Forced induction, p.5
It Would Have Been You, page 5
Cue Monika, the manager behind one of the many job postings that Scott pursued on my behalf. The two of them had a three-hour-long phone conversation about me, which resulted in securing this job and someone to look out for me in California, despite Monika never having met me in person before.
While Scott and Gabe got me back on my feet, physically and financially, Monika is the one who stitched me back together. Her high expectations, despite the state I was in when we first met, are what pushed me those final steps to start living a normal life on my own again.
No matter how many times I messed up at work, be it arriving late, disheveled, or irritable, her patience was endless. Her ability to love, a superpower. Not quite like the innate love of a parent, or the tried and true, give and take love of a best friend, because she was doing all the giving, and I was doing all the taking. No, the way that she loved me was actually somewhere between family and friend, a selfless combination of the two. It was more like an aunt. Aunt Monika.
With that perfect title follows the words that I have kept at arm’s length this entire past year: Aunt Drew.
Monika’s breath hitches. I must have thought out loud again. Now that I’ve started, I find it nearly impossible to stop. I repeat both phrases like a broken record.
“Aunt Monika. Aunt Drew.”
Each time that I say them, they grow like they are a tangible thing, and strengthen with each repetition, until they force a crack in the door that I was certain I slammed shut earlier with a sliver of shimmering light. The idea that I could be an aunt to my nephew, like Monika is to me, is right there.
A tiny beacon of hope, so close that I can taste its sweetness on my tongue.
I want to be in the baby’s life more than anything else, but the sobering fact remains that my curse is unbreakable. I have already tried everything I could possibly think of to free myself of it, with no success.
Monika starts to speak again as I sway unsteadily on my feet. I hear the words, but they may as well be in another language with how deeply I’ve fallen into my own sorrow. She repeats herself, but this time she holds me by my shoulders and brings her face within inches from mine.
“There are three hundred sixty-four other days in the year, Drew.”
I blink, bewildered, because even though I understand each word individually, the combination of them does not compute.
“You can still be in the baby’s life, because March thirteenth is just one day. There are three hundred sixty-four other days in the year.”
Chapter eight
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
My gut reaction is to laugh at the simplicity of her statement, but there is nothing funny about what she is suggesting. “You know better than anyone that I am unlucky all year long, Monika.”
She shakes her head. “See, that’s where I disagree with you. Today, yes. I can see how this particular day might be worth avoiding, but every other day of the year is free game.” I open my mouth to argue, but she quickly amends her statement to add, “Oh, and we can factor in Friday the thirteenths too. Just to put you at ease. I doubt there are more than a handful of those in a year.” She pulls her phone out of her back pocket.
“That’s a dangerous oversimplification,” I say. She ignores me to type something into the search bar. “There’s no telling when my curse will strike. It could be any—”
“Ah, see?” she says and holds her phone up to my face. “Google says that there are only an average of one point seven Friday the thirteenths in a year. Let’s be cautious and round up. We’re talking two Fridays a year, and your birthday. That’s it. The rest of the days are free for you to be an aunt to your future nephew.”
My shoulders rise and fall as I take an exasperated breath, but before I can start in on explaining for what may be the hundredth time that my bad luck peaks on my birthday, but still hangs around all year long, she cuts me off again.
“Also, before you stormed out of dinner, I wanted to tell you that I found a new way for you to break your curse that I think will actually work, and it’s something that you haven’t tried yet.”
I was completely checked out of this conversation and already preparing to say goodnight so that I could finally walk out the door, but her assertion holds me firmly in place while she searches for something else on her phone.
“Yes, here it is.” She holds out her phone for me to take.
I accept it, heartbeat spiking, but my hope is instantly dashed when I read the title of the article: Identity-Based Behavior: Change Your Life in One Simple Step!
“Hear me out,” she says, refusing to take her phone when I hand it back in her direction. “I had a feeling that you might react this way when Scott and Gabe finally matched with a baby, so I’ve been researching ways that you could start to see what we see, which is that you are not a danger to yourself or anyone else. In that research, I came across the concept of identity-based behavior change and did a deep dive into it.”
My quick glance over the article was more than enough to know that this silly idea will be no match for my affliction, and her continued insistence that I am not dangerous to be around is as exasperating as ever.
She presses forward, again, before I get a chance to shut the entire thing down. “The concept is simple. A person decides who they want to be, so in your case an uncursed Drew, and then starts living as if they are that person right away. No waiting for Monday, no watching for the stars to align before you start. Just showing up, every day, by running each thought and decision through the lens of who you want to be, instead of who you currently are. It works like a snowball effect, where every tiny decision adds up to big results until you become exactly who you want to be. It’s brilliant, really. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before.”
