I laid my head back in the tub and closed my eyes. I let the past few weeks events run through my mind. I tried to wrap my head around the changes that Albert has caused in my life. If someone would have asked me a month ago where I would be in a year learning how to live my life without the man I loved would never have come into my thoughts. Let alone him cheating on me with my cousin behind my back. Then there was Jessie. Jessie had waltzed back into my life and changed my whole perspective. It almost felt like the old feelings were starting to come back, but I still wasn’t sure that I wanted them.
The warm water flowing over my skin helped to settle my nerves. The day had turned south quickly when the news of my mother’s intervention had ruined any positive feelings I had started developing.
There was a light knock on my door and then my mother’s voice followed, “Merewyn can we talk?”
A loud sigh escaped my lips and I regretfully responded, “Kinda busy Mom.”
“I know sweetie, but I just wanted to apologize.”
“For what this time?”
“All of it.”
A solid minute passed by before I spoke again. “The thing is Mom; you can’t apologize for something that you are not actually sorry for. If you were then you would not have gone to such great lengths to continuously do this over and over.”
“I just want you happy Merewyn.”
“That’s it Mom, I can be happy, without you coming around here and pushing me to do things that you want me to do. Now can I please just enjoy this bath?”
“I really am sorry honey.”
The sound in her voice was riddled with regret but at this moment in time I didn’t really care about that part of this picture. She had overstepped so much. However, I also knew that I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t accept her apology.
“I know you are Mom. I love you.”
“I love you too.” There was relief in her voice and that was okay. She could have some peace. Maybe that would allow me to have some if she wasn’t so hung up on making things better with me and her.
The bath tranquility had now been ruined so the idea of staying in water that was quickly cooling was no longer appealing. I unplugged the drain and as the water started to leave the porcelain tub I stood and pulled the plush towel over my body for warmth. The break had been nice even though it ended up being shorter than I originally intended. It still helped to give my mind some perspective.
Stepping out of the tub and onto the tile I placed my right foot down first and as I brought my left leg up out of the tub, I felt my knee beginning to give out. Just like that I was lying flat on my back, my towel flown onto the floor and my arm surging with the worst pain I have ever felt.
“Damn it!” I knew it was broken, I just knew it. “Mom!” I screamed over and over.
“Merewyn are you okay?” I heard her yelling.
“No I broke my arm and need to go to the hospital.” I managed to stand up and pull the towel off of the floor and place it in front of me before my mother opened the bathroom door. She hadn’t seen me naked since I was probably five no need to break that trend now.
“Grab my keys she broke her arm!” I knew she was talking to my dad. This day just wasn’t meant to be a good one.
“Do you want help getting dressed?” She asked me as she pushed open the door to the bathroom.
“Yeah maybe my shirt. Can you just go get out my panties, yoga pants, and a sports bra I’ll finish drying off and come in?”
“Merewyn you’re in so much pain! It is written all over your face. Just let me help you.”
I shook my head back and forth, “I got it Mom” I said in my most confident tone.
“Hush and just come on.”
There was no strength left inside of me to fight her. I let her walk me to my room and dress me, like I was that five year old child. I was too exhausted to even be embarrassed for the situation. My dad drove while my mom and I sat in the back seat of his car. She had a pillow propped under my arm. There were tears running down my cheeks, but I was attempting to hold in my pain to the best of my ability.
Once we arrived at the emergency room nearest to our house, the wait we were told would be about two hours. I wasn’t classified as high risk so there was nothing to do but wait it out. Luckily I remembered to grab my cell phone from the charger before we left. With my mom on one side of me and my dad on the other side I sat in the waiting room of St. Joseph’s hospital.
The dinging noise of a text message went off and I instantly silenced my cell phone. I didn’t need the nosiest person in Kemah, no probably Texas, reading over my shoulder at whoever was sending me a message. With a quick swipe I saw Jessie’s name appear again along with a slight vibration notification.
“How was your day?” The text message read.
“A comedy of errors and yours?” My quick little reply made me laugh. He would probably think I was losing my mind with a response like that.
“Errors? Comedy? Everything okay?”
“Why not, sure. What you up too?” Maybe if I didn’t directly answer he would let it go. That was exactly what I didn’t need, another person sitting up here with me.
