She sniffled and stood up straight. “It’s for the best, Shannon Sofia.”
Shannon Sofia.
She’d used my whole name, which meant her words were written in stone.
She was really going to do it. She was going to walk out the front door and leave because of my drunken father and his lies.
How was this right? How was this fair?
“She’s been there for us when he couldn’t be, Mom. How can you do this?”
Mom began crying and left the room as if it was too much for her to handle. If it was too much, why was she allowing it to happen?
“I’ll go with you, Mima,” I promised. She shouldn’t have to be alone. She shouldn’t have to walk out that front door on her own.
“No. You’ll stay here. It’s what’s right. You need to be here at home.”
“This isn’t a home without you. You are my home,” I whispered as the tears began falling down my cheeks. I rushed over to her and wrapped my arms tightly around her body. “Please, Mima. Please don’t leave me here with him. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t watch him pull her down and break her again.”
She held me so tight.
So. Very. Tight.
“Sé valiente, mi amor,” she whispered. Be brave, my love. “Sé fuerte.” Be strong. “Sé amable.” Be kind. “Y quédate.” And stay. “Be here for your mother. She needs you, Shay. More than you’ll ever know, she needs you. Don’t make this harder for her.”
“I don’t understand. Why is she like this? Why is she so weak for him? I hate him. I hate him so much, but I hate her more for loving him. I hate them both for taking you away from me.”
“No, no, no,” she scolded, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t ever speak so ill of your mother. She has been through more wars than you’ll ever know. You have no clue the things she’s done to protect you, to be there for you.”
“The best thing she could do for me is to leave my father.”
“Oh, honey…” Her voice dropped and she shook her head. “I’m sorry this is so hard on you. It’s hard on me, too. It’s sitting heavy on my heart.”
It was becoming hard to breathe, and my heart was twisting into a knot more and more as reality set in. She was going to go. She was going to leave me. I pulled her in for another hug. “Mima…” I sobbed against her blouse. She didn’t cry, though. Mima never fell apart; she simply held others together. “Please let me go with you, Mima. Please. I can’t do this without you.”
“You’re not without me, Shay. I won’t be far, but your mother? She can’t do this without you being here. That’s the truest truth. Be easy on her heart. Be easy on her soul—it’s broken and raw. You’re the only daylight she has right now. So please…stay.”
I cried into her arms for a while before she asked me to load up the car. Before she drove away, she pulled me into a hug once more and kissed my forehead.
Who knew forehead kisses could both heal and hurt?
I stayed on the sidewalk until her car rounded the corner.
Dad wasn’t even home. He was probably off in some bar, drinking or out dealing with people he shouldn’t have been messing around with, with no concern about what his actions were doing to our family. Each negative choice he made ripped the strands of our family unit, and yet he kept doing it, not thinking about us, not thinking of anything but himself.
I barged back into the house, heartbroken and furious. I had to get through to my mother. I needed her to wake up from this nightmare love story she’d been living in for far too long. As I entered the house, ready to snap at her, I paused my steps as I headed in her direction. She was in the bathroom with the door shut, and I listened as she sobbed uncontrollably. Her breaths were weighted and tired. When I turned the doorknob and opened the door, I found her sitting on the side of the tub with her hands covering her face.
I was still angry, hurt, confused. I still planned to let her know how I felt. I still planned on voicing my thoughts and making it clear that her choices were affecting everything and everyone around us, not just herself…but I couldn’t in that moment.
She was already low, and I couldn’t push her any lower.
Sé valiente, sé fuerte, sé amable, y quédate.
I moved into the bathroom. I sat down on the edge of the bathtub with her. I wrapped my arms around her.
And I stayed.
20
Shay
I couldn’t sleep that night. The alarm clock sat on my dresser, the red lights displaying the time, mocking me and my exhaustion. Dad hadn’t come home. Mom was still crying in her bedroom, and Mima wasn’t here. The house felt emptied of its light, and it made it impossible for me to sleep.
I glanced at the alarm clock once more.
12:09pm
Too late to call him, I told myself. Plus, why would I even try? If I woke him up, I’d feel bad for interrupting his sleep, seeing how I knew he struggled to fall asleep on his own. But, if he was up…if the night was keeping him awake, I wanted to hear his voice on the other end of the line.
I dialed Landon’s number. As it rang, my heart sat in my throat, and I tried my best to swallow it down.
“You okay?” were the first words to leave his mouth as he answered. His voice had its normal smokiness without any hint of just waking up.
My heart, which still sat in my throat, began racing even more. I placed my collar into my mouth and chewed on it lightly. “Why would those be your first words?”
“Because it’s past midnight, and most calls past midnight are with upsetting news or booty calls. If this is a booty call then, by all means…”
I could imagine the smirk on his face.
“It’s not a booty call.”
“Damn. So back to my original question…you okay?”
“Define okay.” I laughed, grinding my teeth against the fabric. “My grandmother moved out today. Or, well, my mother pretty much kicked her out after one too many arguments about my father.”
