Thank you for your patience, continued interest and support and especially for your kind concern. I appreciate it more than I could say.
I do not own Glee or the characters and I honestly do not own The Billionaire's Embrace.
MERCEDES
I woke up early the next morning... so early that the sun hadn't yet risen over the buildings to the east.
Sam was asleep beside me, lying on his back with his mouth open and snoring slightly. It was a sweet sight.
He looked so young and handsome.
I looked at him for a few more moments, smiled and slid out of bed very carefully so that I didn't wake him up.
I padded into the quiet living room which was lit with pale gray light.
I had to work that evening and I really needed a few more hours of sleep, but I didn't think I would be able to fall back to sleep.
For some reason, I had that wide-awake, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed feeling.
I headed into the kitchen and poked at Sam's coffee machine. It was huge and shiny and covered in buttons, and I wasn't sure what any of them did.
Maybe I would have to wake him up after all, because coffee was definitely an emergency.
Suddenly, I heard a noise, and turned to see Sam leaning in the doorway of the kitchen.
"Someone's up early," he said, smiling at me. He was wearing low-slung sleep pants and nothing else, and he looked so rumpled and sleepy that I wanted to crawl back into bed with him and never leave.
"I couldn't sleep," I said sheepishly. "Did I wake you?"
He shrugged.
"I doubt it. I just woke up. I thought maybe you had left."
"I wouldn't leave without saying goodbye," I said. "You really thought I'd snuck out?"
"Last night was... kind of intense," he said. "I didn't know how you would feel this morning."
"I don't regret anything," I said. And it was true. I was a little sore, but it was like a memento...a reminder of what had passed between us.
He came forward then and slid one hand into my hair and kissed me.
"I'm glad."
We sat at the dining table and drank coffee. Sam had made toast for himself, but I didn't feel like eating anything.
"But breakfast is the most important meal of the day," he teased.
"Actually, I read something about how that isn't true. And it's a false correlation, because people who actually eat breakfast are more invested in their health in other ways," I said.
God, I sounded like such a know-it-all.
But Sam didn't look annoyed. He just cocked his head at me and said,
"You know so many random things."
I hunched my shoulders, feeling uncomfortable...
"I just read stuff."
At that, he leaned across the table, fixing me with his piercing green gaze...
"What's your dream in life?" he asked. "I know you don't want to work at the club forever. What do you really want to do?"
I swallowed.
"I don't know."
"Pretend that money is no object," he said. "If you didn't have to worry about that...if you could do anything you wanted to. What would it be?"
Dreams were dangerous. They gave you big ideas; they made you think that your life could be bigger and more meaningful than was actually possible.
I had spent my entire life deliberately tamping down my dreams, like useless soil underfoot, because I could never see them coming true.
Sam, however, was someone who dreamed big. For him, anything was possible.
He didn't understand that most people's lives had limits and borders... this far, and no further. So saying my dreams aloud would make it real, would make me hope.
And hope was dangerous.
But how could I explain that to him?
The way he was looking at me, so steady and open, made me want to give him what he was asking for, no matter the risks.
Finally...
"I'd like to be a lawyer," I said, the words dragging out of me. "Maybe a public defender. To help people who need it. I worked at a law office for a while and I liked it. I liked the work. It was interesting." I shrugged, painfully. "But I'd have to finish college and then law school. So it's never going to happen?"
"Why not?" Sam asked. "Why can't it? I would pay your tuition myself if I thought you would accept it. But I know you never would, so I won't offer. But there are financial aid programs, loans..."
"I know," I said. But the thought of going into debt made me feel physically ill.
I had seen what debt did to my parents. The payday loans, the endless calls from collection agencies... I never wanted to owe anyone money.
I had racked up a few thousand dollars on my credit cards right before I started working at the club...when I had no money and was desperate, and that had been a burden on my shoulders that didn't lift until I had paid off every last cent.
Law school would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans...more money than I could even fathom.
It was an impossible dream.
"I know some people at CUNY," Sam said. "That's where you were before, right? I can make a few phone calls..."
"No!" I said sharply. "I don't want you arranging things for me. I can take care of myself!"
He held up his hands in a placating gesture...
"Okay. I'm sorry. I know you can."
I sighed.
"I'm sorry. I know you're just trying to be nice. But I can't just... let you fix everything about my life. I don't want anyone to ever be able to imply that I'm just using you for your money."
"So conscientious," he said and squeezed my hand. "Okay. I won't bring it up again. But think about it, okay? You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than what you really want."