When I read his response I knew he was full of it and trying to just get sympathy from me. “Just bored and feeling lonely.”
“No you’re not.” I typed out.
“Am too.” He said quickly.
I felt my face smiling and my arm suddenly wasn’t at the center of my focus.
“What are you grinning about dear?” Of course it was my mother who made this same observation at the exact same time.
“Nothing mother.”
My dad chimed in for the first time in about thirty minutes, “Let her be, she’s texting with Jessie.”
“Dad!” I exclaimed. “Ever heard of privacy?”
Mom’s hand reached out from her lap and patted my knee, “Have fun dear I’ll give you some privacy.”
The grin on her face now wasn’t without notice.
I pulled my cell phone back up and began typing, “I just got busted texting you by my dad I feel like we are in high school.”
“You could come over and we could text in private.” Reading that brought on another smile, dang he really was getting under my skin.
“Wish I could, kinda tied up at the moment.”
“Kinky.” His one word reply this time brought out a laugh in me.
“Again, wish I could but I am indisposed of at the present time.” God I felt so juvenile. Why didn’t I just tell him where I was instead I am leading him down this rabbit hole of text flirting that who knew where it would lead.
“Okay M you win don’t tell me what’s going on. Leave me waiting in suspense. What a thing to do to a pal.”
“Is that what we are, pals?” I responded with.
“Ms. Smith, Merewyn Smith?” I heard my name and my head shot up along with both my parents. I quickly put my cell phone in my pocket and rushed across the waiting room to the nurse who was calling me over.
“Yes, yes that’s me.”
“Right this way.” She said in a dry tone.
We’re coming honey.” My mother said from across the room.
I looked back over my shoulder and then at the small rooms that the emergency room was riddled with. “Mom why don’t you guys stay there I will be in a small room. I’ll text you okay?”
The expression my mother gave me looked like she was disappointed but I didn’t have time to dwell. Some days I wished I wasn’t an only child because I knew she latched onto me because there was no one else to dote on.
“Ms. Smith please have a seat.” The nurse instructed.
“How long will it take?” I asked her.
“All depends on how bad the break is.” Her response was just as dry as her previous comment but I let it go, she was going to help me and that’s what mattered.
Three hours, one bright pink cast later, and a three hundred dollar bill paid for I was back on my way home with my mother and father hanging all over me.
“Are you going to get everyone to sign it?” Mom asked me.
“I’m not a kid.”
“So?” She replied as if I was the crazy person even thinking not to get signatures.
My cell phone vibrated and the notification against my butt cheek startled me. I suddenly remembered that I never looked at Jessie’s response to my last question. Anxiously I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that I had three missed calls and two missed text messages.
The calls were all from people that I could call back tomorrow but the texts were from Jessie. Two of them. My heart raced as my thumb hovered over the messages. I took a deep breath in and clicked on his bubble and read what he had said.
“I want to be more than pals. I told you I am still half in love with you. But, I am afraid you don’t want that, so I am not sure what I want from you.”
His message pulled at my heart. He sent it three hours ago and I never even responded. This brought me to his second message.
“Guess that was the wrong thing to say, bye M.”
Now my heart broke. I had hurt him and now I didn’t know how I even felt about our relationship.
“I am sorry was in the ER. Broke my arm.” I took a picture of my cast and attached it to the text message and then added, “I don’t know what I want either all I know is, I need you. Sorry.” After pressing send I put my phone back in my pocket and turned my head to look out of the window at the bay. The ships sailing in and out, the tug boats, the large vessels the small ones. So much was going on at night in Kemah and in my own little world it was all crashing in.
“You okay honey?” Mom asked me.
“Yeah just thinking.”
Dad was the one to respond this time, “What you thinking about kiddo?”
“Moving out.”
Neither parent responded but I knew what I had just said hurt them. It was the truth. That’s the thought I had before I broke my arm and there wasn’t any way to deny it. I needed to move out. The sooner I told them that the better it would be for everyone. I just didn’t have enough courage earlier to say it.
“This is because I was meddling isn’t it.”
“No Mom this is because I am an adult and need my own space.”
“If I promise to never meddle again will you stay?”
