Grey

by Aundrea Ascencio

  "Fine, since you won't give me a straight answer in that category, let's move on to the next item on the checklist," she said. "What about women? How many sex partners have you had in the past two years? No, we probably don't have time for all that. Let's do one year instead."

  "You're joking, right?"

  "Do I look like I'm laughing?" Olivia asked him. "How many girls have you slept with before you got to Chantel?"

  "That's a little personal to be asking about on the first date, don't you think?"

  "Wow, you can't answer anything without that apathetic look in your eyes. You're a lot more screwed up than I thought you were," Olivia said. "Were your parents involved at all in your life?"

  "What do you want from me, lady?" Eric asked, feeling his face grow hot with anger.

  "I want you to stay away from my daughter, but as of right now, I don't have any control over that. So, if you have any soul in you, you'd at least answer me this. What's your deal?" she demanded. "If my daughter were in her right mind right now, you would not be sitting at this table. What exactly did you say or do to her to make her lose track of her common sense?"

  Eric dropped his napkin onto the table, nearing the end of his patience. "I asked her to marry me," he blurted out, rather matter-of-factually.

  "Over my dead body."

  "Well, we're all here to die."

  "I don't like the way you said that," she said. "Have you ever been arrested?"

  "That's none of your business."

  "Have you ever killed anybody?" she demanded.

  "And this date is over," Eric said, standing and taking out his wallet. He counted out the money for the bill and tip, and placed it on the table. "Goodnight, Mrs. Pari. I hope to see you again under better circumstances."

  "But am I wrong about any of it?" she asked. "I may not know everything, but I know your kind, and that's enough. I'm a teacher. I watch plenty of people walk through my life. I've stumbled upon kids like you many a time in my career. They act like the sweetest human beings on the planet. They'll smile in your face and tell you everything you want to hear, but if you look deep enough into their eyes, you see nothing. No thoughts. No consideration for anyone. No emotion. Only defiance."

  "Well, you're the expert, right?"

  "If you do anything to hurt my daughter, I will find you. That's a promise," she warned.

  "I'm right here," Eric told her. "Why wait?"

  "That sounds a lot like a threat to me," Olivia said.

  "No, ma'am. Never. Despite what you seem to think about me, I got a lot more respect than that," Eric responded. "If you got some discrimination against me, then by all means, let's settle it. Who knows when we'll get the chance again?"

  "I won't even waste my time," she said. "Sooner or later, she's going to realize exactly who you are, and we'll see who's laughing then."

  "Who am I, Mrs. Pari?" he asked. "What exactly do you see?"

  "I see a lost boy. A vulnerable boy. A boy who has to leech off the life of a beautiful innocent girl because he can't get his own shit together," Olivia told him. "You might be able to hide it from her, but I see right through you. You're running from something. I don't know what it is, but I can see that you're scared as hell of it. You're using Chantel. You're hiding behind her so you won't have to face whatever monster that you really are."

  "You're crazy," Eric said, stepping back from her and shaking his head. "And they let you walk around like this? They need to lock you up, lady."

  "You know what," she said dangerously, pointing a threatening finger at him. "You can put on a nice shirt and use your fork and knife like a gentleman, but all your life, you're only ever going to be one thing. A punk. My daughter deserves better than that."

  "I deserve better than what?" Chantel asked, approaching the table, still smiling and swooning in a bygone moment that had long since departed from the table.

  Olivia threw her purse onto her shoulder and slid out of her chair. "We're done here," she told her daughter sternly. "Can you take me back to my hotel? I need to get out of this place."

  "But we just ordered dessert," Chantel said, still clueless of the exchange that had gone on.

  "Oh, I can't stomach that right now. I feel sick as it is," Olivia snapped.

  Chantel stood dumbfound as the realization that something bad had transpired gradually dawned on her.

  "Chant, can we talk?" Eric asked her quietly, but against all hope, Mrs. Pari overheard him.

  "You've done enough!" Mrs. Pari declared to him, pointing that finger again. "You've done enough."

  "What's going on?" Chantel asked, absolutely taken aback by her mother's reddening face. Never in her life had she seen her so furious.

  "The next time you call me to go somewhere, don't bring him," Mrs. Pari said. "I can't believe I just wasted my whole night listening to this thug."

  "Excuse me?" Eric demanded.

  "Can you just stop talking?" Mrs. Pari shot at him, but shaking her head, she decided that was wishful thinking. "Never mind. It's not worth it. Here's my card for the tab, Chant. I'll meet you in the car." She shoved the money Eric had placed on the table back at him. "You need it more than we do."

  Then she stormed out of the restaurant.

  Chantel turned to Eric fiercely. "What did you do?" she demanded. "Did you say something to her?"

  "I didn't do anything," Eric defended. "Your mother's out of her fucking mind. How is that my fault?"

  He could've said the same thing in a gentler way, especially in the heat of that moment, but the levies of his patience had finally bursts against the anger and injustice he felt over the ordeal. The way Chantel got worked up about it did nothing to help him regain control.

