Emilia reclined on the large couch in her dad's trailer on the set of His Dark Materials. She had just sent Ayden a good morning text. England was five hours ahead so he was about to go to work.
It was hard leaving New York, with the nearly three year relationship going so well. She missed him so much and was feeling left out of all the beginning of the school year festivities. His mother was forcing him to go shopping which he hated, while Lia teased him about it considering he was starting his freshman year at Columbia. He had taken a gap year in between graduating, and was gearing up to start the semester. Lia would miss the free time they had had together but Columbia was a train ride away..
Lia had had her meeting with her guidance counselor earlier. She'd signed up for four AP classes as she'd planned. She'd honestly started to get bored in Wales. Visiting the set had lost its luster after a couple times and there wasn't much for a teenager to do here. Loading up on classes would help pass the time.
"Hey I gotta go so I'm not late. Love you."
Lia smiled. "Love you too. Talk to you later!"
They hung up and Lia scrolled through her IG feed. Just the regular bullshit of people trying to make their lives look better than they actually were. She sighed and headed over to her school portal. Her new classes were loading on the browser, along with the syllabi.
It would be a lot but nothing she couldn't handle. Honestly, she couldn't wait for school to start in a week. The door creaked open but no one appeared immediately. Then she noticed the nose of Hester, Lee Scoresby's rodent daemon poking in. She rolled her eyes and sat up.
"Dad!" She complained.
In what could be described as only a rodent-y voice, Lin said. "Your mother requests your assistance with the tiny heathens."
Lia sighed, stood up and walked to the door. She pushed it open to find her dad holding the puppet used during screening, a mischievous look on his face. He then proceeded to have Hester attack her feet.
"Dad, you're so childish," she complained as she stepped out and closed the door.
"That's why you love me," he reminded her as they started walking. "How'd your meeting go?"
"Fine," she said. "I'm all signed up for classes."
"Your mom said you're taking four AP classes?" He asked with a wince.
Lia was tired of them acting like that was too much. Didn't they know she was trying to get into one of the top schools in the country? She couldn't do that with just regular classes, even if she got A+'s.
"I can handle it," she assured him as they neared Vanessa and the twins. Stella seemed to be tormenting her brother with a worm. He squealed as she dangled it near him. Seb hid behind his mother's legs.
Vanessa was looking overwhelmed. "Lia, do you mind taking your brother to go find a drink? I'll handle this monster."
Lia nodded and scooped up her sensitive brother. He very much wore his heart on his sleeve, much like their father. Whereas his twin sister was bold and a bit mischievous, Seb was quiet and sweet; happiest when he was playing with his Legos or PJ Masks action figures.
Lia took him to catering and hooked him up with some milk and crackers to calm him down. Always happy to play extra mom, she took him back to the trailer and they read books quietly before it was time to go.
—-
Later that afternoon, Vanessa and the kids arrived back at their Welsh home. It was nap time for the kids. They always thought they weren't tired but both would almost immediately fall asleep once they lied down in their beds.
It was finally quiet in the house so Vanessa sat down with a hot mug of tea and opened her laptop. Her clock was still set to New York time so she could better stay on course with her coworkers.
After the twins had been born, Vanessa struggled with postpartum depression for a while. Luckily, Lin had been on the ball and insisted she see her doctor. She prescribed some medication and she saw a therapist once a week for a few months. Because of the workload of two babies she took a step back at the firm. She basically took the first year off and had only worked about twenty hours a week since then. However, she was starting to get an itch to go back full time.
She loved her babies of course and knew she'd miss them being away. However, she also felt refreshed and empowered when she took time away from them. There was something about pouring herself into her work and then being able to fully devote herself to her children, having been intellectually satisfied. It was like working two different muscles, and they seemed to work better when both had been exercised.
Being out of the country obviously made things more challenging, but she was keeping up with the work. She wanted to broach the subject with Lin soon, about going back to work full time. He was in the prime of his career and she missed that feeling about her own work. However, family was very important to them both and she knew he wasn't wild about having someone else raise their children all day. Beatriz had stayed with them throughout it all, and was willing to watch the twins full time once they returned to New York.
Just as she was getting into the flow of things, Seb began to cry. Vanessa immediately put her laptop aside and walked back to the bedroom the twins shared. He sat up in bed crying, rubbing at his eyes.
Vanessa sat down and pulled her son onto her lap, cradling him. "What's the matter?" She cooed. "Did you have a nightmare?"
He nodded tearfully as his mother rubbed his back. Luckily Stella was still asleep. She slept like a rock.
A few minutes later, he seemed to have calmed down enough that she laid him down and continued to rub his back. She hummed Dear Theodosia to him as he gently slipped off to sleep again.
Quietly, Vanessa slipped out of the room and made her way back to the couch. She picked up her laptop and tried to center herself again. However, her focus had been compromised and she soon found herself ready to give up for now.
