#Rev (GearShark #2)(86)

“She wouldn’t,” I argued, a sick, clammy feeling coming over me. Granny wouldn’t disown me. She loved me. She’d always loved me.

Before she knew the real you.

“Don’t listen to her, T,” Drew said softly right beside my ear. He knew I was spiraling inward, he knew I was starting to cave in.

“All these years,” she said, almost like she was suddenly disillusioned and trying to work it out in her own mind. “All these years, I did what was expected of me, and for what?”

“Mom,” I said and stepped forward.

She stepped back. “Get out.”

I stopped and stared. “You want me to leave?”

She nodded. “I’ve done my job. I got you to adulthood. There’s no reason for us to have to see each other again.”

Wow.

I always knew my mom was… distant. But I never thought she was mean.

Until today.

I glanced around the house I grew up in, the house I spent so much time in alone. I looked at the mother who quite possibly never loved me, and I tucked all those feelings right beside all the others that used to hurt.

I walked to the front door and didn’t look back.

My hand was wrapped around the handle when I heard Drew’s voice carry through the house.

“I feel sorry for you,” he said. “I feel sorry that for all these years, you’ve had someone as amazing as Trent right here and you never even knew it. You were right when you said I don’t know anything about your life. I have no idea what could make you so cold and unfeeling to a child who did nothing but wish you were there more. He’s not the selfish one. You are. And what I do know is someday you’re going to regret this, but by then, it’s going to be too late.”

My eyes were misty when I heard him on the stairs and felt his hand on the small of my back. I watched through slightly blurry vision when his fingers closed over mine and turned the handle to open the door.

Out on the porch, the sound of the door closing rang with a finality I never thought I’d hear. I just needed a minute. A minute to process what just happened in there.

“Look at me.” Drew’s voice called me out of my own head.

My eyes focused on him and the blue of his irises. He grabbed my face between his palms and shook me gently. “You’re better than this place. So much better.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “For what you said in there.”

Still holding my face, his lips pressed against mine. He kissed me hard and fast before pulling away completely and taking my hands.

“We’re leaving,” he announced. “I hate to tell you this, T, but your mom’s a bitch.”

I laughed. Like a real laugh that brought everything around us crashing back in color. But just because life was back in color didn’t mean it was pretty.

Even the most beautiful colors could sometimes look dirty.

“She’s probably on the phone with Granny right now.” I think out of everything my mother said, it was her threat to ruin my relationship with my grandmother that hurt the most.

Not only did she not want me in her life, but in my Granny’s life either.

She didn’t care if I was alone.

She never had.

She never would.

“What do you want to do?” Drew asked, staring out the windshield, the engine idling. I appreciated he didn’t tell me what he thought I should do. I knew he was upset by what happened, by everything he learned about the way I grew up.

I knew he wanted to drive home and for me to never think of this again.

I knew because that’s the things I wanted for him when we left his parents’ house. He knew, just like I did, that even if we did that, it wouldn’t erase our past or what happened here today.

That’s why he was asking me where I wanted to go from here.

“I want to go to Granny’s,” I said, decisive. “If my mom has turned her against me, I want to know.”

It was like a Band-Aid stuck to a hairy leg. I wanted to rip it off fast and get the sting over with all at once.





Drew

It was wrong to hate.

I hated Trent’s mom anyway.

She did indeed make good on her threat to call T’s granny and spill the beans.

Granny was waiting at the door when we walked up.

Trent was pale and shaken from what happened with his mom. But he was still strong. He still held his head high.

Granny invited us inside, and two things happened: 1.) She told Trent he had good taste in men and offered me a cookie.

and

2.) She informed Trent his Scottish accent wasn’t very convincing and she always knew it was him who called, but he could call her anytime and talk in a bad accent because she loved him.

Granny was my new favorite person.





Trent

I was relieved.

Feeling relieved made me wonder if I was f*cked up in the head.

What kind of son is relieved when his own mother throws a hissy fit about his life choices, calls him ungrateful, and then tells him to get out?

Me.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one that forced a relationship out of obligation instead of desire. When I thought about it—really thought about it—I would realize I stopped being hurt by her a long time ago. Even if I still lived kind of cautiously, like her ability to hurt me was still there.