Elise
We’d found sleep a couple hours later, pressed against one another. When morning came, I woke up before Aston and slipped out of bed. I went to the toilet and then downstairs to turn the coffee machine on. Tuck was passed out on his back on the arm of the couch. Weird, weird cat. I shook my head at him when I entered the kitchen, and then I startled at the sight of Mom already seated there, mug to her lips, flipping through the news on her tablet.
“How long have you been up?” I asked her on my way to the cupboards.
“A while,” she answered.
“What time did you get home?”
The vaguest answer came. “Late.”
I made myself a cup of coffee, trying to figure out how to tell her that Aston was here and…in my bedroom. We’d never discussed the rumours. She’d never asked me, and I didn’t even know if she heard them to be sure. Words failed me at the moment, so I stood there at the counter, cupping the hot mug.
“I wasn’t here yesterday,” she then told me. “I didn’t get to wish you a happy birthday and I left the card in the car.”
I turned around just as she slid a birthday card across the table. I walked over to it and picked it up. I blinked back tears at the glittery butterfly on the cover, thinking of Dad and his nickname for me, before opening it. There was a small note telling me she loved me, and a couple ten dollar bills.
“I would have given you more,” she told me apologetically, “but we’re a bit tight on money.”
I removed the money and placed it in front of her, swallowing back my emotions. “You need it more than me, Mom.”
Seeing the bags under her eyes and the slump in her shoulders, she was dressed for another day of work and she looked exhausted.
“Just take it,” she told me, her fiery blue eyes hard on mine. “I’ve been absent from your life, Elise, and I owe you more than twenty dollars for your goddamn birthday, especially after what happened to you the other night. Please, just take what I’m offering, okay?”
I wavered for a moment, and then I sighed and took a seat. She slid the money to me, and I accepted it, knowing it meant a lot to her that I did.
“Working late again?” I asked her, purposely steering the conversation away from what happened the other night. I could tell she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to discuss it. She just…wasn’t the mother I once had.
“Yes,” she answered. “Are you okay for dinner?”
“I’ll make myself some mac and cheese.”
“Okay.”
I tapped my mug, looking nervously into it. “Uh…Aston is here, Mom.”
“I know,” she responded casually. “I saw his car out front.”
I looked back up at her, surprised. “He’s in my bedroom.”
She glanced at me before flicking through another tab on her tablet. “I know.”
Oh-kay. Why was she so calm about it?
Sensing my confusion, she added, “When you’re a mother to two teenagers, Elise, nothing escapes you. You’re just lucky your father was a heavy sleeper and didn’t hear your footsteps every single night to Aston’s bedroom.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know what to do. If I told you I was aware of it, that wouldn’t have stopped you. If I told your father about it, he’d have lost his mind. Denial seemed to be the only strategy that kept both sides content for the summer. I didn’t want there to be a blow up before Aston left. He might have been driven away and I couldn’t bear to not hear from him.” She laughed scornfully and looked away. “Funny that it turned out that way, anyways.”
I didn’t reply. I took a few sips of my coffee, and didn’t taste a thing. I didn’t know if she was okay with it. Maybe part of me didn’t care.
“Mom,” said a deep voice.
She looked up and over my shoulder. Instantly her face brightened in a way I’d never seen in months. She smiled brilliantly and stood up, rushing to Aston as he stood at the threshold of the kitchen in nothing but his jeans on. She hugged him and he held her tight to his bare chest as she broke down. She wasn’t crying in that breathless way I’d overheard her doing when she thought she couldn’t be heard. No, she was crying from happiness, telling him how much she missed him, how much she thought of him and how nice it was to hold him again. I watched them and forcefully sipped my coffee, trying my hardest not to smash it on the floor from the jealousy that ripped through me.
She’d never reacted that way with me. She would happily go for days without seeing me. Aston took off on us, and she still hugged him to her like a lifeline. While I…I’d been there for her, trying my hardest to soothe her broken heart, and she rejected me time and time again. Did I have to die to get her attention?
My vision blurred with angry tears. I quickly stood up, set my coffee mug in the sink and walked past them. I ran up the stairs and took another long shower.
*
“Are you upset with me?”
I looked up at Aston as he came through my bathroom door. I was seated in the corner of the shower, knees to my chest, drenched by the hot water. He sat down on the toilet seat and watched me, waiting for my answer.
“I just find it remarkable that you can do no wrong,” I told him quietly, spitting out the water between my lips. “I try so hard with that woman, and I’ve gotten nowhere.”
