As soon as I told Mum that I had my first real boyfriend, she obsessed over meeting him in a better, more relaxed setting than when she was crying and screaming and trying to fend off my father. I managed to stave her off for a few days, until she insisted one afternoon that we run some errands together after I got home from school and she had the energy for it. I wasn’t suspicious of anything until she told me she also wanted to take me out for dinner, and gosh, didn’t Italian food just sound so delicious?
Rosetta was right there, as always, when we walked in, and I introduced the two of them to be polite before she sat us in her son’s section of the dining room. He was sickeningly sweet toward my mother, and when he brought our food out to us, he had a third plate on his serving tray, taking a seat between us so he could use his break to join us for dinner. I don’t think I got more than a dozen words into that conversation, because Mum kept talking and talking, but he never once seemed to mind. He asked her questions about life in England, about the things she liked, about standard, sterile mom topics. Neither of them mentioned the debacle with Roger that first night, and they seemed to get along extremely well. The entire drive home, she gushed like a schoolgirl about how lovely he was, and after his shift was over, I got a text from Joey expressing much the same sentiment the other way around.
I shouldn’t at all have been shocked about the scene he and I walked into that night when we pushed the door open. The lights were off in my living room, but the television was stuck on some sort of sports channel, the announcers acting as the lullaby that kept Roger fast asleep on the sofa. He was lying in a tangle of limbs, his open mouth amplifying his already obnoxious snoring. Thankfully enough, the delightful aroma of sugar cookies coming from the kitchen covered up the acrid stench of liquor that followed my father wherever he went.
Mum looked quite tired when she shambled from the kitchen to greet me, but she brightened immediately when she realized I wasn’t alone. “Joey! It’s nice to see your handsome face again, darlin’.”
“The feeling is quite mutual, Mum,” he grinned in reply as she hugged him instead of me. Joey’s charm, I’ve noticed, was unlike any other, and it swallowed my mother up all at once.
“As you might be able to tell, after he passed out, I had time to do some bakin’,” she rambled as she shuffled back toward the kitchen. “Joey, you’re more than welcome to stick around and have some with us, if you’d like.”
He smiled remorsefully at her. “I’d love to, but I have some other people waiting out in the car. I just came in to say a quick hello.”
“Nonsense!” Mum exclaimed, her face alight at the prospect. What with her illness limiting her ability to live a normal life, she’d come to live somewhat vicariously through me. My stories delighted her and she loved hearing about my day, and something told me the invitation she was about to extend wasn’t entirely for my benefit. “Invite them in and they can have some with us as well, because Lord knows we don’t need to keep all these for three people.”
“You know, strangely enough, Mum, I’d really rather they stayed outside,” I cut her off urgently before she could get too excited, motioning to my unconscious father sprawled on the couch.
She replied monotonously, staring vacantly at her husband silhouetted in the light from the television, “He’s been like that for hours, since he got home from work. I doubt he’d stir if you had your friends ‘round.”
Truly, I didn’t doubt her. It was anything but uncommon for him to stumble in from work and kiss his alcohol hello instead of his wife, and the empty bottle of Cuervo on the end table was all I needed to know about what kind of night it had been while I was out. Still, I didn’t quite feel like explaining to Joey’s friends that the passed out, still-drunk lump on the sofa was my father, and please don’t wake him up or he’ll actively try to hurt us.
I told Mum pointedly, “I know he won’t wake up, but I’m still giving that offer, as nice as it might be, a hard no.”
Mum’s disappointment was obvious on her face, and I really did feel bad to let her down like that, but not bad enough to put myself in an extremely awkward position. I’d worked my ass off that night to seem like a normal human being, and I’d be damned if my not-quite stable home life was going to ruin all the progress I made. Without a word, Mum grabbed a Tupperware container from the cabinet next to the sink, beginning to pack some cookies into it for Joey to take.
