Page 57 of Fake It Till You Make It

“Why are you so optimistic about life when it was obvious to me that you were on the verge of a panic attack the day I hired you?”

“I haven’t always been the eleven-dollars-an-hour high-wage earner you see before you.”

“Used to better?”

“No,” she trailed off, taking a seat in the rocker next to his. “Worse. Much worse.”

“Since you’ve decided to hang around,” he sighed, “things may get way worse before there’s something other than a runaway train speeding toward us at the end of the tracks.”

“Can you please pick another locomotive metaphor?”

“Why? What does it matter?”

“Everything matters, Eli. I’m not a fan of bullet trains to big cities.”

“I upset you.”

“Not true. The train upset me. They lead to fast trouble and slow apologies.”

“There’s a story there.”

“Yes, and it’s an unpleasant one that I care not to remember.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Of course I do. You will bear the load of my paternal trauma for your role in deteriorating my mood.”

“Unload away, friend.”

“That’s just earned you an extra heaping at a time of my choosing.”

“Noted. Now the story.”

“When I was eleven years old, my mother and I left my dad. I think he had been unfaithful for a while by then.”

“Whoa, that had to have been hard on you both.”

“You don’t want to know how bad it got for us.” Amarie rubbed her palms, now sweaty, over her capris. “Anyway, we ended up back with my father after a year on our own.”

“So, your parents patched things up.”

“I thought they had. My first year as a Howard University Bison, my parents drove up from home, America’s old city, eleven hours in a rented SUV because my father descends into hysteria if my mother accumulates more than five thousand miles per year on any vehicle bearing his name on the title. Four hours into their visit, my father announced he had a business trip in New York and had booked a trip on the Acela train because he wanted to arrive early.”

Something in her tone changed. Eli understood this story wouldn’t have the happy ending she seemed to crave but had never quite experienced. His life had a similar melancholy note.

“With the details provided, I Googled the conference… I wish I hadn’t.”

This story would sour his mood. A burn, small and irritating, spread in his gut. The mode and members in this play were different, but he recognized the storyline—lies, deception, and betrayal.

“What happened?”

“I told my mother the truth. Dad’s medical conference had happened two months prior, but closer to home. One hundred miles south in Orlando. There was an online postof him pictured with a female colleague enjoying more cocktails than conference sessions. I showed her all of it.”

Eli didn’t have to ask what happened next because he remembered from a conversation during yesterday’s breakfast that her parents had been married for close to thirty years.

“Amarie?”

“Oh.” She startled. “Sorry. So, my daddy returned late the next day, and my mother said nothing about the information I’d given to her. They left together, a perfect fake marriage. Guess I learned to fake it from my parents. Neither of them returned to the campus. Not even for my graduation.” There was a time when Amarie had hoped for a return of natural ease with her parents, yet the fairy tale had given way to a reality so jarring and gut-wrenching she still wept for the girl who’d learned her father wasn’t a hero and she and her mother weren’t his treasure.