Trapped with My Best Friend’s Dad by Flora Ferrari
Chapter One
Rayla
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Millie asks.
I smile and shake my head as I inch my way forward in the line to check my luggage. Millie and I were supposed to be visiting her Maine holiday home together for a week this summer, but her flight has just been canceled and she can’t get another until tomorrow evening.
That’sthe price we pay for arranging holidays when we live on opposite sides of the country.
I’m flying over from California and she’s stranded in New York.
“It’s just a day,” I tell her on the phone. “I’ll hang out. Maybe work on that play I’ve been neglecting. Maybe I’ll run some lines. Please relax.”
“I just feel so bad.”
She groans in that way I’m familiar with, all her empathy bursting through.
Ever since we met by chance at college two years ago, it’s difficult to imagine life without her. We bonded straight away through our shared love of literature and drama and generally being silly. Neither of us had a bona fide bestie when we were growing up, and it’s like we’re making up for that fact as we threw ourselves into this friendship, our chemistry goes well beyond our two years.
I find myself being able to read her far easier than anybody else, even my mom and step-dad, Markus.
“Just relax, jeez.” I laugh. “It’s not your fault the flight got canceled, is it?”
“Freaking mechanical fault.” She sighs. “It’s like the airline’s trying to trap me in New York.”
“So you can work on your novel?” I tease.
One of our running jokes is that we’re both constantly starting projects only to abandon them. Even though it always makes me laugh when we banter in this way, I can’t deny there’s a nugget of discomfort in there when I think about my unfinished play.
I know it’s the same for Millie with her novel, and what are friends for if not to joke about your shared failures with you?
“Yeah, exactly.” She giggles. “I’ve already rebooked for tomorrow evening, but that means you’re going to have the whole place to yourself for at least a day. What the heck are you going to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll set the place on fire.” I laugh. “You’re talking like I’m some helpless damsel or something, completely lost without you.”
“Well, do you remember when we first met?”
I groan, a smile touching my lips as the memory hits me. It was at an extra-curricular drama club and I was carrying all the props in the universe. At least, that’s how it felt at the time.
As the newbie, I was tasked with carrying a bunch of hats, wigs, fake guns, cutlasses, and a bunch of other drama-related stuff into the big rehearsal hall. But of course, I ended up dropping the whole pile at the worst possible moment, right as the Queen Bee was launching into her lengthy monologue.
Everybody laughed as it all crashed down around me, but then Millie was there, kneeling down beside me with a soft smile on her face.
She’s my opposite in pretty much every way, physically speaking.
She’s thin and tall. I’m short and, well, not thin.
She has blonde hair and I have dark brown.
She’s got a tattoo on her wrist – a blue butterfly – and another of an angel spreading its wings on her lower back. I don’t have any tattoos, never even thought about it. I tell myself this is because I want to keep my skin untouched for acting roles in the future, but honestly, it just doesn’t interest me.
And needles?
No thanks.
“I think I’ve matured a little in the last two years. I mean, heck, look at me… ready to brave the dangerous terrain of Maine all by myself, ready to stay at a luxurious holiday home and completely raid your fridge.”
She laughs. “Yes, everything’s already been stocked up. I spoke to Jensen earlier in the week.”
I’ve never pried into just how wealthy Millie is, but I know she has a fair amount of money because her dad is Roman Robinson, one of the most successful authors of the last fifty years. His series of World War Two novels has been made into a hit television show and every single one of his thrillers are international bestsellers.
Jensen is the Robinson’s fixer – a man who arranges for their lives to be easy and fluid and fun.
So many girls would flaunt this wealth, rocking up to college with designer labels and draped in jewelry. But Millie has never advertised the fact she’s Roman Robinson’s daughter, and when she submits short stories to publications, she even uses a pen name so they won’t make the connection.
“I don’t want to succeed just because my dad did,” she said to me once, while sitting up late one night in the drama hall, empty apart from us so our voices echoed all around us. “I want to do something important, significant, meaningful… and not just because my last name is Robinson, you know?”
“Of course,” I told her. “But if my dad was a famous actor, you better believe I’d be riding his coattails.”
She laughed and nudged me playfully. “I don’t believe you.”
The line inches forward, calling me back to the present.
Outside the floor to ceiling windows, planes take off and land in the gorgeous glittering Californian sun.
I think about mom out in the garden, leaning over the flowerbeds, in full hippie mode as she tends to her paradise.
“Are you going to work on the play?” Millie asks.
“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’m better just focusing on acting. It’s difficult enough to hone all those techniques without adding a bunch of writing on top, you know? Maybe I should leave the writing to other people.”
I can almost see the pensive way she’s stroking her chin. She always does that, even when I lightly tease her about it. “I know what you mean. But I do a little acting even if my main focus is writing. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
The line inches forward even more until I’m face to face with the airline employee. She gives me that blunt hurry the hell up look that seems to be their specialty.
“Listen, I have to go.”
“Okay,” Millie says. “And again, I’m—”
“Don’t you dare apologize again. See you later.”
“Bye, bye.”
I go through security and let my mind flit to what I’m going to do when I get to the cabin… That’s what Millie said, cabin, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be a simple humble wooden structure.
But then again, I don’t know. Millie and I never discuss money, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It simply isn’t part of our friendship.
As I board the airplane, I can’t help but think about Roman Robinson, Millie’s dad. Even if he’s one of the most successful writers in the world, I have no idea what he looks like. He’s been very careful about never releasing an image of himself, and Millie has never shown me a picture.
I know he raised Millie alone after her mother died in childbirth. I know he used to be an incredibly prolific writer until recently. He hasn’t released a book in the last three years, and Millie’s made hints here and there that he’s suffering from writer’s block.
It’s part of his mystique, part of what makes him so famous – his utter refusal to participate in public life.
It’s a testament to just how incredible his writing is too. What other author could get away with never appearing in public or online?
As I rest my head against the window and watch the ground drift away, I can’t figure out why my mind keeps returning to this mystery man. Perhaps it’s because I finished one of his books last night, a thriller called Sometimes in the Rain, and the last paragraph keeps bouncing around and around in my head.
There is a pain that will never leave, he wrote. It’s a pain that will hammer into you every second of every day for the rest of your life. And that, my friend, is the pain of not taking a chance: of not acting when the opportunity arises. It’s a pain that will haunt you long after you are gone, corrupting the flowers which attempt to grow around your grave. It is a pain…
And then the novel freaking ended, leaving me feeling enraptured, curious, and changed in some way, a feeling only great novels can achieve.
But none of that matters, I assure myself as the plane soars through the air.
This summer break is about relaxing and spending time with Millie.
Not thinking about her dad.