My boyfriend turned to me cautiously. “Are you absolutely positive he won’t wake up? I don’t really know how much I want to leave you two here if there’s a chance you’ll have to deal with him at some point tonight.”
From her spot at the counter, Mum flapped a hand at him. “I promise you, he’s out for the night. The bottle on the end table is the second one he got into, so he’s good and sleepin’.” She ran her fingers through her wiry, thinning hair. “I ought to stay here to be sure he’s awake in time for work tomorrow, but Love, you’re more than welcome to leave if you’d like.”
Joey’s eyes met mine, his silent, urging plea quite clear to me in his gaze, but I couldn’t bring myself to impose again. I’d spent the night there a handful of times already, including the night before. Mum called while we were on the way to my house to warn that Roger was being belligerent, and again, the Attolliccis opened their home to me without question. I missed my own bed, and moreover, I missed talking to Danny, who never seemed to show up at Joey’s house. I still had yet to speak to him about the tour announcement, and that coupled with Roger sleeping like a baby solidified my decision to stick around.
“I’ll be okay tonight,” I refuted with a reassuring smile.
Mum tightened the lid on the container of cookies and passed it to Joey. “At least share these with your friends, then. I feel awful not sharin’ the wealth when we have a million in here for ourselves.”
She said her goodbyes quickly, as the oven timer was beeping with more cookies, and Joey took the chance to pull me back toward the door with him. “Are you positive you’ll be okay here? I don’t mean to be pushy, but I won’t forgive myself if he wakes up and something happens.”
Really, his offer was quite tempting. Part of me wanted to crawl into his bed again (I had taken to sneaking into his room for snuggles after his parents went to bed) and fall asleep in his warm, comforting embrace, and not move until he had to get down to The Bistro for his lunch shift the following day. The other part, however, wanted to partake in her own little private indulgence, and now that she was close to getting her way, she wasn’t going to let me stop her.
“I’ll be fine,” I reiterated, my smile saccharine and sincere. “He’ll sleep all night, and I’ll watch TV in my room before I pass out myself.” I rested a hand against his broad chest, my fingers playing idly with his gold Cornicello charm necklace I’d never once seen him without, the Italian symbol for good luck that he refused to ever part with. “I’ll be asleep when he leaves for his field work in the morning, and I’ll enjoy an afternoon of peace and quiet until you get out of work. I’ll see you tomorrow when you pick me up after your shift, and I promise you, I’ll be in one piece.”
Realizing he wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing with me, he settled for giving me a lingering, tender kiss before stepping back out into the frigid winter air. I watched from the window as he made it back to his car and pulled away from the curb.
When I turned back, Mum was leaned against the wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “He’s such a sweet boy, Love, and you make such a lovely pair,” she told me with a warm smile. “I’m happy that you’re finally happy.”
I was originally planning to tell her that I was going to just relax alone in my room before bed, but her garish appearance stopped me dead in my tracks before I could get a word out. Perhaps it was just the harsh light from the television, but she stood before me with all the imperfections in her skin illuminated, and she looked so much like a ghost, a shell of who she once was.
Seeing her like that forced me to tak
e a good, hard look at the woman my mother had become. Her sunken eyes had very little light left in them, her cheeks were thinning, and so, too, was her long, graying hair. She had bags under her eyes, and so many more wrinkles and crude lines in her face than I ever remembered her having before. Her insipid skin, its rosy luster now long gone, only highlighted how withered everything else about her had become.
In crept the sinking feeling that I always tried my hardest to avoid – the reminder that my mother was actively fighting a potentially terminal disease. Girls who are still in high school are not supposed to be faced with the reality that they might actually lose their mother. Someday down the line, I wasn’t naïve enough to believe I wouldn’t have to deal with her passing away, but it was meant to be so far off. I couldn’t deal with that reality, not now, not yet.