Once again, her concentration had been broken and she felt frustration boiling over. It was her job to take care of her children, but shouldn't she also be able to focus on her work?
Giving up, she shut her laptop and went to the kitchen. This time she got some wine.
—
"They just won't stop bringing up my class load; it's deafening!"
Lia was on the floor of her bedroom leaned back on some pillows as she vented to her therapist via Skype. Although she had been reluctant to go to therapy when her parents had first brought up the idea when she was a freshman, she had ended up liking the hour a week sessions. By this point, Dr.Sanders knew more about Lia than most.
"But didn't you also say that they were leaving the number of classes up to you?"
"Yeah, in between reminding me every five seconds that they think I should do less," Lia replied.
Dr.Sanders took a few moments to write some notes down in notepad, something that had annoyed Lia in the beginning.
"It seems like it was a fair point to consider," Dr.Sanders pointed out, "You did say you were overwhelmed a lot,"
"That's because I was taking AP Microeconomics, and game theory still makes absolutely no sense to me,"
The psychologist laughed, "That makes two of us. So, you don't have any worries about this upcoming school year,"
Lia shook her head as she grabbed the throw blanket from her bed and threw it over her lap. The convenience of therapy in your bedroom. "I mean, it sucks that I'm starting my senior year online and have to keep up with the time difference, but I'll manage,"
"You did like taking your finals online though,"
"Yeah," Lia had preferred finishing off her year alone at her kitchen table rather than a classroom filled with anxiety and too much aftershave. "But I meant moreso with debate and newspaper,"
Dr. Sanders shifted her pen to her temple, "You're not doing chess this year?"
Lia gave a smirk, "Can't exactly play chess over video,"
The therapist stifled a laugh, and nodded her head in agreement, "Fair point. So, debate and newspaper. Were there issues with keeping up with them once you left in May?"
Lia shrugged her shoulders, "It's just hard sometimes keeping up with the schedules. They are starting meetings when the twins are going to bed, and dad is getting home, and everything is chaotic here which, before you say it, I know that that is something out of my control," One of the things that had been stressed throughout her sessions is not worrying about things that she couldn't change.
"So you have heard something I've said the past two years?"
"Something like that," Lia smiled. She liked that Dr.Sanders would joke around and not be like the type of adults who were always serious. The banter helped her open up.
"So you can't change the time of the meetings or your classes, but what if you talked to your friends-"
"Acquaintances," Lia interrupted. She didn't consider herself someone with friends. They just weren't in the cards for her.
"Acquaintances," Dr.Sanders corrected herself before continuing, "about filling you in things when you have to miss or maybe changing some of the times that you can submit things to fit with you being in a different time zone?"
Lia opened her mouth to reply, but stopped when she heard a clawing at her door, accompanied by a whimper.
She held up her finger to Dr.Sanders before getting up and creaking her door open for a small gray dog to ease through the door and jumped onto the beanbag Lia had been sitting in. Tobillo, or Tobi as the family affectionately nicknamed, had entered into the family after Lin and Vanessa had returned from their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. Lia had been shocked when her parents brought home the pup, having been told no constantly when she would ask for a dog as a kid. The story was that the newlyweds had been on the beach when Tobi came up and nibbled on Vanessa's ankle, which ultimately coined her name. Lia also suspected a few shots of tequila had probably also led to her mom agreeing to bring the dog home but, regardless, she loved the companion.
Lia sat back down and brought Tobi up onto her lap, Dr.Sanders used to the pet's appearance in their sessions. "But that won't work because no one gives sympathy to the girl who is across the globe because their famous father is filming a tv show,"
"But what about the editor of the newspaper? Or the student who won the award for best argument their first year on the team as a sophomore?" They had also been working on self-confidence.
Lia shook her head, stroking Tobi's back, "They don't see me as those things. I'm the girl who they either want to be their best friend because they think I can get access to things either or I'm the stuck up bitch who bought her way onto stuff,"
"Is that how they actually see you or how you perceive that they do?" She prodded.
Lia pursed her lips, "I know what you're doing,"
"Which is?"
"You want me to say that I have insecurities about opening up to people, and that I have some complex about people using me,"
Dr.Sanders folded her arms, "I didn't say any of that,"
"Yeah, but it's what you're getting at," Lia said with a look of disbelief. This wasn't the first time the therapist had posed a question to Lia. She knew the drill.
"All I did was ask a question." Dr. Sanders said with a smile before closing her notebook, "But we're out of time today. Why don't you think about your response, and we'll talk about it more next week."
Lia relented, not that she had much of a choice and said her goodbyes. She closed out of the program and shut her laptop.
She looked down at Tobi who was still curled up in her lap, looking up at her with her big, brown, pleading eyes. Lia let out a loud sigh, hating whenever she was left for something to 'think over' after a session.
"Tobi," Lia got up off the floor, dog in hands, as she headed to work on more practice tests before dinner, "Therapy sucks."