It just felt… so real. His arms wrapped tightly around my
tiny waist… with me standing on my tippy toes, stretching to wrap my arms
around his neck. My face pressed into his chest and his face pressed into my
hair. We just stood there with the rain coming down around us. Our tears, which
we both have kept locked away for so long, mixing in with it. Our sobs sang
along with the thunder as it cracked through the air.
We just stood there, sharing this, this heart wrenching
moment with each other – a moment I would only want to spend with him.
He found out about her a week before, on that wretched
night. This night was like so many others – the others as those were before
them. These nights so wretched and despairing, nothing seemed right anymore at
night – especially that night. She was at one of the parties that she thought
everyone wanted her to attend, but she was wrong. No one wanted to tell her
different than what she thought, though. Cocktail dresses and fancy shoes and
hair, black ties and all – those were the parties, the parties that were meant
to be grand. Those stupid, horrendous parties – that’s what they were to me.
The subject of everyone’s snide comments and private jokes,
created her usual scene – champagne glasses, one after another, until she can
only stumble across the floor, dropping her drink and ruining one more thousand
dollar dress.
Everyone laughed, giving her fake smiles of encouragement.
She was the night’s entertainment.
She was and is my mother.
Do you know how it feels to have to endure such madness, to
endure the cruelty of other people? Do you truly know how it feels to have to
clean your own mother’s vomit off the floor every single weekend? Do you know
how it feels to have to act like a mother to your own mother? Do you know how
the pain and all of the embarrassment, remorse, and regret of having a parent
like that feels? And then you wish you never felt that way, wishing you were
stronger than everyone else’s words.
That week before – on that night – I watched her stumble
around, and I finally realized that I couldn’t take it any longer. I really
couldn’t do it. I don’t know why I did it, or how it happened so fast. I just
know that my phone was in my hands in seconds. I just know that I sent him one
message and minutes later he was there. He was right before me.
He didn’t laugh.
He didn’t judge.
He helped.
He understood.
As I stood there, my face red from the embarrassment, he
helped get my mother into his car and drove us home. He didn’t mind going into
a rich people’s party – nor did he mind having to leave what he was doing.
“Thank you,” I said after I closed the door to her bedroom.
“I’m really sorry I put you through this trouble.”
I couldn’t look him in the eye. All I could do was look down
at my feet. All I could do was feel the shame creep into my cheeks.
After a long moment, he whispered, “How long has this been
going on?”
I couldn’t say anything, but I could feel my bottom lip as
it began to tremble.
“How long, Clementine,” he asked me. His voice softly made
its way to my ears, “Has this been going on all this time?”
I nodded my head.
Then I felt them. For the first time in years, the threat of
tears stung my eyes, something only he could make me feel.
Why was that? Why was it that only when he was around, that
I could feel the need to cry, to release my feelings completely?
“It-it’s late,” I said, turning my back to him. “Thanks for
coming.”
And then I walked into my room swiftly, wanting to get away
from his gentle blue eyes – those eyes that could be so soft, but at the same
time so piercing.
Tim Daren has been around since I was a baby. We’ve gone to
the same school, but lived worlds apart. I was the rich girl and he was the
farmer’s son, but somehow, some way, we became best friends over the years. He
was always there for me, whenever I needed him.
But I didn’t want to have to need him, though I knew I did.
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