I’d been so wrapped up in myself the past few weeks that I’d barely gotten to see her much at all, and seeing her in that cruel lighting opened my eyes. Suddenly, I was terrified at the thought of losing her, and it was what encouraged me to say, “Thanks, Mum. Now that he’s gone, would you maybe want to sit around and talk for a little bit while your cookies finish up?”
She seemed almost taken aback by my suggestion, which only drove the self-loathing that I was letting her slip away a little deeper into my chest. “Of course. Is everythin’ okay, Love?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded hurriedly. “I just haven’t seen you all that much lately, what with school and Joey and Ellie and everything,” and my creeping fear pushed me into adding for good measure, “and I miss you, and I love you.”
Her smile brought some life back to her pallid expression. “Well, then, I’ll put on some tea, and we can chat your evenin’ while the last few dozen are baking.”
And we did. We spent about two hours at the kitchen table together that night, just being as normal a mother and daughter as we could be. We sipped hot tea, nibbled on fresh cookies, gossiped about my life and my goings-on, painted each other’s fingernails a pastel coral shade, and laughed together about everything and nothing. I hoped that, since she didn’t have much going on that didn’t involve some sort of agony, maybe hearing about my life, knowing that her child was starting to feel okay, would breathe some life back into her. It both warmed my heart and also broke it to see how delighted she seemed that I was taking the time to sit down and actually talk to her for the first time in a shamefully long time.
Eventually, the day began to take its toll on her and she started fading out, so I suggested maybe we should get some sleep. It was shortly after midnight, much later than she usually stayed up, so she was more than okay with following me upstairs. Before I let her go, I remembered to hug her goodnight for the first time in I’m not even sure how long. She felt so frail in my embrace, withering away in my arms as I tried my best to blink away my tears until I was on my own, and I buried myself in my sheets as soon as I got into my room. I refused to cry, to let myself mourn her while she was very much still around, because the fact that she was still there that night felt somehow like the most important thing in the world.
Finding sleep didn’t take too long once I gathered myself again. If I was going to see Danny for the first time in days, I needed to be composed. Sure, he’d seen me at my worst, but he and I had happy, hopeful things to talk about, and I didn’t want to spoil it with tearful thoughts of things he couldn’t change. Before I knew it, I felt the familiar sensation that I wasn’t alone in my bedroom. His presence ignited every synapse in my brain, and I sat bolt upright to greet him.
“Whoa,” Danny cooed softly from where he stood at the foot of my bed. “Calm down; it’s just me.”
But, I couldn’t calm down. I hadn’t seen him since he alluded to my surprise, and I hadn’t had the chance to gush with him about the fact that we’d be seeing each other for real in a matter of weeks. Overcome with the thrill of the premise, I yelped in excitement and shot out of bed toward him, crashing directly into his arms to give him a tight hug.
Except, in all my joy, I forgot about the cosmic middle finger that forbade us from touching. The next time I blinked, I found myself hugging one of my pillows, and I grumbled to myself as I tossed my head back angrily to try getting back to sleep.
I knew I was back in our lucid world when I heard Danny snickering right beside me in my bed. I rolled over onto my side and opened my eyes, greeted by the delightful sight of his smile. “Sorry,” I mumbled to him sheepishly.
“You good now?” he asked, still chuckling. “Got that all out of your system?”
I shoved him playfully, carefully making sure to touch the fabric of his t-shirt instead of his exposed arm. “Maybe if your surprise the other day hadn’t been as awesome as it was, I wouldn’t have been so eager to thank you for it.”
“There’s no need to thank me,” he told me, his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath against my lips. “Mainly because I didn’t schedule the tour, but rest assured that, if that were my job, I’d absolutely still stop in Rhodes.”
I sighed contentedly, rolling over onto my back again and staring idly at the ceiling. “Just knowing you’re coming here is so surreal. There won’t be any boundaries and I can give you a hug without making you vanish.”