“Maybe you should stop trying,” he replied, concerned. “Maybe it’s the trying that wears her out.”
“Maybe she’s a selfish bitch for pushing her daughter away.”
He looked alarmed. “What’s gotten into you, El?”
“I’m…angry,” I replied, feeling tears behind my eyes. “I’m so angry, Aston.”
“At her?”
“At…everything. I don’t know why.”
“You’re depressed. That’s why you’re angry. The anger distracts you from feeling pain.”
“Then I like being angry more.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“I don’t care.”
He let out a long breath, looking anxious now. “Why don’t you come with me, El? When you’re finished school, pack your shit and come live with me like we talked about before.”
Once upon a time, that offer would have been heaven. I’d have done it in a heartbeat. But now…now I knew it wouldn’t solve anything. It’d be like running, and no matter how stale Mom was to me, I couldn’t leave her just yet… or maybe I was making excuses because I was frightened. Whatever the truth was, I didn’t want to face it.
I stood up and turned the water off. I opened the shower stall and ripped the towel from the hook. All the while, he sat there, waiting for a response with a tentative look on his face.
“Elise,” he pressed desperately, “tell me you’ll come to me.”
I wrapped the towel around my body and stood there, looking down at him. I wanted to run my wet fingers through that blond hair, tug it back so his face shot up to mine, and then drown in his beautiful green eyes.
“What am I meant to do over there?” I asked him.
“Be with me.”
I smiled sadly at him. “There’s nothing for me there, Aston. I’d be a burden to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have a life outside of this town. I might be needy and social over there. You’d be locked in your schoolwork, and I’d feel neglected and isolated in a city I don’t know.”
“Then come to know it.”
“You’re not understanding, Aston. I have zero aspirations, and you… You’re a star, and you’re going to shine.”
“And what are you, El?”
I shrugged. “I’m your black hole. I’d drag you down and put your shine out. I’d demand things, distract you, pick fights with you when I don’t get my way. We have two separate lives now, and I have to accept that. We both do.”
He stood up and looked down at me, his face grim. “I just want us to be together. I love you, Elise. I want you for myself.”
“You’d want me until you forgot all about me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then how come you haven’t contacted me once since you’ve been gone? I get that you were hurt, but not even a single text or an email?”
He chest rose and fell faster at my question. He was conflicted because he didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to admit the truth.
“It was because you’re locked inside your head,” I answered for him. “I’m surprised you remember to eat.”
“You’re basically telling me to choose my head over you.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing –”
“I did it because I was hurting!” he interrupted harshly. “I don’t know how to deal with things when I hurt, El. It’s why I turned to numbers when I was a kid. I found a fucking multiplication chart in the garbage when I went out once. I didn’t know what it was. It was just a sheet of paper. I smuggled it in my pocket so the next time they locked me up I’d have something to look at.”
My heart sank. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Aston.”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry!” He walked out of the room and sat back down on the edge of the bed. Running his hand through his hair, he looked up at me and said calmly, “I’m asking you to be with me. When I’m distant, bring me back again. When I’m too busy, remind me how much I belong to you. I want you, El, and I want to find a balance.”
How was he supposed to find a balance when all his years were spent chasing after me and then fading into his room for weeks at a time? He had to pick one thing over the other. I knew that, he just didn’t want to accept it.
“It’s not going to work,” I whispered to him quietly. “We wouldn’t last, Aston.”
“Not with that attitude.”
“It’s the truth.”
He looked defeated and desperate. His knee bobbed up and down and I could see the wheels spinning inside his head. “Then I’ll stay,” he finally said. “I’ll stay and be with you.”
“You’re being absurd –”
“So what would you rather do? You want me to listen to Dad’s advice like I already tried doing? You want us to be apart and pine for each other? You expect me to stay there and accept that you might love someone else eventually?”
“There’s nobody.”
“Odds are against me. You’re so fucking beautiful, and you’re funny and you’re…just amazing, El, you’re bound to attract a whole fucking slew of men. Those aren’t odds I’m willing to take.”
I sighed, frustrated. “You can’t use numbers for everything in life, Aston. That’s not how it works. You don’t know that will happen.”
“But I’m right, and you know it. So I’ll pack it all up and come here and be with you, and that way we’ll make it work –”
“No!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Goddammit, didn’t he understand? “You can’t throw it all away, Aston! You’re meant to get out of here and make something of yourself! And I’m not going to be with you and watch you settle for less. It’d be like watching you degenerate. We can’t. I’m…a fucking mess, Aston. I’ve got rage issues and I’m depressed. I…I am absolutely pathless right now, and I’m terrified of being destructive to you. Being isolated in a city outside my comfort zone is the last thing that is healthy for me right now.”
