Текст книги "Falling to Pieces"

Автор книги: Leddy Harper

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“The other night…” She seemed so nervous to talk to me, which was completely out of character for her. I’d never seen her even hesitate when speaking to me, so this had me quiet and still, waiting for the familiar sting of her words. “I was mad and made the decision to let you walk home. I honestly had no idea it had started to rain until way later. And I swear to you, I thought you had come inside. I saw your keys on the counter when I came down from my shower, and figured you’d gone upstairs. And since I was mad, I didn’t want to go up and check on you, because I knew it would only cause me to yell.”

“I don’t get it, Mom. I rang the doorbell and pounded on the door for a long time. At least five straight minutes. How did you not hear that?” Tears stung my eyes, remembering that night so clearly, and unable to believe a word she said.

“That must’ve been while I was in the shower. I’ve done some awful things to you, things I’m not proud of and don’t want to discuss right now, but I’d never purposely leave you outside in that weather overnight. I’d never do that.” Her voice shook, causing me to focus on her watering eyes.

I’d never seen her cry before. I’d heard her after my dad left, but it was always behind a closed door. Watching tears pull at the rims of her eyes before cascading quickly down her rosy cheeks weakened my resolve. It crumbled my hard exterior when it came to her, and it softened my fight. I didn’t want to believe her, but witnessing her guilt over it, I couldn’t help but buy her story.

“And then you were quiet and down on Sunday, and I just thought you were pissed about it. I didn’t know what to say by that point. I felt horrible knowing you’d been outside that whole time, but I didn’t know how to express it. I have a hard time showing my feelings around you sometimes.”

I shook my head, which caused her to pause her excuse. “You don’t have a hard time showing me your anger. You never hesitate to let me know when I’ve pissed you off or I’m doing something wrong. You never tiptoe around your feelings about my grades or school. The only time you have any difficulty expressing anything is when you do something wrong. When you knock my head against a door and make me look like I’ve gone twelve rounds with Rocky. Or when you leave me alone at a closed library, and make me walk home in the freezing rain. When you make me sleep on a lounge chair in the back yard with nothing to keep me warm. Those are the only times you hesitate to say anything. Is it that hard to admit you’ve done something wrong? Is it that hard to apologize…or at least let me know you feel bad about it?” Tears had streaked my face by that point, and nothing could stop the quivering in my chin. My hands shook in my lap from the adrenaline that sucker-punched my system. I’d never spoken back to my mom before, and had it not felt so good at that moment, I would’ve feared the repercussions.

Her throat worked hard as she swallowed, probably feeling every ounce of my anger. All I wanted her to see was that I was a child—her child—and never deserved anything she’d ever given me. I deserved so much better than being ignored or treated like some household servant. I was the only family she had left, and she made me feel as if she’d rather be alone than to have me there. I wished she could see that.

“Is it so hard to be my mom?” My words were nothing but a whispered plea, begging her to show me that she loved me. In that moment, I didn’t feel like a sixteen-year-old. I felt like a small child, hungry for the love and affection from a parent.

Some kids act out to gain their parent’s attention. They say bad attention is better than none at all. Some kids seek it from other people or things. Drugs. Alcohol. Parties and sex. But not me. I never once acted out, talked back, did anything bad to be seen. I would’ve rather gone the rest of my life invisible to her than to garner the wrong kind of notice.

But Axel had done something to me. He saw me. And it made me feel special. It made me yearn to experience that from the one person that was supposed to give it to me. I didn’t need to daydream about some relationship with a man whose purpose was to prepare me for the future. I didn’t need to spend my time thinking about a guy that smiled at me, imagining what it would be like to be held by him. I didn’t need a stranger to comfort me. I needed that from my mom. That was her job. She was supposed to teach me what love meant. It was her responsibility to lay the groundwork for my future, give me an example of the way it’s supposed to be, show me what I had to look forward to. It was her job to hold me when I was scared, dry my tears, and bring me medicine when I was sick. All these things I’d buried long ago. I’d come to the conclusion when I was very young that I’d never get that…not from her. And when my dad left, I’d accepted that I’d never get that from anyone.

Until Axel Taylor came into my life.

Until I walked into his classroom.

Until he showed me he cared.

Now, after all this time, I wanted it from her. I wanted it from my mom. And I would fight to get it if I had to. I would call her out on her bullshit. Her lies. Her inability to take blame or apologize for her mistakes. I couldn’t allow it to carry on the way it was.

“Don’t you get tired of this?” I asked, studying her reaction closely.

