I’d lie about how experienced I was. It would all be fine.

I was in Texas before I answered my parents’ calls.

They couldn’t make me come back. They couldn’t do anything. Over the next two days, they both tried the angry Get back here right this instant tactic. They tried the tearful appeal, the frank appeal, the kind appeal. Then, eventually, they gave in. They told me they loved me and let me be.

I haven’t thought of it at all in many, many years, and I feel so guilty now that it makes me ache. To this day, I have no idea what kind of financial loss they took when I dropped out of college. I know they must have paid some tuition for the year I didn’t attend. Not to mention what a waste the previous semesters had been. They never mentioned it. Like they never mentioned the money I constantly borrowed over the next several years as I lived not-quite paycheck to paycheck.

No wonder they aren’t flitting off to the Amalfi Coast in my life. Instead of a vacation fund, they spent years bailing me out. And no matter how many times I try to send them money now, they never accept.

After missing Aimee’s funeral, I never talked to anyone from home again besides my parents. I never even went back to Florida. Not for Christmas, birthdays, nothing. I made excuses about work, and then when I had the money, I flew my parents to me. That was the only way they’d accept any money from me, and only because I would book nonrefundable tickets and insist that it was a Mother’s Day, birthday, or Christmas present.

My whole focus in LA became fame. Success. Changing my life so substantially that it didn’t resemble the one with Aimee in it; making it so perfect that I could never again wonder if I’d made a mistake by staying in Florida with Aimee.

And that’s how I ended up never saying her name in my new life. I could pretend she hadn’t died by pretending she had never lived. If I was in this new, completely different life, it made sense that she wasn’t in it.

As much as I tried to forget about her, I still often wake up with a start. If I hear a crashing sound, my heart rate spikes. I hate driving. I’m white-knuckled most of the time I’m a passenger. I gasp a hundred times a car ride. I hate the hospital. And whenever I think of her, I become heavy, my body weighing a hundred tons, as I think about how it was my fault, my fault, my fault.

If I had only …

If I had …

If I could have hidden my feelings …

If I had pretended I didn’t care …