We got home from the hospital three hours ago. I took the day off to stay by my mom’s side to make sure she was okay. There was no way I was going to leave Dad to care for her.

As she lays in bed, I sit next to her, drawing.

It’s the only thing I can do to take my mind off the world–to escape to a place where everything is okay. My hand glides quickly across the page as the pencil in my hand moves to capture the images passing through my mind. Or should I say the guy who hasn’t stopped running through my head since I last saw him. Hudson’s all I can draw. Chocolate brown eyes and hair thicker than mine. His square jaw and broad shoulders lead to arms I would do anything to have wrapped around me, holding me close and promising me the world.

But since I don’t have time for distractions, I draw him. If I don’t, I’ll only drive myself crazy wanting to see him again.

Hudson. His name is all I know. A man full of mystery and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. It was there hidden in his rigid stance as he stood above me. The tick of his jaw. The way he walked when he left me standing alone.

He barely said two sentences to me, but I felt like he was hiding something because it’s the same way I am. Withdrawn. Strong. Alone. Everything that I am reflected back at me. And that’s why I need to stay away from him because I can’t handle another version of myself.

“Jade,” Mom murmurs.

I place my pencil on my sketchbook. “Yeah, Mom, I’m here.” I gently squeeze her hand.

“Where are we?”

I run my hand up and down the length of her arm. “At home.”

“Home,” she trails off as her eyes begin to close.

I watch her, my eyes tracing every part of her. Her brown hair fans out on her pillow, and I can tell she’s struggling to keep her eyes open.

“You shouldn’t work your life away,” she mumbles before her body succumbs to sleep.

My hand pauses on her arm as I frown. I don’t bother telling her she’s the reason I work so much because she would tell me she isn’t worth it–that my future is more important than hers. But to me, she’s important.

She’s the one who brought me into this world. The one who picked me up the first time I fell while roller skating. She taught me how to read and write and showed nothing but patience my first time behind the wheel of a car. She was there the first time a boy broke my heart and cradled me like a little girl. She was there for me even when I didn’t want her to be, so here I am, being everything to her that she ever was to me, as best I can.

I slip off the bed, taking my stuff with me as I exit her room. I put my sketchpad and pencil in my room and close the door.

Without saying a word to my dad as I walk past him, I step outside into the hot summer air, letting out a sigh.

Outside our home, I don’t feel as constricted. I’m happy we have a place to live, but sometimes the close quarters suffocate me. My life inside those four walls trap me, binding me in place, never wanting me to break free. Outside, I can breathe.

I walk down the steps to pick up the few toys in our yard and throw them over to the neighbors. If I wasn’t trying to escape my house, I would probably break the damn things.

I trudge down road, moving farther away from my house. There isn’t much to our neighborhood. Cracked pavement, dirt, and a bunch of tin cans for houses. Only a few of the trailers have crappy cars in front of them. If you ask me, this isn’t a neighborhood; it’s just a trailer park. But people who live here don’t like to call it that.

It’s comprised of people who were spit out by the real world. People who couldn’t make it for whatever reason. I have nothing against them. I am one of them, but they could put some effort in to their trailers.

Half of the trailers are rusted and the rest have broken windows with trash scattered in the yards. There’s a reason trailer parks get a bad name, and it’s because the people who live there just don’t care. If I were a passerby, there is no way I would freely wander around, much less drive through here.

“Do I have to go?” a small voice whines, drawing my attention.

I peer over at the young boy standing next to a car with a teddy bear tucked under his arm.

“Yes, you need to make more friends,” a familiar voice says.

“I have you. I don’t need friends.”

“I’m your dad. You need friends your own age.”

Dad? Hudson? I blink several times to ensure I’m actually seeing him. No matter how many times I close and open my eyes, Hudson is still the one standing next to the little boy.

Hudson pats his back pocket and scowls. “I forgot my wallet. I’ll be right back.” He turns around, heading back inside his trailer.

Hudson has to be around the same age as me, so how can he have a son? Most importantly, where’s the boy’s mom?