“What?” His voice was alert. “Where is she? Is she okay? Where will she stay?”
I’d almost forgotten how much a part of Landon’s life Mima had been. The concern in his voice made me wish he was there with me so we could worry about my grandmother together.
“Is she okay?” he asked again.
“She has an apartment she’s renting for the time being. It’s hard to tell if she’s okay, really. She has a hard shell and acts like nothing gets to her, even though I know it does. She doesn’t show weakness ever, and when she’s broken, I don’t think I’d even notice. She’s been our family’s rock from day one. I don’t know who she leans on when she’s hurting, because we’ve all spent so much time leaning on her. I just worry she’s struggling with all of this and she’ll never admit it. She doesn’t show her emotions like that.”
“The people who show the least emotions are normally the ones who hurt the most,” he stated.
My chest tightened. “Personal experience?”
“Something like that.” The tone of his voice made it clear he didn’t want to dive deeper into the subject. “Maria means a lot to me. Even though she’s my housekeeper, she’s been there for me through some of the hardest days.”
“Housekeeper?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah. She comes over every Sunday. She has for the past forever years.”
“Landon, my grandmother hasn’t been a housekeeper for years. She opened her yoga studio about four years ago…” My heart skipped as I thought about Mima and what she always said she was doing on Sunday afternoons. “She said her Sundays were meant for a dear friend of hers.”
Landon went quiet on the line. I imagined his bushy brows pushed together, and the confusion swirling in his mind as the silence stretched across the call. “She isn’t a housekeeper anymore?”
“No. Not for a long time now.”
More silence. “I don’t get it…” he confessed. “I don’t get how she’s such a good person.”
“Yeah, neither do
I.”
“Is that why you can’t sleep? Because you’re worried about Maria?”
“Yes.” I shifted around in my bed. “Why are you up?”
“Kind of what I do.”
“You need sleep, Landon.”
“I know, but just because you need something doesn’t mean it comes easily.”
True.
“I can stay on the phone with you until you fall asleep if that helps.”
“I don’t know if it will, but it’s worth a try. And Chick?”
“Yes?”
“Stop chewing on your shirt.”
I dropped the fabric from between my lips and shifted around a bit. “What should we talk about?”
“Anything you want…everything.”
So, that was exactly what we did. We talked about stupid things. Favorite things. Sports.
I didn’t have much to say about sports, but he shared his favorite teams. Even though he was from Illinois, he loved the Green Bay Packers. Even though he should’ve repped the orange and blue, his sports colors were green and yellow.
I called him a traitor, even though I knew nothing about football. He called me beautiful just because.
His favorite candy was Reese’s Cups. His favorite soda was Mountain Dew. If he could visit any state, he’d want to go to California. He was afraid of snakes and loved dogs.
His favorite movie was Home Alone. “I love the part when he plays the movie clip and it says, ‘Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.’ I swear, when I was ten, I said that to anyone and everyone for a year straight. I still think it’s the funniest shit,” he explained, snickering to himself. I loved his laugh the most.
I gave him facts about me, too. How my goal in life was to see one of my screenplays made into a film or television series. How I dreamed of achieving the EGOT—an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Sure, it seemed like a farfetched dream, but if Audrey Hepburn could do it, maybe I could, too.
Even though I was nowhere near as talented as Audrey.
I told him she was my favorite actress. Her romantic comedies were some of my favorites and the reason I’d fallen in love with writing romances. I told him my favorite writers, too.
I told him so many things others probably found boring, but he listened and asked me questions about my dreams, my wishes, and my hopes.
“You can do it all, Chick. You will do it all,” he promised. “You’re too damn stubborn not to.”
That wasn’t a lie. Even if I didn’t do it all, I was going to fight like hell to get as close to my dreams as possible.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you want to do?”
“I hate that question,” he muttered. “It always feels loaded.”
“Loaded with what?”
“Pressure.” He grumbled a little through the receiver and then cleared his throat. “Everyone has an idea of what they want to do. Hank and Raine want to open that bakery and café shop crap. Eric wants to do engineering. Grey is a shoo-in for taking over his family’s whiskey company. Reggie has it locked down to be a homeless dick begging people for money so he can get a ticket back home to Kentucky. Everyone has their stuff figured out, while I’m walking around lost as fuck like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.” He paused. “That’s another favorite movie. Home Alone then Pulp Fiction.”
“I’ve never seen that movie.”
“Ah, and to think you were just starting to grow on me.”
I snickered. “You’ve been growing on me, too, actually.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Like a disgusting fungus between my toes.”
He laughed out loud, and my stomach fluttered with butterflies from the sound. I liked that. I liked that I made him laugh.
“You don’t have to have it all figured out right now, Landon. So many people go to school undecided. Some people take a year off to figure out what they really want to do. Some people don’t go to school at all. None of those are wrong choices. None of those choices are better than others.”