I shake my head in fervent disagreement but restrain myself from saying just how much I hate the idea, because she deserves my respect after everything she has done for me. “Maybe that could work for someone with smaller problems,” I start. “But my curse is not something that I wake up and have the option to choose or not choose every morning. It’s an extension of me that I have no control over.”
“That’s another thing that you and I disagree on,” Monika argues. “I think that you are so focused on looking for danger that your curse is actually nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are so busy anticipating bad things that you completely miss out on the good things that happen to you every single day, and what you focus on is—”
“What you attract,” I say, finishing her favorite saying with a grumble. I cross my arms over my chest.
“So, tell me if I am understanding you correctly. You want me to create an alter-ego, Uncursed Drew, as you called her, and then start living as her? And Uncursed Drew is going to be so wildly different from Cursed Drew that the shackles of my curse will magically fall off just in time for my nephew to be born?”
She narrows her eyes at my assessment. “That’s a very basic way to put it, but yes. If you start doing things that an uncursed person would do, like having friends, going out in public, and not living so small in general, paired with the mental change of looking for good around you instead of bad, I think it just might prove to you that you were never bad luck to begin with. Then, you can finally start to believe what we have been trying to tell you all along.”
Her theory, while incredibly similar to everything I’ve already heard a thousand times over from her, Scott, and Gabe in the past, is just different enough that I take a second to consider it.
Could it really be that simple? That breaking my curse never required a special herb tea, a smudge stick, or living in a way to minimize risk that feels painfully similar to being an inmate at a maximum-security prison? That instead, it could simply be broken by a mental reframing of it?
I take the last week as a random sample, to play it back through the lens of me being uncursed instead of cursed, but the theory doesn’t hold up under scrutiny with the daily mishaps that have transpired alone, and it completely falls apart when I take into account the family that almost lost their daughter because of my choice to bang on the glass.
“It’s too dangerous,” I say, and loop my purse back over my head so that I can make my exit. “There is no safe way to test the theory, even if I did believe that it could work.”
“Well, you stormed out before we could explain that we figured that part out too,” she argues, and angles her body between me and the exit so that I can’t leave before she finishes. “We understand that this won’t work overnight, so we found the perfect place for you to try it out: the retreat. It’s inside a house, and the itinerary is literally just reading books and doing small trips around Charlotte, which is similar to how you spend your time here anyway. This retreat allows you to put the theory to the test in a semi-controlled environment. We weren’t trying to force another trip down your throat, we were trying to give you an opportunity to practice living as Uncursed Drew. But you started freaking out before we had a chance to explain.”
“Maybe you should have started with that, then, because it felt a lot like every other birthday back in there to me,” I point out. “I love you, Monika, but I’m going to head home, and you should too. We both have to open tomorrow, so we need to get some sleep.”
She presses her lips together in a hard line as I brush past her to head towards the door. I am seconds from freedom when Monika calls out to me from back where I left her. “You’re a liar, Drew Bailey.”
My hand locks on the door handle as I wince at her words, giving her a chance to reiterate. “You’re a liar. You say that you love them, but you won’t even try one last time to stay in their lives.”
“I do love them which is why I have to do this,” I counter over my shoulder. “I’m the only one who is strong enough to—”
“So you’re saying that Scott’s endless compassion, devotion, and unbelievable level of selflessness when it comes to you is a show of weakness? His willingness to keep fighting for you, even though he had to bury your father all by himself and come to your rescue while pushing aside his own grief, means nothing?”
“Don’t forget our mom. I took her away from him too,” I spit back. “It’s my fault that our parents are dead, Monika, so no matter how Scott, Gabe, you, or anyone else feels, I won’t risk being responsible for taking his own child away from him too.”
I am about to take my final step out the door when she plays her last card.
“If you really cared about them, you wouldn’t give up this easily, so which is it? Do you love them enough that you will do whatever it takes to stay in their lives, or are you a liar?”
“I’ve already tried everything—”
“Not everything,” she argues. “So, I ask you again, Drew. Do you love them, or not?”
I shake my head, as every part of me sags with the ramifications of my answer, but I say it anyway. “I love them. More than anything on earth.”
She lifts her chin victoriously. “Then prove it.”
Chapter nine
DANGEROUS
“Do me a favor, Drew, and close your eyes.”
I turn away from watching a family run from one side of the busy crosswalk to another to shoot Monika a death glare, but it only manages to make her smile even wider. “Just do it. This will only take a second.”
I sigh. We have been sitting in the parking lot at LAX outside of my terminal for the last thirty minutes. At least she had the foresight to park in the temporary lot instead of at the curb, since she has tried every trick possible to get me to exit her car with no success. When my eyes are closed, she continues.
“I want you to imagine all the bad things that might happen on this trip. Say them out loud as they cross your mind.”
I whip my eyes back open. “Are you crazy? This sounds like a great way to make sure I never get on that plane.”