He looked at me for a painfully long time. He was beaten. I could see it in his eyes. He was beaten and it was killing him.
“So that’s it then?” he said resentfully. “We just go our separate ways.”
I looked away from him. “We…live our lives, Aston.”
“I succeed, build an empire, all the while you’re absent and stuck in this piece of shit town. Does that sound fair?”
I scoffed disdainfully. “Actually, yeah, it does, Aston. It sounds like life.”
He tilted his head to the side. “You are such a disappointment, you know that? You are weak. Weak for not even trying.”
“I’m strong for letting you go live your potential,” I replied evenly, glaring back at him. “Maybe one day you won’t be so fucking selfish and realize that.”
“I’m not selfish for wanting you. For the first time in my life, I’m a fucking idiot for wanting you, El. I should’ve kept you at a distance. Dad would have been alive. You’d have sulked and drowned in your fucking angst, but you probably would have moved on eventually. We’d have been fine, and I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to talk you into being with me and hearing you feed me bullshit about choosing a different path over you.”
He stood and moved to me slowly. His eyes were cold, colder than I’d ever seen them before. I didn’t move as he approached. Despite how much his words cut me to the bone, I stood tall and waited.
“Thank you for breaking my heart,” he whispered, close enough his breaths hit my face. “I’ll leave you in peace and give you what you want. But that’s fucking it, El. I close that door and I’m not going to open it back up again.”
I rolled my eyes in spite of his seriousness. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“You think I’m talking shit?”
“I think you’re trying to hurt me, and you’ll be back in this room next week, fucking me, holding me, asking me to be with you again.”
“Is that right?”
“You’re obsessed with me.”
“Fuck you, El.”
“Yeah, whatever. You know it’s true.”
“I know I’m as obsessed with you as you are with me, and we love each other.”
I groaned and walked past him. He was just going to keep arguing with me. He wouldn’t stop until he won. I knew it. He knew it. Why wasn’t I just giving in right now?
“I’m not going to the city with you after I’m finished high school,” I told him, “and that’s the end of that. Get over it. Move on.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?!”
“I love you too much to let you go.”
“You wouldn’t be letting me go! I’m not going anywhere! I’ll be right here, putting my life back together.”
He moved to me again, cutting me with his stare. It wasn’t cold anymore. It was determined, and a determined Aston spelled trouble.
“You want me to grow without you there. You want me to make something of myself without you there. I’m going to be successful one day, and I’m going to have a job and all the time in the world, and you’re not going to be there on that journey. It makes the experience worthless, Elise. If we stick by each other, defy those odds, and make a go of it, we’ll have journeyed through it all – the ups and the downs, the bad days and the good days. It’s better than being apart and coming together again when we’ve got our shit sorted out. I don’t want that. I want us to grow together and come out on the other side. Any time apart is time wasted.”
He made a compelling speech. But I was stubborn and determined too, and burdening him with my bullshit felt selfish.
“No,” I told him sharply. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why?” he demanded, exhausted.
“Mom needs help around here –”
“Stop making excuses!” he suddenly shouted, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed. “Tell me why!”
My entire body started shaking uncontrollably. “She really does need my help –”
“Shut up about Mom, Elise. She’s with Adrian, alright? He told me about it.”
My eyes widened. “What? When did you –”
“He said it last night, and he’ll take care of her. He promised after I told him I wanted you out of here.”
I didn’t respond. He shook his head and paced the room, looking like he wanted to strangle me. He should join the club. I wanted to strangle myself too sometimes.
“You’re afraid,” he told me. “I know what you’re feeling because I’ve been trying to conquer it the last seven months. You know what I realized at the end? You never get over the fear, El, you just learn to live with it. You confront it every single day. You face the unknown, the possibility of loss, and you learn to endure. We can do everything we talked about. You can dance and find your path wherever you go, but I want to be there and watch it.” His voice broke as he stopped to look at me. His eyes were red with unshed tears. He was killing me with that stare. “We can do it as long as you believe it and want it. Think about it, El.”
He turned and left the room. Tuck was waiting on the other side, and he strode in and circled around me, nudging me with his head. I fell to the ground and welcomed him into my arms, all the while I stared out the bedroom door, conflicted and…yeah, scared.