  He felt cornered, and could not find security even in her. Despite everything she'd said before about giving him a chance against her preexisting prejudice, and loving him for the person that he was, she seemed awfully determine to jump to quick conclusions and believe that the blame laid on him for ruining the evening, without even knowing at all what had gone on.

  "Eric, what happened?" Chantel demanded.

  "She came at me with all these invasive questions, stuff she had no damn business asking me, and accused me of all this shit, and I don't even know where it came from," Eric said. "Then she got pissed because I wouldn't confirm any of it, and she blew up from there."

  "Oh my god," Chantel said, distressed. "She's my mother, Eric!"

  "Ya, I get that, but she's also rude as hell. There was no reason for her to come at me like that. I have done nothing but treat that woman with respect all night."

  "We can talk about this later in private, but you really need to go out there and apologize to her," Chantel told him.

  "No. I'll apologize to you about how the night turned out, but I don't have anything to apologize to her about," he said, shaking his head. "She's not the one who deserves an apology."

  "Can you ever just stop being a problem?!" she shouted in frustration, silencing the whole restaurant. "What point are you trying to prove? You're not a badass, Eric. You can't just say and do what you want to people. Nobody respects you for being defiant, and stuff like this just makes you look like an asshole."

  "There it is," Eric said quietly, gazing at her in defeat as his frustration melted away into pain. "This is the real you."

  Chantel's lip quivered with emotion, but it was too late to take it back. Words never come back.

  "Eric," she said more calmly. "What I'm trying to say is-"

  "Nothing's changed this past year," he said. "You don't trust me. Period. In fact, you're terrified of me. To you, I'm a walking time bomb. If someone made you put a gun to my head and told you to pull the trigger or else that bomb would go off, you wouldn't hesitate. You wouldn't even give me the benefit of the doubt. You'd pull the trigger. You'd put the monster down-"

  "Eric-"

  "Because obviously I'm not capable of being anything else, right? I'm always the monster."

  "Eric, I don't h
ave time to talk about this right now. I really need to get out there with my mom."

  "I know," he said, nodding in understanding. "That's all I had to say anyway."

  Chantel hesitated, not knowing what to do. To address what he was saying or see about her mother?

  Eric waited for her to resolve her dilemma. Chantel could not in good faith leave him standing there, because she knew that after such a decision, things would never be the same between them again. She felt him gradually slipping away from her, and she couldn't hold on.

  "I'm sorry," she said regretfully. "I can't do this now. I need to get out there."

  Eric remained quiet and motionless, trying to process what she really meant by the word sorry. Sorry about the way he had been treated, or sorry that she could not trust him enough to take his side?

  She wanted to say more. He wished she would, but her thoughts were disconnected from her ability to speak. He could see the battle in her eyes, but neither her nor he could find the words to save each other.

  In the end, she did pull the trigger.

  She turned and walked away, as concern for her mother finally won over her priorities.

  Growing Pains

  Eric didn't stay much longer after that.

  He gave her time to leave the restaurant before walking out the door himself. He hadn't counted on her lingering in the parking lot next to her car, waiting for one last attempt to make peace with him.

  "Eric," she called after him, but she was a ghost to him. He didn't hear her, or pretended not to hear her. He kept his pace, marching into the far off darkness of the parking lot.

  "Let him go, Chantel," her mother told her.

  "This isn't a safe neighborhood for him to be walking in at night," Chantel said, jumping into the driver seat of her car, determined to catch up to Eric. "I was supposed to be his ride home."

  "He's gone now," her mother said, looking back through the rear window. "I'm sure it's the neighborhood, not him, who's got something to be afraid of tonight. God, that guy gives me the creeps. I knew there was something off about him."

  Chantel didn't comment, staring lifelessly at her steering wheel and the blinking lights on her dashboard. "What happened?" she asked finally, in a voice as small as she looked.

  "I saved my daughter from a predator, that's what happened."

  "So you did attack him?"

  "I didn't attack him," Olivia defended. "I was just having a conversation with him, and he turned into a smartass on me."

  "Eric was nice to you."

  "That is not a nice boy, I can tell you that already. He did not once bow his head to bless his food. He smokes. He drinks. He does drugs. He sleeps around. He's been arrested! Did you know that, or was he hiding that from you too?"

  "He got arrested because of me."

  Olivia's jaw dropped in disbelief. "What do you mean he got arrested because of you? Chantel, what is going on with you lately? You're hanging around with this guy who's nothing but trouble and-"

  "It was a fight," Chantel informed her. "I had no control over it, and I didn't ask him to step in, but he felt obliged to do it to defend me against a bad person who wouldn't have otherwise stepped down. In the end, no charges were pressed. He's not a criminal."

  "Why didn't you tell me about this?" Olivia asked, still dumbfound at the fact that her daughter lived this kind of life now. "You never said anything about being in danger."

  "I'm not in danger. I was never in any danger," Chantel cried. "In fact, before tonight, I thought I was the happiest I've ever been."

  "Not because of him," Olivia insisted. "Chantel, you are a good girl with a good life and a bright future. You have accomplished so much and you have the potential to accomplish so much more. What are you doing here?"

  Chantel looked away from her, watching her own reflection in the side mirror as tears flooded down her cheeks.

