Unforgettable Read Online Free PDF Page A

could possibly change that?”
    “You’ll never know, will you? I’ll be back for the rest of my stuff.” Trish snatched up the suitcase.
    Rett followed her to the door. For what, she didn’t know. A tender good-bye after that exchange of violence? Just to be sure she was gone?
    Trish turned from the open door. “By the way, if you think what we had was love, think again.”
    “If it wasn’t love at the beginning, what was it?”
    “A means to an end. After that, it was just pathetic.”
    “You’re half of that story,” Rett said hoarsely. Emotion and exhaustion had taken their toll on her throat. “If it was pathetic then you get half the blame.”
    “Sorry, sweetie.” Rett wondered distantly if Trish knew just how unattractive that sneer was, and how much worse it would be if she ripped Trish’s face apart with her bare hands. “I was the one who laughed about your sad little libido with other women. Lots of them.”
    Rett closed her eyes for a moment, not wanting Trish to see the knife going in. Then she fixed Trish with an unwavering gaze. “And I’m the trash?”
    Trish didn’t answer. She swung her suitcase as she went through the door, knocking over a little table laden with mail and papers. She slammed the door behind her and a picture nearby slipped off its nail and shattered on the tile.
    In pieces. Rett gasped for breath. She struggled against the tears. Crying ruined her voice and her face. Then she remembered she wasn’t singing in the near future.
    She cried about loving and not loving Trish, and for losing the woman she had thought Trish was. She cried because she wasn’t who she had hoped she’d be by now and she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to start over. She cried because she could.

2
    “How come you won’t go out with the boys who hang around here? You too good for them?”
    “I don’t like boys, Mama. It’s none of your business anyway! You bring enough men into the house for both of us!”
    “Don’t you talk to me that way, young lady. I can still pull you over my knee and I don’t care if you are Miss Artsy Fartsy in your third-rate school play …”
    Rett woke up on the couch. The VCR clock blinked 8:30. For a minute she was too disoriented to know if that was A.M. or EM. It was EM., the same miserable day. The echo of her mother’s voice hissed in her ears.
    She reached for the phone to call Naomi, then stopped herself before the call went through. What was she going to do? Dump her mess on Naomi’s lap and expect her to pick up the pieces? That was weak and unprincipled. She thought of old friends she could call for comfort. Friends she’d let drift away because Trish didn’t like them. She couldn’t call them just because she suddenly could use a good shoulder — she was not going to be one of those people that used friends as standins between lovers.
    Today, Rett vowed, she was done with being weak. Maybe Trish was a manipulative bitch, but as Eleanor Roosevelt had discerned, no one can make you feel inferior without your help. She shoved all thoughts of her mother into a mental closet and visualized padlocks on the door — that was where she belonged.
    She glanced at her ravaged face in the mirror. She could still feel the sting of Trish’s slap. Tears threatened. You’re no Eleanor Roosevelt, she told herself. But you’re going to have to try harder. You gotta be strong, you gotta be tough, you gotta be wiser.
    She felt a little less hollow after a large glass of milk and some ibuprofen. A hot shower removed the sticky airplane feeling and the unclean aura of the scene with Trish. She threw away the paraphernalia, stripped the bed and put the sheets in the washer, then dug around until she found her old ratty chenille robe. She’d always liked it better than the silk kimono Trish had given her one Christmas. She wandered into the den that served as her home office. She wasted an hour playing Myst, then clicked onto the Internet to check her mail.