Chapter 1

Nicole slumped on the couch, the mobile still grasped in her hand, staring out at the surrounding serenity. Ashley's concern and resentment, coming in waves across the lines, lingered in her mind.

"Ashley, I'm fine." Nicole was still struggling to calm her sister down, but there was no point in trying to reason with her.

"Are you insane, Nicole?" The exasperation by now threaded into her voice as it began to rise. "You are 25, and you've had three breakups. What the hell is happening with you?"

Nicole sighed and had to hold her wet temple. She might have understood Ashley's reasoning, but she was too tired to defend herself anymore.

"I mean, could you be this insensitive now, or did you just call at midnight to witness my breakup story?" Nicole raised an unquestionable note of defiance in her voice.

A pause. "The problem is, I hardly have time in the day—the time-consuming job and everything—and Mom is dying to know what goes on here. You know how she is."

Nicole rolled her eyes. Even without knowing it, their mother had always been very inquisitive; matters had grown worse since the divorce.

"Everything's fine as long as I date anyone." She felt a sort of relief articulating all those pent-up feelings. "But once I'm in a relationship, it all changes. I'm not up for someone controlling how I live and when I live."

Ashley's reply was prompt. "Baby, this is a relationship." This was new, and Nicole had never heard anyone say this before. "That's how you manage, with others. You need to think about the idea."

Nicole raised her eyebrows. "Your face sounded so deeply involved with my ex!"

Ashley's tone softened somewhat. "I do not side with anybody, Nicole. I correct you with the truth about relationships. It doesn't mean you should forsake love with just one or two heartbreaks."

Nicole chuckled bitterly. "Ashley, I am not giving up on love... I am just..."

There was a moment of silence, and then Ashley began again. 'It's not possible, Nicole. Don't you know what Mom wants? To have one of us married off. She will drag you round and round unless you let all her desires come true.'

The outpouring frustration from Nicole: 'Why can't both of you let me live in peace? Just go tell Mom that I am not going out on any more dates or entering into any relationships from now on. I am done with it.'

The impishness in Ashley's tone was plain now. 'I am coming next week; get ready.'

"What for?" Nicole narrowed her eyes at her, skeptical of the surprise.

Ashley broke into peals of laughter. 'To for your birthday, idiot!'

Nicole's face beamed up "Oh, my God, how could I have forgotten that?"

Ashley murmured in a bubbly voice, "Ok, now I will hang up else mom would think I'm talking with my boyfriend.

Nicole burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

"Bye, sis," said Ashley, and then Nicole was still laughing as she hung up the call.

****

I had slouched on my couch, as before, and the air was filled with the peculiar stench of my apartment. But in my mind—oh my!—what mixed feelings. Most of them feelings of fear and confusion. I have, indeed, become single again, even more sure of being single. It was impossible, even after four hours, that I had gotten the weight of expectations from my mother sledge hammering down on me.

My thoughts, by the gaze out at the window, wrapping themselves around themselves back to my childhood. My father was a junkie and, by all reckoning, a jerk, something clear and bloody from the divorce settlement. He had put Mother and us through his controlling and infidelity, which I could think of only as gross.

In thinking it over with the time, I came to understand what I had been told behind it. And that was what had been done to set Mother free. What father did had been totally out of line. Little anger still remained within me, considering all the trouble he had put us in. But, how could I not think of the deepest sorrow for the family that we were, the lost love?

Mother had resolved to steer her children away from any future harm by vowing to raise us without any man in the house. And so she had succeeded for the most part. The strength that was nourished in Ashley and me over the years was such that it derived from our privately looking after one another.

But I thought I managed pretty well going through one's mid-twenties, only to discover that my mother's expectations threatened to smother me. She wanted me to settle down, get married, have babies, and everything else pretty much any young woman would have dreamt about. But I felt she had her own desires written all over me and that she had missed the point about marriages not being perfect.

Recalling the past three relationships in my life, all of them ending in a mess, I soon discovered that it was not just incompatibility or inconsistency in behavior that led to their downfall. In closing every potential matrimonial relationship, it became clear that it was me who always felt encircled and suffocated by things, heavy things called "expectations."

As a consequence of Ashley's provoking me to blow hot air with what was happening between her and my mother—either a boyfriend she was trying to ensure attracted enough attention away from me—I realized that my interest would move from that point to how to get out of the blind dates scene and the apparent relationship entanglement in my life.

With the noise exchanged among voices, I took a breath: I thought determination might carry me much further, or perhaps even deeper into such an impassable, lasting darkness. Unbeknownst to me, my life would take its most memorable turn to come, challenging all my perceptions—a radical alteration of opinion on love, relationships, and myself.

The volume of her thoughts had at last subsided, and both buttocks were deep-seated into the couch; her whole body responded to the exhaustion that had been creeping up on her. She closed her eyes and allowed the soft cushions to engulf her, leaning her head down into the pillow. She is happy to be left alone now, with only her thoughts and the comforting peace of "home."

****