“Yeah, I guess. I just wish my dad understood that.”
“I’m beginning to think parents aren’t meant to understand us kids.”
“And we aren’t meant to understand them,” he added.
Never a truer statement. I wondered if parents even remembered what it felt like to be young, and confused, and completely without direction.
Then again, Mom had looked to be all those things that evening.
Maybe parents were still kids with old, tired hearts, and every time they beat, they cracked a little more.
My phone dinged and I received a message from Tracey. She and Raine had been texting me all night about a party at Reggie’s house—which was the last thing I wanted to be a part of.
Tracey: You were right about Reggie. He’s an asshole and I’m done with him forever.
The relief I felt when I read those words was overwhelming. For a split second, I wondered what brought about her revelation. Then, I realized it didn’t really matter. As long as he was out of the picture, I was happy.
“It seems Tracey is officially over the Reggie infatuation,” I yawned into the phone receiver.
“Good. He’s a fucking asshole. And that means a lot coming from an asshole like me.”
“You’re not an asshole, Landon,” I yawned again, “You’re a like a teddy bear hiding in a grizzly bear outfit.”
He snickered. “You’re yawning,” Landon noted. “Go to sleep.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the sleepiness to fade. “I’m still here. I’m good.”
I yawned again.
“Hang up,” he said.
“Not until you’re asleep.”
“You’ll be asleep before me.”
“But stay on the line until you fall asleep, too.”
“Okay.”
I yawned once more, my eyes feeling heavy. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
I didn’t know if he was a boy who broke his promises, but I was hoping he wasn’t.
As I was falling asleep, I gently spoke. “You could be an actor, Land. You know that, right? You’re so good at it. You could be the greatest actor in the world.”
“That’s sleepiness talking. You’re delusional.” He yawned next. Perfect. “Good night, Chicken. I hate you.”
He’d called me Chicken, and I hadn’t known I could love a nickname that grew from hate. “I hate you, too, Satan.”
“Yeah, but I hate you the most.”
21
Landon
Shay fell asleep before me, but I kept my promise to her and stayed on the phone until I was sleeping too—and I actually did fall asleep. I wasn’t sure if it was the sound of her breathing or the fact that I had a feeling she’d somehow find out if I did hang up on her, but I slept.
I went to sleep with the moon and woke to the sun.
I woke up refreshed, which was something I hadn’t done in such a long, long time.
When the doorbell rang that afternoon, I hurried downstairs to answer it, knowing it could only be one person. I swung the door open and there Maria was, sporting her classic Maria smile.
“Afternoon, Landon.” She grinned ear to ear, walking in with a food dish in her hand. Meatloaf—at least it smelled like meatloaf. She handed it over to me and eyed me up and down. “You look well-rested—that’s good. You slept.”
“Yeah, I did.” Thanks to your granddaughter and her magic powers over me. “The place isn’t that messy today, if you want to just hang out and watch television or something.”
“I don’t get paid to watch television, Landon Scott.”
I wasn’t certain she was getting paid at all.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” I smirked, nudging her in the side. “Plus, I made your favorite cookies—oatmeal raisin with pecans.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You baked for me?”
“Yeah. So, what do you say? How about a day off?”
She darted her eyes away from me, and I figure
d it was to hide her emotions. Maria was far too proud to ever show her struggles, and I knew this. So, I wasn’t going to push her into opening up to me. I planned to make her day as comfortable as I could, bringing her a little bit of joy during a crappy season of her life.
“You won’t tell your parents?” she asked, her voice low with concern.
“I won’t. We can hang out in the living room and watch TV. I have the DVDs of Friends.”
“I’ve never seen that show,” she admitted.
What was with Shay’s family and not seeing great entertainment?
“Well, today’s your lucky day. Come on.”
We sat in the living room all day watching episode after episode of Friends. Every now and then Maria would laugh at the show, but most of the time she shook her head and grumbled, “Dios mío!” with annoyance at the characters.
She didn’t even make us eat at the dining room table for dinner. We ate the meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and one too many cookies with ice cream on the coffee table as we watched.
“You’re a lot like that Joey character,” Maria remarked, nodding toward the screen. “A dorky, handsome guy.”
I snickered and raised an eyebrow, giving her a slight nod. “How you doin’?” I quoted.
Of course, Maria didn’t pick up on Joey’s infamous line, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I’m doing fine, but this show is awful.”
That made me laugh even more.
I’d never had a grandmother figure, but I figured this was what it would feel like if I did. It would be a collection of random moments that added up to big things, big memories. That was what Maria had been to me over the past several years. She’d been these small moments that built up into something important to me. There weren’t many important things in my life, but she was one of them.
Top five at least.
Her granddaughter was climbing her way up that ladder, too.
After the night ended, Maria collected her things and headed to the front door. “Thank you for tonight, Landon. I know you may not know this, but I needed today. I needed a day off.”
Landon & Shay - Part One: (The L&S Duet Book 1) Page 19