Perfect Kisses

by Maine, Miley

  “What job?” I attempt to struggle out of the cuffs, but all that does is cause me pain. I’m already all hot and bothered, full of agony and tears. Causing myself pain is only making it worse. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. This must be a mistake. I haven’t done anything wrong. I want my son back. Where is Travis?”

  I ignore the police officer and start yelling my boy’s name over and over again. I can sense him trying to talk to me, and I think he’s trying to explain exactly why I’m in hand cuffs right now, but I’m beyond listening to him. I can’t hear him because I’m too consumed with panic.

  “Ma’am? Miss Brown?” the officer yells. “I really don’t want to charge you with a resisting arrest.”

  “Resisting arrest?” Those words hit home hard. I know that I am in hand cuffs, but I didn’t actually realize I was being arrested. Does that make me totally naive? “I don’t understand what I’m being arrested for. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Please tell me what I’ve done. Please tell me why you are taking my son away from me. I can’t believe you are even doing this in front of Travis. Are you trying to traumatize a young boy? This is so messed up...”

  I can feel my blood boiling, my anger bubbling up yet again, it really is crazy that they would do this over nothing. Because there isn’t anything that I’ve done wrong, I’m sure that eventually, we are going to find out this is all just a mistake, but by then the damage will be done. Travis will be hurt forever...

  I don’t fully get into my rant because the door swings open and there I see an ashen faced Marc. He looks horror stricken, which I suppose is to be understood since all of this is happening in his house. I bet he’s wondering why he invited us to come and live with him, but I’m also relieved because if anyone can sort this out it’s him.

  “Help,” I mouth at him, my face absolutely soaking now. “Help me.”

  “What the hell is going on here now?” he growls, seemingly full of rage himself. “Where is Travis?”

  He isn’t looking at me. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems like Marc can’t bear to see me. I have spent so long not meeting his eyes that I recognize the signs. Only I couldn’t look at him because I like him so much, but I don’t think that’s the same now as to what’s happening.

  All I want to do is reach out and hold him, I want to explain everything, to make it all right again, but I’m stuck here, unable to do anything.

  Unfortunately, I don’t get to hear the end of that sentence because the police officer takes Marc into the other room, presumably to give him an idea of what’s happening here. It would be nice if he could do that in front of me too because I would know as well, but it seems that letting me know for what reason I have these hand cuffs on for is a second priority.

  I want to run. That’s my instinctive answer. My body sets in to ‘fight or flight’ mode, and since my hands are tied behind my back making it impossible for me to fight, I want to run, but I can’t. Not without knowing what’s going on with Travis, not with the other police officers and the child protective service workers staring at me like they are. Like I’m scum of the earth, not someone to be trusted with a child.

  But why would they think that? What has changed now? I have struggled on for the past six years of my life. This is the most settled we have ever been. So why would it happen right now? It honestly doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been racking my brain ever since the police officers burst into this house, but I just don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I can’t picture anything. Even a mistake that I didn’t mean to make...

  “What is going on?” I call out again. “I don’t understand. Please someone help me.”

  I fall to my knees. I don’t even feel my legs giving way until I’m a heap on the floor. Someone tries to help me up, but it feels like I have gone floppy, like I have absolutely no scrap of energy left in my body. I’m no longer human, just a shell, and there is nothing that anyone can do to help me.

  “Help me,” I whimper. “Help me, someone.”

  It was the look in Marc’s eyes that got me the most. The way that he couldn’t really see me anymore. This mistake has changed his opinion of me, and it leaves me wondering if there is any way to get it back. I haven’t even done anything wrong this time, but I might be able to lose my happiness anyway. Travis’s too. After all the promises I made to him.

  “Aisha.” I only move when I hear Marc calling out my name quietly and I feel his hand touching my shoulder. He’s the only person who can drag me out of this right now. Well, he and Travis, but I don’t know where my son is right now. “Aisha, I need to talk to you right now, and I really need you to hear me. You need to nod to let me know that you’re focused on my words.” I do as he commands. Somehow, I just about manage to work out the energy for that. “Ronnie, Travis’s father has reported you to child protective services. He wants to take custody of your son because he blames you are an unfit mother.”

  “But proof...” I say weakly, because surely, he needs to have some proof that I am no good for Travis.

  “I don’t know how, but it seems that he has proof,” Marc confirms. “From what I can gather, he has hired someone to follow you, someone to dig out all of your financial information, which I guess doesn’t look good.”

  My heart sinks. If Ronnie has done that then I really am stuffed. Of course, my financial situation hasn’t always been great, but that’s because I’ve been doing it on my own, he has refused to help me, so how can he turn that around on me now?

  “You called him?” Marc stares at me questioningly, hurt to the very core and I can see it. “You contacted him and that’s where he started all of this. That’s when he found a way to track you down.”

  I feel sick to my stomach, physically ill. Knowing that all of this is my fault because I made some stupid panicked phone calls is the absolute worst news ever. Especially because this moment could lead to me losing my son. Losing Travis to him, a man who doesn’t deserve him one bit. A man who won’t love him or show him any kind of good life. How can that be fair? How can that be justice?