Her eyes dropped, her hands fisted in her lap, and her shoulders pulled back, as if the muscles were taut with some kind of heavy emotion I couldn’t read. I couldn’t read it because I’d never seen it on her before.

“Don’t you want to have a relationship with me? I’m your daughter. I’m your only child.” I hiccupped a sob when I said, “Don’t you love me?” The tears had filled my vision so much that I couldn’t see her. She was nothing more than a shadowy figure in front of me.

“I just wanted you to know that I never meant to leave you locked outside. It was an accident.” Her voice was all I had to go on since I couldn’t see her, and it was filled with ice. Cold and distant. It lacked the emotion I’d previously witnessed before going blind with salty pain. “It’ll never happen again.”

And then the shadow rose from the ground and vanished. I couldn’t even find the strength to wipe my eyes, knowing if I could see her walk away from me, it would be worse than the assumption. I couldn’t handle that, even though it was all I was used to. It reiterated to me that my mother was nothing more than a silhouette. She was the closing curtain on my final act, leaving me alone on the stage of life with my grief and deep-seeded insecurities. Hell, she was my insecurity.

All this started because of one man.

Axel Taylor had ruined me.

I laid in bed and stared at my new phone, clutching it tightly in my hand. I’d gone through life alone, and dealt with the rejection my mother handed me on a daily basis all by myself. But, for some reason, I now felt the desire to share this with someone. Not just anyone, but one particular person. Axel. I wanted to talk about it, cry about it, vent to him about how my mom made me feel when she walked away from me. I had become accustomed to bottling up my emotions, not worrying about the way my mom’s rejection affected me. But now, I’ve experienced the amazing feeling of being heard, and I couldn’t go back to closing myself off any longer.

It took me close to thirty minutes before flipping the lid open and finding his contact information already programmed in. I opened a blank text message and watched the cursor blink over and over again without typing a single word. Finally, I spelled out one word: awake? And hit send. Then I freaked out as I waited impatiently for him to respond.

Within seconds, the phone beeped once, and a response came in.

Everything okay?

Again, I hesitated on what to say, typing out a word and then deleting it. I worried that I’d sound too juvenile, too immature. I didn’t want to bother him the first night I had the phone, and I certainly didn’t want to come across too eager to talk to him. Doubt began to flood my earlier spontaneity. What if he was busy? What if he was entertaining someone? Or what if I really had woken him? But before I could organize my thoughts enough to reply, the phone started ringing in my hand, making me jump.

I answered it before the sound could alert my mom—the last thing I needed was for her to come in and catch me with it. “Hello?” Even though I knew who it was, his name flashing across the small, square screen, I tried to act aloof, as if I had no idea who was on the other end of the line.

“Everything okay, Bree?” His voice sounded worried, concerned.

“Hi,” I said nervously, not sure what the right thing to say was. “Yes, everything is fine. I thought I wanted to talk, but I think I changed my mind.”

He laughed through the line and it immediately set me at ease. “You think you’ve changed your mind? What did you want to talk about? Let’s start there and then we’ll discuss why you aren’t sure about it.”

“Well, my mom talked to me after she came home, and it upset me. But now that I think about it, it seems stupid to go to you about it. You told me to call you if I needed to, and I guess I don’t really need to. I just wanted to talk for some stupid reason.”

“It’s not stupid to want to talk about it if it upset you. What did she say?”

I told him everything, leaving out my breakdown. I didn’t want him to know how desperately I craved my mom’s love. I figured that’d make me sound like a weak child, and that’s the last way I wanted him to think of me.

“And you believe her?”

I twisted my blanket in my hand, suddenly feeling self-conscious about it all. “I mean, I guess I do. She seemed sincere. She has no reason to lie to me about it. I’ve never seen her act like that toward me before, so what else am I supposed to think?”

“But then she walked away?” He sounded disbelieving, as if he couldn’t fathom it. As if a mother walking away from her child in the midst of such a heavy conversation was incomprehensible to him.

The sting of tears threatened my eyes as I thought back to earlier that day when she left me crying alone on the couch. The rejection that overcame me then rushed back as if it were freshly exposed. As if she’d just walked away from me all over again. “Yes. But it was my fault. I pushed her too hard. I asked her why it was so hard to love me. I guess she couldn’t handle that and left. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just let her get the guilt off her chest and move on.”

A frustrated grunt carried through the line, filling my ear with his irritation. “Stop blaming yourself. You didn’t make her walk away. If she can’t handle that kind of question, a very valid question, then that’s on her. Not you. You had every right to ask her that, and she should have given you an answer.”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you with this, Mr. Taylor.”

