Cursive - By Phoebe Lane Page 0,87

mother’s chest, where a small white gold pendant she had given her for her birthday a few years ago still hung around her neck.

"Aislynn?" Pam said with hesitation, finally looking up at her, the eerie silence in the room becoming heavy and deafening.

"I love you, Mom," Aislynn whispered, put her hands on her face, and placed a gentle kiss on top of her head. In an ironic case of role reversals, she felt like an adult comforting a vulnerable child. "Goodbye."

Aislynn walked away slowly toward the door and heard her mom call her name over and over, the pitch of her voice rising with each repetition. Pam was reacting in a way she had never done before, and Aislynn realized this time was different.

She finally gets it. She understands now.

Goodbye, Mom.

Aislynn walked into the apartment with a sour mood, hoping, for the first time in months, that the apartment was empty. Instead, she found Ellie pacing anxiously in the living room.

"What's wrong, Ellie?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm just—holy shit! What happened?" Ellie asked when she saw Aislynn's face, her eyes swollen from crying.

"Umm…I don't want to talk about it," Aislynn said, dropping her things on the living room table.

"Yeah, okay. Let me rephrase that question into a statement, then. Tell me what happened," Ellie said sternly.

"Ugh. I hate all this drama. I'm not made for drama. Why does it have to chase me around?" Aislynn said, throwing herself on the sofa, hands hiding her face.

"Is it Jace?" Ellie asked, sitting next to her.

"No. It's Pam. Or, it was Pam. I stood up to her last night at dinner and basically told her off."

Aislynn filled Ellie in on every detail of what had happened in the past eighteen hours, and even spoke about the guilt she felt for how things had ended between them. From the outside looking in, it probably looked like Pam got what she had coming to her, but she was still Aislynn's mother. It hurt her deeply having to make the decision to walk away from her mother forever.

"I can understand that, I guess," Ellie said. "I'm so proud of you, though. This needed to be done."

"I know, but I really feel horrible," Aislynn whined, and laid her head down on Ellie's lap.

"I know something that could help make you feel better, but it's still too early for rum," Ellie joked, effectively lightening the mood.

"Oh, come on. Your boyfriend owns a bar. I'm sure you could make it happen if you really wanted to," Aislynn said.

"You got me on that."

"So what's up with you? Why were you pacing?" Aislynn asked and watched Ellie take a deep breath in.

"I'm flying to Chicago tomorrow morning to meet with my boss and tell her I'm moving here. I really don't want to quit my job, so I want to get her to let me work primarily from the west coast. I was trying to run through ideas on how to best pitch it to her."

"Want some help? I can help you brainstorm, and you can practice your delivery with me," Aislynn said, sitting back up.

"Oh, yay! That would be great."

They spent the rest of the morning drafting an oral and written proposal for her boss, and then Ellie went out to meet Evan for an early dinner at the bar. Jace had left town earlier that day for a conference in Portland, and Aislynn finally found herself alone at home.

She took a long hot shower, trying to relax and prepare her mind for a night of writing. She was way behind on the goals she had set for herself the last time she had met with Lana, and it was making her nervous.

She sat at the computer and read over the last few pages she had written. She reviewed her outline and started writing. It only took her a few minutes and about five hundred words before she felt like throwing her laptop against the wall and deleting everything she had written so far—not just the last few paragraphs, but the whole damn thing. Instead, she closed her eyes, took several deep breaths and opened up a new document. She started writing about the things that were weighing on her mind, thinking that once she put them down on paper, she would be able to let them go and concentrate on her novel.

She first wrote about what had happened with Pam that weekend and, like a free-fall, she wasn't able to stop after that. She went back in time and wrote about