He maneuvered his arm so it was wrapped around me, and he nestled comfortably in the spot beside me. “I’ll allow it, on the grounds that you’re standing in the front row that night. I just want to be able to see you, to know you’re really there.”
As if I would actually settle for anything less? “My friends and I are already planning to skip school that day so we can get a good spot in line.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, who are you coming with?”
With just those few words, my airy, lighthearted feeling dissolved all at once, the void it left rapidly filling with heavy, black dread.
When Joey and I saw that they’d be coming here, after he gave me a moment to freak out a little bit because he knew how much I loved them, he informed me that he’d be coming with me no matter what. After I’d spent the day as the girl I was when I was with him, I accepted it blindly. That meant he would be right beside me throughout the duration of the show, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to hide who he was to me. He would ask questions if I tried to make sure I was far away from him, but Danny would ask questions if I didn’t.
Trying not to trip on my words, I had to answer him. I’d reserved to never lie to him, but that didn’t mean I had to tell the whole truth. “Just a few friends,” I opted to say. “Ellie will be there for sure. Her boyfriend Josh is coming, and he’s bringing his friend, Joey. Our friends, Yosuke and Sam, will be coming, too.” Joey and Josh were friends, somehow, so technically, I was being honest.
Danny nodded, accepting my answer without question, and I tried hard not to heave a sigh of relief. “It sounds like you’ll have a good time,” he told me, smiling a bit. “Just so you know, a lot of times, we hang out by the bus after the show, so I’d love it if you came back to say hello. Then, I can steal you away from all the stuff happening in your life, and you can live on the road with me, and we’ll just spend all of our time having adventures and enjoying each other.”
The comment was enough to elicit a laugh out of me, and because of that, we spent all night giggling about the various types of shenanigans we’d get into if I did indeed run away with the band. When his alarm went off and he had to get going so he could make it to an early-morning meeting with people from his label, he pointedly reminded me that he’d see me soon. The next time I blinked, he was gone, but the feeling of comfort he left me with lingered as I remained tucked safely away in dreamland, thinking about how sweet a life with him could be.
Chapter Fourteen
“You look absolutely splendid tonight, Love,” Mum beamed, her eyes fixed on my reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was finally my eighteenth birthday, and she’d spent the day helping me get ready for the party Joey was throwing for me. He’d spoken to her at length about
it a few days before, but she told me absolutely nothing, silently pulling out all the stops so I looked nothing short of amazing for the occasion.
She let me skip school that day, much to Ellie’s chagrin, letting me sleep as late as I wanted before taking me for breakfast and out shopping at the mall. I got to pick out a few things I wanted, but she insisted that I also select a dress while we were there, and I opted for a burgundy skater fit piece that flattered my figure. After that, Mum took me for mani-pedi, and once we were back home, she got me into my dress and helped me with my makeup as well. From the shaggy, unkempt beast that went shopping in jeans, a hoodie, and a sloppy bun, Mum built a princess.
She had just enough time to compliment me before a horn sounded outside, and she dashed to the window to see who it was, although I think we both already knew. “That has to be Joey,” I commented.
“It is. He’s comin’ to the door, Love, and he looks wonderful,” she gushed as she all but pushed past me to race downstairs so she could receive him.
I heard him chatting with my mother from where I stood fixing a piece of hair that’d fallen out of place, excited to look good when he saw me. Finally satisfied, I stepped out onto the landing of the stairs, and he couldn’t stop looking at me as I made my way toward him. His entire face lit up, a smile breaking out across his lips. “You look,” he paused for a moment to find his words, “spectacular, Ash.”
My cheeks burned roughly the same color as my dress as I descended the stairs to take my place at his side. He wrapped an arm around my waist and playfully reached out to cover Mum’s eyes with his other hand, just long enough to kiss me hello. She erupted with a roar of laughter as she swatted his hand, and she turned to me once she could see again. “I’ll try to be awake when you come home, but regardless, I want you to have the best time tonight, okay?”
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