  "You don't need this kind of trouble in your life, and that boy's got trouble written all over him. He is not good for you. At all," Olivia continued. "I know what it's like to be at this age and how it is with boys. When it's your first steady relationship, you think it's serious and you think you're in love, and it warps your reality. Sometimes when you idealize someone, it's hard to see them for who they are, and it's even harder to accept what other people see in him. I've come across so many people in my life, Chant, and I have this kind of intuition when meeting a person, and Eric gives off a bad vibe. He's just not for you, sweetie. Now, that's not saying that he's a bad person, but he is a bad influence for you. I saw some things in him tonight that gave me chills, and maybe I did overreact a little bit and for that I am sorry. But I do not regret standing up for my daughter when I saw there was a problem."

  "You don't know him," Chantel whispered, trying to keep her trembling voice steady.

  "I know enough, because I've seen what he's doing to you," her mother said. "You've changed a lot these past few months, Chantel, and it doesn't feel like a good change. You've let this boy completely take over your world, and that's dangerous. I'm worried about you. Have you been smoking and sleeping around too?"

  "Even if I was, it's my business," Chantel replied. "I'm a grown woman. I'm not under your roof anymore. I've been living my own life out here for a while now. I can handle my own decisions."

  That hurt Olivia, but Chantel was in no mood to stroke her feelings. She was enraged that her mother had intentionally confronted Eric for the sole purpose of causing conflict between them, a conflict that could very well terminate any hope of reconciliation with him later.

  Above all, Chantel was infuriated with herself for not handling it better when she had a chance, and balancing her equally important roles as Eric's confidant and her mother's daughter. She felt as if, from the beginning, her overprotective mother had been wary of the idea of someone influencing her daughter's life in such a significant way. Chantel would have understood her anxieties, and probably have appreciated them more if Olivia had talked to her about it privately, rather than drag Eric into it.

  Now she could only feel that her mother was against her, and had never acted in her benefit.

  "No, I'm sorry that's not entirely true," Olivia finally replied. "You look like a grown woman, but when I look at you I see my child. That's not fair to you, but that's the truth. And the way you've been acting lately, it just makes me want to hang onto you more and protect you from the danger you're putting yourself in.

  "You're right. You do have the right to make decisions about your life now as an adult, but even though you're no longer living under my roof, you're still dependent in so many ways. You're still growing, Chantel. You're still trying to find your way, and I get it. You're going to make mistakes along the way, and I have to learn to step back and let you figure it out. But when I see a problem you're heading into, one that you're clearly not ready to deal with, I can't just sit back and watch. You're my little girl. You're young and innocent and you're not really acquainted with the world yet. I just wanted to protect you. That's my job. Protecting you. If you're going to hate me for that, go ahead, but I can't change it. I can't change the fact that I'm your mother."

  Neither of them said another word on the way back to Olivia's hotel, nursing their personal injury and lingering in their own version of self-righteousness.

  Olivia was the only one to break the silence upon reaching the hotel, reminding Chantel that she loved her more than anything, and that she hoped they could talk about it in the morning when they were both rested.

  Chantel's only response was a retreating glance in another direction.

  Realizing she would get nothing else out of her daughter, Olivia said goodnight and closed the passenger door.

  Perfect

  Mia waited up late for Chantel, partly because she wanted to be sure her friend got home ok, and partly because she wanted to be the first to know every graphic detail about how Chantel's boyfriend dated Chantel's mother.

  She heard Chantel's keys in the door, and abandon
ed her work to race to the door and admit her friend in.

  "Do you know what time it is, young lady?" Mia scolded her lightheartedly. "So how did it go playing the chaperon on your mom's and boyfriend's date? Are they soulmates now? Did they hit first, second, or third base?"

  Chantel shot an unexpectedly dark look at Mia, and tossed her keys on the desk. "Don't ask."

  "Whoa, you know I'm joking, right? They didn't actually kiss? Oh God, I hope not," Mia laughed. "You look really pissed off. What happened?"

  "Don't ask," Chantel said more firmly, but the firmness costed her the control she had over her trembling voice, and Mia immediately detected the thin fragility of her tone. She examined her friend's face closely and traced the ghostly footprints of recent tears.

  "Oh my god, Chant," Mia said, all playfulness giving way to deep concern. "Have you been crying? Are you ok?"

  "I'm fine," Chantel dismissed, marching over to her bed and collapsing onto her soft ballet pink pillows. "I just want to sleep. Do you mind if I turn the light off?"

  "Sure, I'm done here anyways," Mia said, closing her notebook inside her textbook.

  Chantel made no further apologies for interrupting her studies, and quickly shut the light off before it compromised anything else that she wished to keep secret.

  Mia grabbed her favorite magenta throw blanket from her bed, the one with the skulls and roses that her mother had sent her from Mexico. She let it fall over Chantel's body, securing her in a cocoon of warmth and security. Then she snuggled up against Chantel's back, and stroked her head lightly. "I'm here if you need me," she whispered to Chantel. "Always."

  Chantel sniffled, breaking under Mia's gentle hand, unable to hold back the tears any longer. "I'm so stupid," she sobbed.

  "Why would you think that?" Mia asked.