"I'll think about it," I said.
That seemed to placate him. He smiled at me and finished his toast.
Turnabout is fair play...
"What's your dream?" I asked Sam.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me, considering...
"I want a family," he said. "I want kids. I always knew I would end up running the company. And I'm glad to do it; it's interesting work and I'm good at it. But I don't want it to be the only thing in my life."
"Kids," I said. "Really?"
It surprised me. It wasn't that I thought he would be a bad father, just that I'd assumed his dreams would be...larger. More ambitious. More like...the governor's mansion or the White House.
"Really," he said. "And maybe a few dogs." He shrugged. "I want a happy life. Isn't that what everyone wants?"
"Sure," I said. Although I had never thought about it much.
Happiness was just a word and I wasn't sure I believed in it...at least not the way that Sam meant...
His was the kind of happiness that meant you lay on your deathbed and think,
'Gosh, it's sure been a good life.'
"Cocker spaniels," Sam said.
And I squinted at him.
"What?"
"I'd like some cocker spaniels. That's the kind of dog I had growing up. They're good dogs. Calm and affectionate. Good for apartment living."
"Cocker spaniels are cute," I said.
He grinned at me.
"Don't worry, I won't make you start picking out baby names just yet." Then he laughed and said, "Gosh, Mercedes, look at your face! I'm just kidding. Or am I? You'll never really know."
I kicked him beneath the table and he grinned again, unrepentant.
But he had already put the thought in my mind, like a seed planted there. And it grew while I finished my coffee, into a dangerously appealing fantasy of what our children would look like, with my brown skin and his green eyes...
I couldn't... shouldn't think about it. Way too dangerous.
"I should probably go," I said.
"Of course," Sam said. Then he leaned across the table and kissed me. "I'll miss you. When do I get to see you again?"
I wasn't sure but we made tentative plans to have dinner in a few days, and then he had his driver take me home.
It was still early enough that I had a couple of hours before the time I would usually get out of bed, so I decided to make some more coffee... then scrub my bathroom.
And so, it wasn't until past noon that I finally sat down and checked my email.
I had to refresh my inbox three times before I understood what I was seeing.
It was an email from my mom, in her familiar broken English. For some reason, she refused to write in proper English.
However, it was the first time she'd attempted to communicate with me since I left California six years earlier.
Apparently, my grandmother had died and she was asking me to come home...
I don't know why, but Sam was the first person I called to share the sad news.
"Take my jet," he said.
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see me over the phone.
"No," I said firmly. "I'm going to fly coach like a regular person."
"I can come with you," he said. "If you want."
I cringed... I'd been afraid he would say that. And I could imagine it all too well...
Him standing in my mother's dingy living room, the walls stained yellow from nicotine; Him in the church, meeting my suspicious relatives; Him eating in someone's back yard...
It would be like setting a chicken among foxes. And he wouldn't be a fox. He would do everything wrong in their eyesight and nobody would cut him any slack.
Anyways, he probably hadn't even been to a wake before.
So I said...
"I can't ask you to do that. I know you're busy."
"You didn't ask me. I volunteered. If you want me there, I can put everything on hold," he said. "There are things in life more important than running a business."
I wasn't sure how to respond so I said nothing, and the moment dragged on too long and a little awkwardly.
Finally I said...
"Maybe not this time. My mom...you know. There are some family issues..."
"Sure," he said, a little too lightly. I knew I had hurt him but I didn't know how to apologize for it.
"I'll be gone for a while," I said. "Maybe a week. I have to... there's the wake and then the funeral and...family stuff. And I'll probably be pretty busy, so..."
"So don't expect to hear much from you," he said. "Right. Well..." A pause. "Are you sure there isn't anything I can do?"
"No," I said. "But...thanks."
I checked Sam off my list...
Then I called Joss...who didn't answer because she was at work...and Brittany...who did...and told me to take as much time as I needed.
However, I still needed to buy plane tickets, pack and email my mother to let her know I was coming.
I didn't know why I was dropping everything to fly across the country and attend the funeral of a woman I hadn't seen or spoken to since I was eighteen.
That wasn't true... I knew exactly why.
Blood, after all, was thicker than water.
I flew out to California the next afternoon, Newark to Ontario with a stop in Phoenix.
There was no fast or convenient way to get to San Bernardino; it was a dead end...somewhere people left and didn't return to.
The ticket cost enough to make me feel a little nauseated, but I reminded myself that this was the reason I had taken the job at the club... so that I could handle emergencies like last-minute plane tickets without having to worry.
