Hell yes I’m pissed at my dad. Angry he robbed me of all the things in life I deserved to do and see with him. Angry that he left me with a bucket load of promises I don’t want to keep most days and yet I do so that somehow, in some fucked-up way, he’ll be proud of me. I still love him just like I still love her despite how much she hates me.

I brace myself for the slap that comes but welcome it to shock me from the slide show in my mind of all the skeletons in our familial closet. It stings like a bitch despite her weakening physical state but I accept the pain.

“Mom, stop!” Hunter speaks up for me, knowing this isn’t my fault even though I’m sure over the years he’s blamed me too at some point. He uses the rage inside him over being cheated out of a father and he uses the drugs to numb himself as fuel to get back at me subconsciously.

“Don’t you protect him!” She whirls on Hunter, the pitch of her voice shrill. “He ruined our lives. Your brother didn’t try to stop it and ruined our lives.” She’s screaming now, loud enough that I hear the nurses call over the intercoms for a Code Gray in her room.

I fist my hands, the only reaction I can give when all I want to do is punch through the drywall beside me. She turns back to me, hands shoving, hysterics escalating, so that I can’t make out everything she’s saying but I do hear her say the comment that causes the burn of anger to comingle with the tears I refuse to shed. “You’re weak just like your father was.”

I grab on to her wrists as she continues to thump my chest even though they aren’t causing any real damage. The orderlies come in and help Hunter and me try to calm her down some, her head thrashing and arms flailing. I know they’re going to call the nurse in to medicate her if she doesn’t settle down so I do the only thing I can think of, the one thing that sometimes helps.

I begin to sing.

An old song that Aya, our nanny, used to sing to me when I had trouble sleeping after my dad died. When the sound and smell and image of that day would haunt my dreams so that I wanted to stay awake all night so I wouldn’t have to relive it. In my childhood naïveté I believed I could forget it. Fuck was I wrong.

I sing the foreign words that I held on to like a lifeline, some of their symbols inked on my skin still, and hope that it calms my mom so that she can forget: her cruel words, her pain, her mangled memories, her hatred of a tragic event a little boy had no control over.

I’m on the second verse when her resistance begins to abate. Her head sags down, her curses grow quieter, and then as we set her down on her bed, she begins crying. It’s so soft at first it takes me a moment to hear it but I kneel down in front of her, her hands still gripped in mine so that I can look up to her.

Her gaze meets mine and I see the confusion flicker in her eyes followed closely by panic. Her head whips back and forth looking at Hunter and me in a frantic haze as the fear takes hold. “Who are you? Why are you here?” She yanks her hands from mine and reaches for one of her purses on her bed and clutches it to her chest, fingers trembling, breathing rapid. “Joshua?” She yells, the name crippling every part of me. “Joshua?” Her voice escalates in pitch and in terror as she calls for my father.

“Mom! Mom!” I try to get her attention, break through her fear but feel as helpless now as I did standing with my dad.

“Mom?” She says as she looks back. “You’re not my son. My boys are young. Get away from me!” She yelps when I reach for her and scrambles as far away from me onto her bed as she can manage and curls into a ball, cowering.

“Mrs. Wilson,” the orderly says, and hearing someone call her the last name she insisted we abandon after his death is a jolt to my system. But she whips her head up and stares at him, eyes wide and expectant. “Joshua had to work late. He’ll be back later tonight.” I watch her absorb his words, and she gives little nods of her head as her breathing slows down. “He said to leave the—”

“Bathroom light on,” she finishes with a slight smile on her face that makes my heart ache so desperately I have to force the burn that’s back in my throat away. “Joshy doesn’t work at night though.”

“He has a dinner thing tonight.”

“Oh yes. With the Brooks firm. I forgot. Okay then.” She smiles at the orderly again and she seems so young, even the tone of her voice has softened and taken on a youthful quality. “Can you please see these strange men out? Josh would not be happy they’re here. You know he’s been known to throw a few punches in my honor.”

I’m a grown man—successful, famous, tatted up—and those last words, seeing my mom’s love for my dad before it turned bitter and resentful, have just reduced me to a child fighting back the sobs that are warring inside me.