“Every time you call me that outside of school, I’m going to call you Miss Jacobs,” he said, gritting out each word in annoyance. “If we’re going to do this—talk and stuff—then I can’t have you refer to me like that. This is already hard enough on me without hearing you use such a proper name.”

“Why is this so hard for you?” I longed to know, hoping it would either validate my own feelings, or set them straight once and for all.

A long huff of air rushed through the earpiece, and I swear I could feel it cover me in warmth, like a blanket. “I’m new to all this, okay? I’ve already told you that I’ve subbed before and assisted other teachers, but that was always short term. I’ve never had to worry about growing an attachment to a student.”

“Are you saying you are attached to me?” Why am I pushing this?

“Not like that, Bree. You are in a crappy situation, and I want to help you. I can help you. And I think I’m the only one willing to do so. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. As a teacher, it is my job to protect you while you’re in my care. Unfortunately, you aren’t being protected outside my watch, and that’s what bothers me. I’ve been through this with my friend growing up, and I don’t even want to think about where he’d be without me and my parents. I don’t want to think about what will happen to you if I turn my back. So I don’t want to—I can’t turn my back on you. However, I need you to understand that you are my student. I am your teacher. And it is unethical and just plain wrong for this to go beyond me keeping you safe.”

“I get it, Axel. You don’t have to explain it to me.” I gripped the phone tightly in my hand, pressing it against the side of my face, becoming so completely torn. My emotions were all over the place, fried and burnt. I couldn’t listen to him over-explain it any more than he already had. “This is just really confusing to me, and I…” I let out a sigh as I said, “I don’t know.”

“Talk to me, Bree. Tell me, don’t dance around it. I’m not a mind reader.”

I rolled onto my back and stared at the dark ceiling above me, hoping to find the courage to give him an honest, straightforward answer. If I expected this crush—or whatever it was—to go away and see him for who he really was, for what his purpose was in my life, I’d have to keep it real and get it all out.

He’s on the phone, you don’t even have to look at him. You can say this. You can be honest with him. Do it now while the door is open, before you lose the chance. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, not thinking about the words as they came rushing out with raw candor.

“I’ve never had anyone care about me before, or at least they never showed it. I’m not used to having someone watch out for my best interests, wanting to keep me safe, protect me. And I’ve never gotten attention from the opposite sex, either. So this is all so confusing to me. I think you care about me, like you want to be around me. Like you want to talk to me. And I know why you do, you’ve been very clear about that, but you have to understand, I’m sixteen years old. The naïve, romantic inside—the small part that hasn’t been murdered by my parents—likes the way it feels. I like the way you see me, and I like knowing I have someone to talk to. But it’s hard to remind myself that this isn’t romantic. This isn’t anything more than you having a hero complex, and me playing the part of the damsel in distress.”

His end of the line became very quiet, and I worried I’d lost him. I feared he’d hung up after hearing my confession…after I’d told him my brutal truth.

“I’m not saying I have a thing for you. Don’t misunderstand me. I only wanted you to know where I am coming from. I am smart enough to know where you stand, and I’m not some dumb idiot that takes things out of context. But I am still a girl, one that has never been in a relationship of any kind. A girl that dreams of having someone look at her the way you do. I want to be seen. I want to be loved. And it’s hard not to grow attached to the only person in my entire life giving me all that.”

“Bree…”

“You don’t have to say anything. I know how you feel, and now you know how I do. You wanted me to be honest with you, so I am. Please, don’t say anything else. I think we’re both on the same page. Nothing else needs to be explained.” I knew that wouldn’t stop him, but I at least had to try. My chest ached from my confession, and I knew it would hurt so much worse if I had to hear his harsh words.

“Bree, this thing between you and I—”

“You and me,” I corrected him, cutting off his words.

“What?”

“You said ‘you and I,’ and that’s crappy grammar. It’s supposed to be ‘you and me.’ If you remove the ‘you’ from the sentence, you’d know which one to use. It’s misused a lot, yet there’s a very easy way to know which word to use correctly.” I wanted to smack myself…and then laugh. Smack myself because this was not the time to correct his English, however, it felt good to tease him as if we weren’t in the middle of a serious conversation.

“I’m a history teacher, not a grammar expert,” he said with a laugh.

