Page 63 of Better than Yesterday
“You don’t understand anything,” I cut her off, my tone sharp. “You have spent my entire life telling me what I should want, where I should go, who isn’t good enough for me. And I listened. I listened every single time.”
“We wanted what was best for you.” My mother’s voice took on that wounded tone that used to make me back down immediately.
Not anymore.
“You wanted what was best for theideaof me. A doctor. A prestigious university. A boyfriend who met some invisible standard of ambition. You told me Braden was a charming dead-end, but you were wrong. He’s part of something that matters. And I believed you when you said he wasn’t enough because it was easier than believing in myself. Easier than standing up to you.”
My father squared his shoulders. “Tessa, honey, you’re upset, and you’re not thinking clearly.”
“For the first time in my life, I am thinking completely clearly. And I’m done.” I took a breath, steadying myself. “I’m done with your voices in my head making my decisions. I’m done pretending that the way you measuresuccess is the way I measure success. And I’m done letting both of you decide what my life looks like.”
The silence that followed was heavy. They both wore slack expressions, unable to retort when I wasn’t following their script.
“I need you to leave. Let me figure this out on my own.”
The words hung in the air, thick and absolute. My mother stared at me, her expression a mixture of shock and profound hurt. “Leave? Tessa, don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to abandon you when you’re feeling like this.”
“You need to be with family right now,” my father added. “We’ll stay. Your mother and I will sleep on the pull-out couch. In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, we can all talk about this.”
He was trying to fix it. To manage my emotional crisis with logistics and a sensible timeline. The very idea of being trapped in this townhouse with them overnight, their quiet disappointment and well-meaning suggestions seeping through the walls, was suffocating.
“No,” I said, the word sharper than I intended. “You don’t understand. Your being hereisthe problem. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t hear my own voice over the sound of yours.”
“But we’re just trying to help,” my mother whispered, a tear finally spilling over.
“And I appreciate that.” I forced my voice to remain steady. “But the crisis has happened. The only thing left to do is for me to figure out what comes next.”
My father stepped forward. “We are not leaving you in the middle of a breakdown.”
“This isn’t a breakdown,” I countered, meeting his gaze directly. “It’s a breakthrough. For the first time, I’mmaking a decision that isn’t based on what someone else wants from me. And I have to do that alone.”
“If you truly love me,” I continued, my voice softening just a fraction, appealing to the one thing I knew was real beneath the layers of control, “if you truly want what is best for me, then you will do the one thing I am asking of you. The most helpful thing you can do right now is get on a plane and let me work this out on my own. Proving you trust me to handle my own life is the only support I need.”
I had turned their own logic, their own stated motivation, back on them. It was a checkmate. They could either stay, proving my point that their presence was about control, not support. Or they could leave, and in doing so, finally give me the one thing I’d never had from them—autonomy.
My mother stared at my father, lost. All her emotional tools had failed. It was up to him. Dad held my gaze for a long, heavy moment. I braced for anger, frustration, the final argument. But it never came. Instead, his eyes flickered with something I’d never seen before. Not disappointment, but a grudging, painful recognition. He was seeing the woman he’d raised to be strong and decisive finally turn that strength back on him.
A slow breath escaped him, and the tension in his shoulders dissolved. He closed the distance between us in two steps and pulled me into an embrace. It was firm, protective. A father’s hug. He rested his chin on the top of my head. “All right, Tessa. If us leaving is what you need, then that’s what we’ll do.”
He pulled back, keeping his hands on my shoulders and forcing me to meet his earnest gaze. “But I want you to promise me something. You have to know that we are always here for you. Always. When you figure this out, or if it all falls apart and you just need to come home, call us.We will be on the next flight or get you to us. No questions asked. Understand?”
My mother came forward, her own face streaked with tears, and wrapped her arms around both of us. “We love you so much, sweetheart. Just be safe.”
“I will,” I managed to whisper. “Thank you. I know you love me, and I love you both too. But I have to do this without you.”
My father gave my shoulder a final squeeze before stepping back and pulling out his phone. “I’ll book the flight.”
The silenceafter they left was vast and terrifying. I wandered through the townhouse, seeing it as a stranger’s home. The generic art. The stacks of research papers that were supposed to justify my life. It all looked the same, but something in me had shifted. Now the space felt less like a base of operations and more like a cell. A holding tank for a life that wasn’t actually mine.
I went to the marina and worked with Zane and Kaia. They sensed my mood and were unusually quiet. As I uploaded data into my laptop, I thought about Braden’s face at the moment hope had died behind his eyes. About how I’d hesitated at exactly the wrong moment. How my overwhelming panic at everything happening at once had made me sound like I was choosing Australia when I was really just choosing not to drown. How my one chance to be clear and committed to him had slipped through my fingers because I was too shocked to speak.
The worst part was knowing how it must have looked from his perspective. The email arriving. My parents’ vindication. My hesitation when he asked what I was thinking. From where he stood, it probably looked like I’d already made my choice. Like my whole speech aboutlaying down the law and making them apologize had been just another thing I’d planned to do until I had a better idea.
Back in my rental by seven in the evening, I called Lila. “I need someone to talk to, someone who won’t try to fix it or make me feel better. Can you come over?”
Lila showed up twenty minutes later with a bottle of wine and a face that made falling apart easier. She took in the state of my townhouse—the general air of disaster, the way I looked like I’d been put through a washing machine—and went straight to the kitchen to find glasses.
We settled on the awful beige sofa that looked like the saddest piece of furniture ever assembled. “Braden broke up with me, and I spent the afternoon at the marina trying to forget all of it. I still haven’t responded to the email from the Great Barrier Reef. I got offered the job I’ve been waiting for my whole life, and I’m completely paralyzed.”