My chest constricts with the pain, with the weakness I feel because I can’t bring him back…. I can’t get us back. My eyes meet Hunter’s and as we start to leave the room, I think of everything I can’t fix lately. But at the same time I know I’m looking at the one person I still can help.

As we leave I glance back at Mom through the open doorway and a part of me just needs her to be my mom again so badly. The one I remember from before. And I’m so desperate for the feeling of belonging, for the love, that there are days I consider dressing like Hunter and coming here to see her. Maybe then she’ll hold me in her arms and tell me she loves me. Maybe then she’ll not look at me and think of her weak son who did nothing to stop her husband’s suicide.

It’s a ludicrous thought. Even I know that, but it does nothing to abate that need I have deep down to hear her tell me she loves me one last time before her mind slips away for good. I swear to God it’s better to miss someone quietly than to let them know and get no response, because that lack of response? That’s the one that kills you.

The nurse comes in to give her her medication, and her appearance saves me from wanting to go back in and tell her good night. I wanted to wrap my arms around her small frame and feel her arms around me like she was hugging Hunter. I feel like a pussy, still needing that connection with her but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how tough you are, what shit life’s thrown at you, every fucking person still wants their mom at some point.

It’s like losing her over and over each time I see her even though she’s right there in front of me.



Chapter 10


QUINLAN

The lecture hall is noisy as I sit down in the last row as part of my perfectly timed entrance. I don’t want to see Hawkin, don’t want to deal with his bullshit—or the unexpected pang I feel at wanting him to look up and notice I’m there.

Get over it, Westin.

Somehow I’ve become a sappy female, and I’m usually so far from sappy it’s ridiculous. I wanted casual. Well, you can’t get any more casual than a guy who rejects you. Besides, if a guy’s not interested, I know how to brush it off and move on. Plenty of fish in the sea—one pectoral fin is the same as the next, just hopefully a little bigger.

I had thought Rick’s irrefutable demonstration of how men are like bras—that they hook up behind your back—had hardened me some and made me not care…. So why are things with Hawkin affecting me so much?

That’s the question I need an answer to but even after moping around like a lost puppy the past few days, I still don’t get it, don’t get him. We flirted, he made the first move when I was trying to show him the PA system, and so how am I left to feel like I’m the one inferring there was something more there than there really was?

He initiated the kiss on the porch. He led me from the kitchen to go upstairs. And then he said see-ya like nothing happened.

Maybe I’m just stressed about the couple of snags I’ve had with my thesis. The writer’s block that’s made a permanent place on my creative doorstep needs to leave sooner rather than later. It has to be the stress contributing to my vulnerable emotional state.

Not Hawkin per se, just the combination of everything all at once.

So when his voice fills the room, I hate that I immediately sit up taller hoping that he looks up and acknowledges me like some road-battered groupie who follows him from city to city wanting any scrap they can get from him.

Pathetic. Yep, that’s what he’s reduced me to and it’s not very attractive.

I keep my head angled down, pissed off at myself for how stupid I’m being. I don’t want to feed the insanity if he does actually look my way. I busy myself with double-checking notes for a different class, purposefully ignoring him. If I could stick my earbuds in and get away with it I would.

Anything to tune him out because all I want to do is let him in.

An hour later I sigh in relief as a few students in the class clap when the lecture finishes. I did it. See, Quin, not a problem, you can be in the same vicinity as him and not fall to his charms. My confidence boost rings false seeing as how in a lecture hall filled with hundreds that feat is a little easier to accomplish, but I’ll take what I can get.

When I rise from my seat I make the fatal error of looking down to the front of the room. And of course he’s talking to some coed but his eyes find mine, causing that punch of carnal lust to hit me hard. I reason that I’m just horny and need to get good and laid. The kind of laid that leaves your knees rubbery and your body feeling like it’s floating on a cloud while you wait to come down from its euphoric high.

The kind that allows you to lose your thoughts for a while.

We stare at each for a beat. Long enough for the jolt of chemistry between us to reach across the distance and attack my senses. That panicked feeling hits me chased by unfettered lust. I force myself to turn abruptly and walk the few steps up to the door and out of the auditorium, feeling like I’ve gained a bit of my good sense in walking away from him on my own accord, this time.