It was only a few days before Christmas and the airport was a madhouse. It took me more than an hour just to get through security.
For a few dark minutes, I was trapped behind a woman arguing with the TSA agent about why she shouldn't have to remove her shoes. And oh how I wished at that moment that I had taken Sam up on his offer.
I had a window seat, at least. I had only flown a couple of times and it was still sort of a novelty watching the ground recede as we took off, and the huge, fluffy clouds hanging about the sky.
The woman sitting beside me cracked open a book as soon as we started taxiing. Which was fine with me; I didn't want to talk.
So I balled up my coat into a makeshift pillow and did my best to sleep.
I was planning to rent a car in Ontario and drive out to San Bernardino, but when I came out of the security area, one of my cousins was waiting for me...
I stopped dead in my tracks... completely dumbfounded.
I had told my mother what time I would be arriving, but I hadn't expected her to send someone to pick me up...much less J.J...who had never liked me, and who had told me when he found out I was moving to New York, that I had betrayed the family.
Like we were the Mafia or something.
"Mercedes," he said stiffly and tried to take my suitcase from me. But I backed up a step without meaning to and his frown deepened. "Fine, carry it yourself!"
"Um, thanks for coming to get me," I said.
He snorted.
"Don't thank me. It's not like I had a choice. Your mom called my mom. You know how it goes."
"Yeah, I know," I said. Some things never changed.
We went out to where my cousin had parked his car...a beat-up Cadillac with shiny new rims. And I shrugged out of my coat.
I'd forgotten how warm it could be in December in these parts.
J.J. threw my suitcase in the trunk and we peeled out of the parking lot.
Then we headed east on the 10.
It was a little after six, California time, and the sun had set already, turning the desert landscape into a blur of headlights.
I wished it was still light so that I could see the mountains... Because one thing I missed about California was being able to see the majestic mountains.
Maybe the only thing I missed...
After a few minutes of awkward silence, I said,
"So, what are you up to these days?"
J.J's face settled deeper into its scowl.
"The fuck do you think I'm doing? I'm still working at the warehouse. And I'll probably be working there until I die."
"You could always leave, you know," I said quietly.
He laughed, an unpleasant bark of sound.
"Leave, my ass! My mom depends on me, you know that. Yours depended on you, too. But you only cared about yourself."
I turned my face to the window, flushing with anger and embarrassment. They all probably thought the same thing...that I had abandoned my filial duty and left my mother alone and helpless.
Never mind the fact that she had told me to leave.
She had screamed it at me, standing in the back yard, her face still red from where my father had struck her.
Whatever. It wasn't my problem anymore.
I pulled out my phone and texted Sam...
MERCEDES: In California. It's warm here.
SAM: Snowing here. Hope everything's going okay so far.
Well, J.J. hadn't stopped the car and told me to get out, so it was going better than I had expected. However, I didn't respond to Sam's text. There was too much history involved, too many years of complicated family dynamics for me to be able to explain to him what was going on.
A few minutes went by in silence. Then I said,
"Do you know if my dad's going to be there?"
J.J. snorted.
"You don't know? You don't even know where your own father is? He left. He's gone. Six months after you." He shook his head. "Shameful! You just walked away and left us all behind. Your mom needed you. And so did your grandma and now she's dead. And you never called her. Not once!"
I slumped down in my seat...
The last time I saw my grandmother, she told me I was a useless whore, that I would never amount to anything, and that if I treated myself like trash, everyone else would too.
All because she had caught me kissing my boyfriend in the front seat of his car after he had brought me home from a date. Never mind the fact that kissing was all we ever did.
I tried so hard to be good that I never even let him take my shirt off. And I know my grandmother wouldn't have wanted me to call her. So I never did.
But I knew better than to speak ill of the dead.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, broken only by J.J. muttering angrily at other drivers.
The highway was so barren and isolated that there was nothing to see...no landmarks...until he exited and started driving towards my mother's house.
And then I was overwhelmed by familiar places...
The Catholic church, the tire shop, the elementary school and the roads I knew like the back of my hand.
I felt tears welling up in my eyes and bit down hard on my lip to hold them back. It wasn't that I was glad to be home... It wasn't home anymore... And I had no happy memories associated with any of these places.
But seeing everything so unchanged as if I had just turned away for a few moments, gave me the disconcerting feeling that my old life was waiting to rise up and engulf me again, so that I would never really be able to leave.
We turned onto my mother's street and my cousin slowly rolled to a stop in front of the house...