The little boy pouts as he struggles to open the back door of the car.

I don’t know what compels me to do it, but I walk over to the boy and open the door for him. He smiles up at me as he hops in the car. He pulls the door closed on his own as footsteps sound behind me.

“Jade?”

There it is. The voice that soothes me. The sound of his voice has been playing like a top forty pop song in my head on repeat, but my mind hasn’t done it justice. If only I could record the sound, so I could play it on repeat when I’m on the verge of combusting.

“What are you doing here?” Hudson asks as I stare up him.

“I live here.” I shift on my feet, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Well, not here”–I point to his house–“because you obviously live here, but over there”–I hitch my thumb over my shoulder, indicating behind me–“I live back there.”

He nods his head. “Small world.”

“I’m gonna go.”

“To work?” he questions, stepping closer to his car–to me.

“Uh, no.”

“So, you don’t always work then,” he says–a statement as opposed to a question. He opens the trunk and throws in a black bag before slamming it shut. “Told you I’d see you again.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I never thought it would be here, though.”

I let out a small laugh. “Tell me about it.”

“I gotta get going.” He jerks his head toward the car. “But at least I know another place to run in to you.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Guess you do.”

“See ya,” he says as opens his car door and disappears inside. He drives away before I have a second to think about what just happened.

Hudson has a kid. He has a freaking kid. Albeit a cute kid, but a kid none the less.

I don’t have anything against kids, but if I thought getting involved with Hudson was a bad idea before, well, it’s a really, really bad idea now that I know he has a kid to take care of.

I have enough on my plate to worry about without adding someone else’s baggage in my life. If I added more weight on my shoulders, I wouldn’t make it.

I can’t afford to get lost in Hudson as much as my body wants me to, because every time I see him, my breath hitches in my throat, and my heart threatens to rip through my chest. Every time I see him, I want to lose myself in the mystery that is Hudson. I want to fall over the edge into oblivion with him.

But I can’t because I feel like I would lose track of everything around me. My mom. My jobs. My life. I would throw everything away for him–for a feeling of peace, but I’m not lucky enough to have that. I’m not the girl who gets the happy ending. I lost that a long time ago. I lost that chance when Mom landed in the hospital three years ago.

I kick at the dirt in front of his trailer with my Converse, defeated by the world, feeling utterly lost and confused.

I’m still standing in front of Hudson’s trailer, so I walk over to the wooden steps and plop my happy ass down. I’m not waiting for him, but being here is better than being at home, and right now, I can’t go back. The weight of the world is crushing my chest like an elephant has taken it upon himself to sit on top of me, not caring that I’m already holding a stack of bricks on my shoulders.

I rub at the black smudge of graphite pencil from my hand, scrubbing until it’s gone…just like everything else. I’m supposed to be at Savannah College of Art and Design. I should be mastering my drawing skills and learning new techniques, using textures and paint, but I’m not.

Art is personal. It leaves you open to judgement and scrutiny of others. If art had a slogan, it would be Thick Skin Required, but I was ready to take the leap when I read my acceptance letter–to allow people to see what I saw as an artist.

Now I draw for me because that’s all I have left that makes me content, makes me feel at ease.

I doodle things I’m feeling on my sketchpad: a bleeding heart, a crying girl, and things that instill anger. But it makes me feel better because it’s the only thing that’s just mine.

With a heavy sigh, I stand from the creaky stairs that lead to Hudson’s home as the sun sets. Shit, how long have I been sitting here? The sun was shining when I left Mom’s side, but now the sky is changing to a dark blue.

I focus my attention on Hudson’s trailer, my eyes roaming from one end to the other. His home doesn’t look like a drug dealer lives here. It’s spotless on the outside, painted in a light gray with a white metal roof. The stairs might not be in the best condition, but there is a pot of blue flowers by the front door near a black welcome mat. The blinds in the windows are white and in perfect condition, not broken or falling apart like most of the other trailers. It’s nice. It’s nicer than I would have expected.

Although, I never expected him to live here in the first place.

Life’s cruel way of throwing him in my path, not bothering to consult me first.