  “He has been dealing with child protective services for a while, trying to sort out an emergency order to give him custody.”

  “No,” I cry out, a guttural primal yell from the depths of me. From a part of me that I didn’t even know existed. “No, he can’t do that to me.”

  This is worse than any nightmare, there is no situation that could destroy me as much as this. Ronnie must know that which is why he’s doing it. But why would he want to destroy me? What have I ever done wrong to him? All I did was love him then raise his child when he couldn’t do it. How does that make me the bad guy in his eyes?

  “Right now, that’s exactly what he’s doing to you.” Marc rests his hands on my shoulders. “I’m telling you this bluntly because I think that’s the only way you’ll understand right now. This is happening, but I will help you. I will do everything that I can which you can’t.”

  “I want to help,” I reply helplessly. “Why can’t I do anything?”

  “Because you are under arrest...”

  “But why?” I wail. “Why are CPS doing this to me? That part doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That is because you recently took out an illegal loan. One which is involved with organized crime and is a definite cause to get you locked up.”

  The loan. The thing that was supposed to help me get organized, to put my money all in one place, and to help me start again... I thought I was being so smart when I hit that accept button. I did it so quick because it was a limited time offer, and now as I look at my world crashing and crumbling around me, I can see just how stupid that was.

  “Why did you get an illegal loan?” I can hear just how heartbroken Marc is by this. “I could have helped you. I wanted to help you and you wouldn’t let me. This isn’t better. Why did you pick this path instead?”

  When he puts it like that, it makes me realize how dumb I was to follow my pride, how silly of me it was to not jus
t take everything he was offering me. But in my defense, I didn’t know that Ronnie was watching me, plotting to take me down, I didn’t know that I was going to end up in hand cuffs, I just didn’t know any of this...

  “I don’t know, I’m sorry.” I turn my face away from him, needing to hide my shame. I have definitely ruined things now. I’m sure there is no coming back from this. “I’m so sorry, Marc. I’m sorry.”

  I’m not just apologizing to him; I’m apologizing to my son as well for messing up his life over and over again. But he can’t hear me, CPS has taken away him from me because they feel I’m clearly unfit as a mother. They are about to trust Ronnie, a man who has never had anything to do with Travis, over me because someone somewhere has made the decision that he is a better option.

  I know he isn’t, there is no way in hell that he can be, but in this deep pit of depression I can feel myself tumbling in to, I start telling myself that anyone would be better than me. Maybe even him...

  21

  Marc

  January 23rd

  “I don’t understand,” I mutter sadly to myself as I watch Aisha being led away into the police car. “Why did this happen? I don’t get it. This could have all been avoided…”

  But for all this not to happen, she should have talked to me and I guess she must not feel comfortable doing that. She doesn’t like taking anything from me, she refuses to take a damn thing from me because she doesn’t seem to want to be helped, but she’s more than willing to take out some dodgy illegal loan online. What the hell does that say about our relationship? I thought that we had a good one and that she trusted me. I guess I was completely blind.

  “Excuse me, Sir,” the CPS officer asks as she tries to slide by me… but I can’t just let her go because she has Travis with her, and I know that this is the part which upset Aisha the most.

  “Where are you going?” I demand. “Where are you taking Travis?”

  The poor kid looks terrified. I can see it in his eyes that he’s begging me for help. His one stability has been driven away in a cop car which must be terrible, and now I’m all that’s left. He doesn’t know this woman and he sure as shit doesn’t know this father of his, so he can’t be taken to go and live with him. That’s absolutely crazy, they can’t just do that because of biology. All I want to do is take Travis’s hand and to save him, but I can’t. This is a very serious legal situation, and I don’t want to make it any worse than it already is.

  “I can’t discuss this with you,” the bitchy woman replies tartly. “You are not the boy’s father. You aren’t related to Travis at all, so this is a conversation that can’t be had.”

  I part my lips with a million and one arguments crossing my lips, but all of them fall away because there really isn’t anything that I can do here. It isn’t even like Travis has been living with me for years, and I have been dating his mother forever. It’s been a few weeks. I don’t have any right to say anything, even if I really want to.

  Travis stares at me like I’m letting him down as he is dragged from my home, and that’s exactly how I feel as well. Like I am failing him, but the more I fight this, the worse I will make it for everyone in the long run. I can’t sort this short term, but I can in the long term… somehow. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do, but I will do something.

  As soon as they are gone, I feel all of the air strip from my body. I can now understand why Aisha ended up in a pile on the floor, because the energy literally zapped from her. There wasn’t anything left, and that’s a bit like me right now.

  My family… my happiness… it’s all gone, and I am the only one who can sort it.

  “What the fuck?” I slam my front door hard and let out an impressively loud growl. “What the fuck just happened? One minute I was thinking about babies and stuff, and now… now I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Aisha is in a police cell; Travis is with the CPS.”