I was born here, in the living room, because my father was too drunk to drive to the hospital and my mother refused to call an ambulance until it was too late.
She liked to point to the stain in the carpet that never quite came out and say,
"Here's where my daughter made me suffer."
"Thanks for the ride," I said.
J.J. only grunted and said,
"Tell your mom I'll be back later for the wake."
I got out of the car and hauled my suitcase from the trunk. The wheels bumped noisily over the uneven sidewalk.
The house looked just the way I remembered... the stunted avocado tree, the dog tied to the fence and the yard with a few clumps of grass struggling out of the packed dirt.
When I opened the gate, the dog opened one eye and looked at me, but didn't move.
It was a new dog, one I didn't recognize. And I wondered what happened to the old one. She had only been a couple of years old when I left.
I stepped onto the porch and the front door creaked open...
My mother stepped out haloed by the lights in the living room.
And I swallowed hard.
I didn't know what to say to her, or how. However, I went with,
"Hi, mom."
She looked me up and down.
"So, you're here."
She crossed her arms over her chest. She looked just the same and despite the distance and the years, all the horrible things we'd said to each other, my crummy childhood and her refusal to leave my father, I wanted to hug her so badly that my arms ached with it.
But I also wanted her to say,
"Mercedes, my daughter, oh how I've missed you." And we would hug each other and cry, and everything would be forgiven.
But she just said,
"You had better come inside." And held the door for me to enter.
My grandmother had died on Saturday; And I had missed the first two days of the wake, but there were three more to go before the funeral.
The house was filled with relatives and friends, smoking and playing games, gossiping and eating the food my mother had prepared.
None of them had seen me in six years, and all of them were intensely curious about what I had been doing.
It was, basically, my worst nightmare.
"Mercedes, you live in New York?" my aunt asked. "What part? You don't live in the Bronx, do you? I hear it's very dangerous there."
"She wouldn't live in the Bronx, she's not that stupid," my other aunt said. "Tell her you don't live in the Bronx, Mercy."
"I live in Brooklyn," I said.
"See, Brooklyn! That's a good place. With all of those hipsters." My aunts nodded at each other wisely. "Kenny, do you know those hipsters?"
At that, my cousin Kenny exhaled a cloud of smoke and rolled his eyes.
"Ma, you don't know a thing about hipsters. They don't exist east of Claremont."
My aunt gasped indignantly.
"That's not true! I saw one just the other day, near that Starbucks."
"That was a drag queen," Kenny said.
It has been years since me and my relatives have been in such close proximity...although I've dreamt about it. And so being here, their bickering didn't bother me as much. It felt... palatable.
I still didn't really want to listen to it though, so I murmured something about helping my mom in the kitchen and sidled away.
I went and hid in the kitchen for a few minutes, where my mother was so busy cooking that she ignored me...other than to tell me to stir a pot.
But I couldn't stay in there all evening. And as soon as I poked my head out, I was roped into another conversation...
All about New York...
How dare I leave my aging mother alone...
Didn't I know how to be a good daughter...
And the icing on the cake... My grandmother wished she could've seen me one last time before she died.
It was excruciating.
I gritted my teeth, smiled and nodded then got away as soon as I could.
As the night wore on, people started going home, and around midnight there was nobody left except my mother, her two sisters and the handful of cousins who didn't have to work in the morning.
It was then, that I sat down and finally ate something...for the first time in more than twelve hours. But as soon as I was sitting, I realized how tired I was.
I had eight hours of travel and it was past three in the morning on the East Coast. I would usually be home from work by then and just getting ready for bed.
This room was warm and familiar, scented with cigarette smoke, flowers and food, and my head started nodding.
But each time my chin hit my chest, I jerked my head up and blinked awake.
Yet it kept happening... And I knew I couldn't keep my eyes open.
My mother came over and looked down at me, her mouth pursed.
"Sleeping at your grandmother's wake?"
"I'm sorry," I said. I rubbed my eyes. "It's the time difference."
"Hmm," she said. "I made up your bed. Go sleep."
"But the wake," I said, and then couldn't figure out why I was protesting.
"There's more to come. You can sit up with me tomorrow." She jerked her head in the direction of the bedroom. "Go sleep."
I wouldn't dare protest twice. So I staggered down the hallway and fell into bed, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Hey all, I want to thank you for your concern and your comforting words. This has been a rough time but I'll get through it. Everyone does, only at different stages. Anyway, I appreciate you all and I hope this update finds you and yours happy and in great health. Much love to you.
Stay safe!