Forcing Gravity Read Online Free PDF Page B

had to attend. It was what she did, and I was used to it .
    But Ethan was bothered, especially because it was only my second night in town. Of course if you asked my mother, she’d tell you that we had dinner together the night before, and to her that was an acceptable welcome. Julio would cook for my sister and me tonight, so it wasn’t like we’d starve . I was fine with it. I learned a long time ago that my mother was always focused on one person – herself. Skylar and I we re usual ly afterthoughts, if she thought of us at all.
    But I think Ethan sometimes forgot that my mother was nothing like his mother, so he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more affected by her behavior. Since he came from a nuclear family that wa s still intact with two parents , who still kiss ed each other hello when they ca me home from work at night , and siblings who he adored, he had a hard tim e understanding that my family wa s not like his.
    My fam ily wa s, in the most rudimentary terms, a hot mess . And quite honestly, I don’t think we ever had the potential to be a nuclear family , since that concept blew up soon after I was born .
    My dad loved my mom. That I know. He adored her and pampered her and catered to her every whim, and she loved it, but it wasn’t enough for her. She wanted fame and fortune and an exciting life. But she got pregnant by accident and was a mother before she was ready. Over the years, I attributed her immaturity and complete lack of maternal instincts to the fact that she was so young when they got married and had me, so she neve r really got to be a teenager. My dad, who was always much more responsible, and two years older, took care of everything while she remained a child at heart. It’s why he got me when they divorced. And why she readily gave me up.
    My parents met when my dad was a senio r in high school and my mom was a sophomore . He was a football player, and she was a cheerleader. They fell madly in love – well, as madly in love as you can be when you’re eighteen and sixteen. After graduation from high school, my father headed to USC, and he continued to date m y mother for the next two years. He fully expected her to follow him to USC, seeing as they’d been together so long, but my mother, ever t he party girl, had plans to take a year off and backpack around Europe with her girlfriends. Unfortunately for her, she found out she was pregnant with me a week before she was supposed to leave. That fall, while her friends were visiting The Louv r e and Buckingham Palace, my mother was at home growing a child that I’m not sure she ever wanted.
    To this day, I am almost one hundred percent confident that my father convinced her to have me. He was the responsible one, the sensible one and the one who was beaming down at me in pictures the day I was born. There was no doubt in my mind that he loved me from the moment he found out about me , and I can almost guarantee that there was never a hesitation in his mind that I would be brought into the world. If I was a betting person, I would put money on the fact that if the decision had been solely up to my mother, I wouldn’t be here today.
    I would also bet that my father promised my mothe r he would take care of us . My father’s family had money, so he could promise that. Even as young as they were , he knew they would never go without. He would provide for his family, and I would be willing to wager the significant amount of money he ’d put away for me in a college trust fund that this was a key point in my mother’s ultimate decision to marry him and have me. Although being a teen mom wasn’t ideal, she knew she wouldn’t have to deal with the hardship s that others in her situation would have .
    My mother did end up starting college at USC, and she and my father moved into a small house on the beach in Santa Monica. Over Christmas break, they got married, and three months later, I was born . We lived in that little house for the