  My head falls into my hands and I feel distress capture me. The fact that none of this needed to happen is the worst thing. Pride really has been the fall of Aisha and it’s stupid. So fucking dumb it crushes me. I could have just sorted it for her in an instant. I have earned all of my cash by working hard, but I certainly haven’t spent it all. This is the sort of thing that I want to spend my money on… helping someone else. Helping Aisha.

  “Your dad would have probably been in the same,” I try to remind myself. “He wanted to do everything on his own as well. He didn’t like to accept help…”

  Well, he didn’t until he met my stepmother. Then little by little he let her in. The love that she gave him allowed him to open up and to take her help. It saddens me that Aisha doesn’t seem to feel the same way about me, because I’m definitely in that place over here.

  “Stop fucking wallowing.” I bang my fists down on my kitchen counter until my hands actually begin to hurt. “Don’t wallow, there is no time. You need to find a way to sort this.”

  But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where I can even begin. Could I call the police station and try and bail Aisha out? I don’t know. I have no idea how any of this legal shit works. I haven’t ever been in this position before.

  “What is that?” All of a sudden, I catch a glimpse of something half poking out from under my couch. I bend down and grab it, immediately noting that it’s Aisha’s cell phone. She must have dropped it when the cops came in and arrested her in shock. “Could this help?”

  It’s easy to unlock her phone. It’s Travis’s birthday. I’m sure she won’t mind me prying into her private business if it’s to sort this out. It desperately needs doing, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

  Call her Mom…? Hmm. This is risky. I know from what she has told me that she doesn’t exactly have the best relationship in the world with her parents, but this is a desperate situation, isn’t it? Am I being an idealist for thinking that they might want to help and that this might bring them back together? Maybe so, but since my head is all over the place, I go with the instinct.

  As the phone rings, I feel sick to my stomach. I’m scared that I might actually throw up, and it doesn’t help that they are taking their sweet ass time to pick up the phone…

  “Hello?” God, the man sounds cold. Nothing like Aisha at all.

  “Er, hello.” Shit, I feel nervous now. I should have planned out what I was going to say in advance. “My name is Marc. I’m friends with Aisha…”

  “I don’t think this is a conversation that I need to have with you.” He interrupts me rapidly. “If I am going to talk to anyone about it, I would prefer my daughter to call us herself. If she has anything to say, then I don’t want to hear it through a third party.”

  If he’s being cold with me, then I’m prepared to give him a sharp shock back. “She can’t contact you at the moment because she is currently in jail.” I expect him to say something here, or to even gasp in shock, but I get nothing. Just a silence that hurts my ear drums. “She has been locked up because she got herself in a financial hole. I think she might have been in one for years, ever since she left home.” I’m not directly blaming him, but I hope he gets the hint that he isn’t totally innocent here. “She is in a mess.”

  “Well, that isn’t something that I can help with,” he finally replies icily. “That sounds like a mess that she has gotten herself in to, so she needs to get herself out of as well. Are you her current boyfriend? Perhaps then this is your problem.”

  I suck in a shocked breath. He hasn’t even asked about Travis. It’s like he doesn’t even care. This literally kills me deep inside me. I adore that boy so much, I would do anything to save him, yet someone who is actually related to him doesn’t give a shit. It seems crazy. Especially to me because I would do absolutely anything to have my family back here.

  “Okay, well I wasn’t calling you to ask for financial help,” I insist. “Ronnie, who I presume you know is Travis’s father…” I will mention the boy, even if he isn�
�t going to ask. “Has created a shit storm for Aisha. Somehow, he has sparked all of this, and I need some help taking him down. I thought this might be something you would like to help me with.”

  I don’t know what I’m expecting, I don’t know what next will come out of this man’s mouth which makes me nervous, but I’m sure that deep down there must be a part of him that wants to help his daughter out. He can’t just totally turn his back on his child, no matter what he tries to tell himself. I just have to drag it out of him somehow…

  * * *

  That last phone call was bad enough. Contacting Aisha’s parents was a fucking nightmare, but this is a million times worse. Still, after thinking it through a number of times, I don’t see what else I can do. I’m honestly not sure what other option there is.

  “This can only go one way or the other,” I tell myself as I stare at the phone screen. “This can either be the best thing you have ever done, the right decision, or…”

  I suppose it could also get worse, but I don’t want to consider that possibility because I’m pretty sure that this is the worst that it could possibly be. I don’t want to think about the chance of it becoming even more horrific than this.

  I hit the dial button, because I don’t want to give myself a moment to talk myself out of this. I have made the choice to do this and it’s what I need to do.

  “Aisha?” he picks up far quicker than Aisha’s parents did. “Is that you?”

  “You know damn well it isn’t,” I reply with a hardened tone. “Ronnie, since I already know that you have been following her, I’m sure you are aware of where she is.”

  “Ah!” He sounds far too pleased with himself. My blood bubbles with a burning hot rage. “So, you are calling me to try and protect Little Miss Mother of the Year.”

  “What the fuck do you know about parenting?” I can’t lose my cool, I have to keep it together, but he’s getting to me. He’s winding me up. “You haven’t been around at all.”