Chapter One
Ayla
It was our graduation after-party, and everyone was boozed out and swaying hard. My best friend, Lara, who was never one for standing still, was now standing in the corner of the club doing nothing. I’d lost track of her a few hours before when one of the many guys who were in love with her, had pulled her away from me, begging her for a dance.
I wasn’t really in the mood for a dance. I was still wrecking my head over my admission to Harvard. College was over, but now I had something new to worry about—a post grad degree of my dreams.
Seeing that Lara was finally alone, I grabbed a half-empty bottle of Tequila off the counter and made my way towards her. I could see that she’d lost her shoes somewhere. She was standing sideways, and now the closer I got to her; I could see she was on the phone.
Was she fighting? Arguing? I was confused. Was this about some guy?
When she saw me approaching, she looked embarrassed and spoke quickly in a hushed tone into the phone and hung up.
“Since when do we hide things from each other?” I asked, extending the bottle of Tequila towards her.
Lara sighed and shook her head.
“There’s nothing to hide. That was just my brother, being a dick again,” she said, rolling her eyes. I smirked and joined her, leaning my back against the wall.
I never quite understood the relationship Lara shared with her brother. She seemed to fight with him a lot, but she was also fiercely defensive of him. I’d given up trying to figure them out.
Lara and I met in college, we were roommates and quickly turned into best friends. Our lives before we came to college didn’t seem to matter any more. I had literally spent every waking minute of the last four years in Lara’s company. We knew each other inside out, but I’d never met the rest of her family. She spoke very little about them. Maybe because she was starkly aware of the way other people perceived her and her family.
She was the heir to the Gibbons’ family fortune. A multi-billion-dollar corporation that had been in operation for three generations. Her parents had died in an accident seven years ago and since then, her brother had been running the organization. They were billionaires…and that was all I knew about the family.
Lara, behaved far from it. And that was the reason we were friends. She told me I never treated her as anything different.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked her now, while she took a deep swig of the Tequila.
“Not really. It’s the same story. My brother wants me to figure my shit out and join the company. He complains how I don’t help him, and the effort he’s putting into carrying forward our legacy single-handedly and blah blah blah…”
I looked over at Lara, and she was rolling her eyes again.
“But you don’t want to get into the family business, do you?” I asked and she shook her head.
“I don’t know what I want to do, but I definitely don’t want to go corporate and do what my brother’s doing. I know I’m disappointing him and probably disappointing my dead parents too!”
“You should do what makes you happy. You need to think of your own future, instead of trying to live your life according to other people’s terms,” I supplied. Lara looked over and nodded.
“Yes, exactly. But Ethan doesn’t get that. He’s all about duty and legacy and family expectations. Sometimes, I feel sorry for him. He was just twenty-five when our parents died, when he got thrown into all this and took responsibility for everything. I was just a kid. I knew nothing. He looked out for me, raised me practically!” Lara continued.
There was a faraway look in her eyes, and I could see she was thinking about her childhood and her brother.
“I don’t blame him for being so angry all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him relax. Like, ever!” She scoffed, mockingly.
I didn’t know what to say. Even though she was my best friend and I knew her inside out, I didn’t consider it my place to comment on her family matters. All I could do was be there for her, and hear her out.
“And then other times…I’m like; fuck this! Just because he chose to live this life, doesn’t make him a saint!”
She took another swig of Tequila and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. I nodded.
“You look after you,” I told her. She smiled wide, gave me a quick hug and then grabbed my hand.
“C’mon, we need to dance it all away!” She exclaimed, dragging me towards the thumping dance floor again.
“I really don’t want to…” I cried, struggling to wriggle my hand away from her tight grip. She kept pulling and making jokes about my awkwardness, till we were both laughing and somehow, before I even knew it, Lara had managed to get me to dance.
We shared more of the Tequila and slowly, I began to feel my limbs loosening up.
Just a few hours ago, we’d graduated from college; it was over and yet, I was worried. Worried about my future, worried about getting into Harvard, worried about a career and my five-year plan. As we danced and I watched Lara, I wished I could be more like her. Like how she didn’t give a dime. It was impossible to tell that just a few minutes ago, she was deep in an argument with her brother. She’d forgotten all about it already.
Even though I was getting increasingly drunk, I still couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling that I was going to fail. What was I supposed to do now that I was a graduate? Where was my life going from here?