“Hear me out,” she says. “Cursed Drew would ruminate on all the bad things that could happen, but Epic Drew would name all of her fears and declare that they are no match for her.”
I roll my eyes at the alter ego that she, Scott, and Gabe chose for me to go by for this trip. They spent the entire week coming up with it, and while I am not a fan, it was the best one out of the others they came up with, so I have reluctantly accepted it. Not without bringing them into the mix by referring to them as silly, made-up alter-egos every chance I get, in return, though.
“Well, hopefully you’ve been visualizing Bodybuilder Monika,” I say, “because if I start naming everything that can go wrong, you are going to have to physically remove me from this car and drag me inside.”
“Just do it!” she says, with another glance at the clock display on her dashboard.
“Fine,” I say, and slump down farther into the seat.
When I agreed to go on this trip last week, I secretly hoped that something bad would happen to prove my point that the plan was too dangerous, but when the week went by without a single incident, it just bolstered Monika’s claim that my curse could be broken, or never even existed to begin with.
With Scott and Gabe on board, there was no going back. They even insisted on coming out to drive me to the airport themselves, but I refused to let them miss even more work on account of me, or risk being in California when their child’s birth mother went into labor back in New York.
She is already a few days past her due date, which I’ve learned is normal for a woman’s first pregnancy, and just makes the timing of all this even more perfect in their eyes. If I can prove to myself this weekend that I am safe enough to be around the baby, then I can come up to meet him right after the retreat, and I will already be close because North Carolina is just a few states under New York.
I consider telling Monika that I would rather go inside than do this stupid exercise, but I humor her so she can’t argue that I didn’t play by the rules if I come out the other side of the weekend feeling the same as I have for the past year.
“Okay,” I say, and start with the most obvious one. “Either you, Scott, or Gabe gets mortally injured while I am on the plane, and you call me for help, but I don’t answer for whatever reason. By the time I land and realize what happened, it’s too late, and you’re already gone before I get to say goodbye.”
When I am met with silence, I crack open one eye and see that she is still as a statue. “You asked!”
“Planes have Wi-Fi so we can text you the entire time,” she says, visibly shaken. Before asking me what the next bad scenario I was imagining was, she adds, “And from what I have seen of your bad luck it doesn’t repeat. The likelihood of that same thing happening again is slim to none.”
She’s got me there. My bad luck isn’t cyclical. Instead, it likes to come up with new and novel things to darken my day. I don’t want to rehash what happened eight years ago any more than she does, so I move on to the next scenario.
“During truth or dare, someone is dared to run around the pool naked and slips, cracking their head on the side of the hot tub.”
“Truth or dare wasn’t on the itinerary, so I don’t think you need to worry about that,” she laughs. “Adults don’t play truth or dare, anyway. Do they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say, because Monika is the only friend I’ve had for most of my adult life. “With my luck, they might.”
“Well, if they do play, which I doubt they will, and if a guest does slip, which would be unfortunate, that would be her fault, or the person who dared them’s fault. Not yours.”
“But that’s the point. Me being there is what would—”
“Why would you being there cause them to play truth or dare? Are you planning on starting a game yourself?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Then why would it be your fault? If you don’t go, they might play truth or dare on their own accord, and the person will smack their head in your absence. If you go, then you can tell them how dangerous it can be and stop them from playing altogether. See? It might actually be good luck for you to go.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Maybe not for Cursed Drew. But for Epic Drew—”
“How about this one?” I say, interrupting her musing. “While we sit around the table and talk about the book, someone accidentally sets theirs on top of a candle, and it catches on fire.”
“Again, this is a retreat for adults. I am sure everyone there knows basic candle safety. And I think putting a book on a candle would extinguish it, anyway, because it would take away the fire’s oxygen supply.”
I open my mouth to propose my next scenario, but Monika is done with the game. “Enough worst case. Now I want you to envision the best thing that could happen to Epic Drew this weekend.”
It takes some effort to push aside the next three worst-case scenarios I had queued up, but Epic Drew, true to her name, steps forward in my mind’s eye when summoned. Vague images of her drinking wine, relaxing in the hot tub, and not setting the place on fire flash by in a blur, followed by the grand finale that I have been clinging to: getting a call that Scott and Gabe’s baby boy was born, and is healthy and beautiful, and since I will be in Charlotte instead of home in L.A., I hop on the quick two-hour flight to LaGuardia, and get to be one of the first people to hold my perfect nephew. My breath catches in my throat at the vision of it.
“Drew, you were supposed to be thinking of the best-case scenario,” Monika chides, misreading my reaction.
I open my eyes, gather my things, and push open the car door. “I was. Now come give me a hug before I change my mind.”
Chapter ten
EXPOSURE THERAPY
“Welcome aboard. My name is Bianca, and I will be taking care of you during the flight. Can I get you something to drink before takeoff?”