Once I heard his deep, rumbling chuckle, my own laughter bubbled out. And suddenly, the weight that surrounded me began to ease. The darkness that filled the space around me lightened, and the air cooled. All it took was one laugh from Axel to calm my racing heart, lessen the tension in my muscles, and soothe the heat that had flushed my cheeks.

“True, but you’re still an educated adult. I may be your student, and a child in your eyes, but that doesn’t mean you should sound like ignorant kids my age.” In my head, it sounded funny, but out loud, all my words did was point out the obvious: he was an adult, and I was not.

“In my defense, most people your age aren’t as smart as you.”

I appreciated how he didn’t call me a kid and gave me a compliment at the same time. It made me smile and become slightly more confident. “Guess that means when you talk to me, you need to up your game, huh? I wouldn’t want to show you up in the intelligence department. It might embarrass you.” My voice came out light due to the ear-to-ear grin on my face, my playfulness obvious in every word.

“Bree, I’m rather certain that you’re more intelligent than I. Me. I am? Now you have me confused and slightly terrified to use the wrong word,” he said, causing us both to laugh uncontrollably.

I had to turn my face into the pillow in order to keep my giggles from waking my mother. After our talk earlier, I didn’t think she’d barge into my room, not to mention, she hadn’t had any wine, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

“But back to what I was saying before your impromptu grammar lesson…” His voice slowly calmed down and turned more serious, causing my giggles to die. “This thing between you and me? I don’t want to lead you on. I don’t want you to be confused, or think too much into it. That’s the last thing I want, because if you’re uncomfortable with me, I worry you won’t come to me if you need to. And it scares me to think of you in danger, or pain, and not have anyone to turn to. I won’t show up at your house again, I promise. But I need you to tell me what else I should do—or not do—in order to keep this friendship in check. Like I’ve said, this is new to me. And it’s new to you, too. Maybe we should set boundaries, ground rules, something to make sure neither of us cross any imaginary lines.”

I took a moment to breathe, to watch the shadows of the trees from outside my window dance along my wall, and waited for the crushing weight to press against my chest. But it never came. The sting of tears never surfaced, the knot in my lower belly never formed, and the invisible hand around my heart never tightened. What I did feel, though, was respect. It blossomed into a heated veil that covered me. His words didn’t burn like I thought they would, the rejection absent from them. Maybe because I knew they were coming? Or maybe because his words echoed my own thoughts? Whatever the reasons, a comfort took ahold of my insides, and I knew he wasn’t turning his back on me. He had no intentions of leaving me and walking away. He still wanted to be there for me. And that’s when my own feelings became clear.

What I thought had been a developing crush on my teacher, was nothing more than the deep desire to be cared for. I didn’t need his physical affection, or even for him to think of me as anything other than a student that needed his protection. And just like that, I was okay.

“You’re not doing anything wrong, Axel. I only wanted you to be aware of how my brain works. I’m not saying I have a crush on you, or that I’m expecting something to come from this. All I wanted to do was get it all out so there would be no possible way my mind could twist anything and somehow convince myself our friendship is more than it is. That’s all. But now that we’ve got that out of the way, hopefully any future bantering or unexpected phone calls won’t become awkward or strained. I have enough of that in my life…I’d really like to have a relationship with someone that is natural and easy.”

“I’d like that, too.” I heard the grin in his tone, and if I closed my eyes, it was as though I could see him right in front of me. Smirk and all. “So…before I get off here and get ready for tomorrow, is there anything else you want to talk about? Your mom? Life? Fucking rainbows?”

I laughed and shook my head at his inappropriate—yet completely at ease—language. “Nope. Nothing else. I didn’t really mean to text you earlier. I think the ability to simply text someone became too much to resist. Anytime I’ve ever wanted to talk to someone before, I never had the option.”

“Never apologize for reaching out to me. That’s what I gave you the phone for, remember? I know I said to use it for emergencies, and that was the primary reason for giving it to you, but I’m always here to listen if you need to talk. Everyone needs someone to talk to.”

“Thank you, Axel.”

“Goodnight, Bree.”

I ended the call, flipped the top closed, and held the phone to my chest. I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t do a little somersault, or that my stomach didn’t house thousands of tiny butterflies when I closed my eyes and thought about my new friend. But I wasn’t stupid, either. I didn’t fall asleep dreaming of a future with Axel, filled with half a dozen red-haired, blue-eyed kids. I didn’t wake up and choose my outfit with him in mind. I didn’t walk into school with an eagerness to see him. No. I dreamt of security, I dressed for the weather, and walked into class eager to learn.

Seeing his smile from across the room was merely a bonus.