“Mom yes you upset me but I was thinking this before today okay. I love you. I just I don’t know what I am going through okay. I just, I need some space.”
“Let her be.” My dad said softly.
No one spoke after that, the rest of the drive was in silence. And that silence killed me.
A night full of tossing and turning was to be expected after my evening ended with the broken arm, but what I didn’t expect was the sense of guilt that kept overwhelming me because of the fact that I told my folks I wanted to move out. I was nearing thirty, I needed freedom, to spread my wings, soar above the clouds. Living at home would keep me tethered down and that was literally the last thing I needed or wanted. Logic told me that they would get over this blow, and that we would be fine. Logic. But my heart told me I was wrong and I hurt them. So I continued my game of sleep for ten minutes wake up and ponder for twenty and then repeat, over and over.
Sometime around two thirty I gave up on this charade of sleep and just sat up in bed and grabbed my book off my nightstand. If I wasn’t going to sleep then I might as well continue reading. Usually a late night read was all I needed to feel some peace and calm down. Hopefully tonight would mirror that tradition. Forty minutes into the book I saw a flashing light coming from the floor next to my bed. I didn’t know what that could be so I leaned over and ran my hand across the top of the floor. When I touched the hard surfaced item I realized at some point I had dropped my phone. Turning the device on I saw that I had another missed text message from Jessie.
Sighs, Jessie. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do about him. He was a great guy, a good friend. But he was a mental conundrum. The more I tried to wrap my head around him and me starting back up again the more the universe threw something at us making it seem like it wasn’t the best of ideas. Obviously with as hard as he and my mom were trying to get us back together this feeling was strictly left to just me.
With a single swipe I opened the message and read it.
“I hope you’re okay, call me in the morning and I will take you for breakfast. Do I want to know how you broke it?” The emoji he used to indicate his tongue sticking out brought a smile to me; I did enjoy how easily he made me laugh. Looking over at the time I saw it was just after three in the morning. Not too early to send a text message I thought to myself.
“Call me when you wake up, can’t sleep. Arm hurts!!! Oh and no you do not want to know…” I decided to add my own emoji, the face with the wow expression on it. Then for good measures I added the purple devil with horns and a big smile. That should make him laugh.
I put my cell phone down on the bed and then picked up my current reading material and went back to the main characters. I was really enjoying this story of these magical kids that were sent off to wizard school. I had never gotten into the Harry Potter phase when the books came out in the early two thousands. I had heard the new movie about fantastic beasts was worth watching so I felt it was best I do some back story reading.
Albert used to tease me that I clearly lived under a rock because I was never up on the current pop culture. But that never bothered me. He insisted that I should make more of an effort to fit in culturally. I never understood how so many adults could swarm and love the Young Adult genre. My mom tried explaining it once to me that it was because we were all secretly kids inside and that it was the little things like movies and books that would help keep us young.
The dinging noise of my cell phone brought my eyes down to my bed. Was Jessie awake this early? Picking up the phone and swiping open the notification.
“Hey I’m up, want to come over?”
He was really crazy, come over at three in the morning. “Are you nuts it’s the witching hour!”
The little notification popped up with the typing indicator. One thing iPhones were good for was suspense. “Course I’m nuts, but you knew that.”
My smile came out again and I started typing back, “I love that you’re nuts but not at three in the morning goof.”
Why was it easier to talk to him like this, relaxed in bed and hiding from parents than it was as a normal adult? Maybe because it reminded me of our youth. His typing indicator came back on and my heart started to skip a few beats.
“I knew you loved me.”
That response wasn’t what I had expected from him. Three dots in reply was what I started to type and then I deleted them. The curser sat there looking back at me in the text message as I felt extremely tongue tied.
His typing indicator came on and it almost felt like I started hyperventilating. This was certainly too much too early in the morning.
“I am teasing M. I know you are probably freaking out over there. Be ready in four hours I’ll come pick you up for a Saturday morning breakfast.”
This response from him calmed me down. He and I both knew he wasn’t teasing and deep down we knew that I still had feelings. But I wasn’t ready to deal with them.
“See you soon.” I typed out. No emoji no teasing just three simple words. Keep it simple stupid. I need to remember that. It is always the best advice.