Motels weren’t usually my idea of the lap of luxury, but damn the bed at my first stop in Mississippi was calling my name.
Melanie, my one and only quasi-supportive sibling, had helped me map out my path to California. Nothing but four days, five audiobooks, and twenty-five hundred miles stood between me and a whole new life.
New job—a role that was way over my head.
New apartment—I’d yet to find.
New friends—I had no idea how to make, considering I’d lived in the same state for my entire life.
Oh God, what had I gotten myself into?
“You look like you’re about to puke,” Heath said, sporting a proud grin. “Is that… No, it can’t be. Wait, I think it is.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned toward me. “Ah, yes. The look of regret. Since you haven’t pulled out of the driveway yet, I can’t technically say I told you so, but also, I fucking told you so.”
I shot him a glare. “Keep talking and I’m going to reconsider that job in Singapore.”
“Liar,” he mumbled, reluctantly grabbing the wooden handle of my mother’s old trunk.
While I might not have remembered my mom, it hadn’t stopped me from collecting anything I could find that she had ever touched. Pictures, a journal, a few scarfs, and pieces of mismatched costume jewelry were about it, but that deep-red trunk my father had made her on their first wedding anniversary was my most prized possession of all. It was a simple design, and my father’s craftsmanship was nothing to brag about, but she’d carved all of her children’s names into the lid on the inside. From the time I was a child, I’d traced my fingers over those jagged letters more times than I could count.
I’d often imagine what she’d been thinking as she sat on the floor, knife in hand, carving those letters. Was she smiling with love and adoration? She’d only been nineteen when she had Heath. Was she happy? Was that the life she’d wanted? She was younger than I was when Laurie, her third child, was born. I couldn’t keep a fish alive, much less three tiny humans. And what about when I’d come along as number five? Was she exhausted? At only thirty-one, she’d done a lot of living. But how much of it had been about her and not about her kids?
She died four years later, within six months of finding out about the cancer. She’d never traveled or had a career outside of changing dirty diapers. She did laundry, she cleaned, she made dinner while her husband sat on the couch with a beer in his hand.
How could she have possibly been happy?
That was why I had to leave. I needed to get out, see the world, live the life she’d never had the chance to. Nothing against my sisters, who had all settled down in their twenties, but I wanted more out of the—God willing—eighty-ish years I had on this Earth.
So yeah, it was terrifying moving to a new city, twenty-five hundred miles away from the only home I’d ever known, but to me, regrets were far heavier than fear.
“Lift on three?” I asked, grabbing the other side of the trunk.
Heath stared at me for a beat, his innate ability to read my mind in full force. “You know you can always come home, Mags.”
Offering him a tight smile, I nodded. I did know that. The night before, he’d gone so far as to give me a key to his house complete with a Pokémon keychain. That was so uniquely Heath that it had nearly caused me to burst into tears.
I wouldn’t be using it though. I’d come for visits. I’d come for holidays. But home was no longer a place as much as it was a state of mind.
First stop: San Francisco.
After that, only the wind knew.
“Thanks, Heathrow.”
His lips twitched at the silly nickname I’d used for him since I was a kid. “Anytime, Magalicious. Anytime.”“You’re fucking firing me?” I stood and yelled at my brother-in-law, Casey Moore. I’d given Bay Brewing Company over four years of my life. Practically rebuilt their online presence and social media. From finding the best coders to hand-picking a team of graphic designers, I’d molded the Bay brand and advertising team as if it had been my own.
“Firing is a harsh way to put it.” Casey reclined in his office chair, not taking this nearly as seriously as I was.
