Page 8 of A Fine Line

And Rachel and Adam are happily married with big plans for the future.

And I was here…making lasagna with my mother and arguing with my dad about who deserved the rightful trophy of last season’s Master Chef.

They all had their beautiful lives all together wrapped up in a big bow, meanwhile I was struggling over here to just remember to pay bills. ‘Just write it down’ they’d say when I said I was having a hard time. But they didn’t understand that even if I wrote it down, I wouldn’t remember where I put the paper. And setting an alarm on my phone only works if it goes off at the exact time I am able to pay it or else I turn off the alarm and forget. The cycle continues over and over until whoops, your power is out.

Everyone took their rightful seats at the long extended table in my mother’s dining room, a large lasagna set out in front of us beside a pan of seven layer brownies.

“What kind of diapers do you guys recommend?”

“Yeah, works been crazy, did you know Suzie quit?”

“What? I loved Suzie!”

“I know, me too.”

“I think Pampers were best for our boys.”

“Can someone pass the Parmesan?”

All of their voices danced around me, crowding in closer and closer until I felt like all of the walls around me were raised to the point of no return. My pants were too tight. The overhead chandelier was causing a glare in my eye. My plate was scalding hot and my drink was freezing cold. My knee won’t stop tapping. I was trapped. Stuck. Frozen.

Left here in this place that should have been called my home but now was feeling like more and more of a cave. No, worse than a cave. A cave had an exist and this…this feeling never had a way out. Not in any way I’d experienced before.

“Crew, honey,” Mom’s voice from one seat over began to ground me ever so slightly. “What’s going on with you, hmm? How’s work?”

She could sense it. I didn’t know how. I always kept my flare ups so quiet that no one suspected a thing. But this last year Mom was different with me. She treaded more lightly. Spoke softer. Stopped blaming me when I had to skip out on dinner early or when I’d suddenly disappear without a goodbye. It was like she just knew, despite me keeping every bit of the diagnosis to myself.

What was the point in telling them? So they could tip toe around me? So they could think poor Crew and pity me and my sad, lonely life. F that. I would rather be on my own than in a crowd full of sorrowful eyes staring back at me. I refused to be treated differently. Even if my mind begged for it so.

I settled my breathing and took a bite as I felt my siblings and their spouses looking my way. “Good. Really good, actually.”

“Yeah?” My sister in law, Layla, smiled. She was always smiling. “Anything exciting for the truck?”

I looked up from my plate at my family. At their eyes all boring into me. Married, family-making, successful career eyes. Don’t do it, Crew. Don’t say it. I knew it wasn’t logical deep down. But that was the thing about ADHD, sometimes it meant I couldn’tbe in control. Right now it wasn’t my logic in the driver’s seat. It was my feelings, and they went zero to sixty in five seconds.

“I signed up for a big food truck competition.” I announced, reveling in their stunned, joyful faces.

Nope. I hadn’t. But obviously I had no traction in this conversation and if me blurting that out was enough to get someone to lean in to me then so be it.

“The state wide one?” Nathan asked. “We saw a sign up for that the other day.”

Calla nodded. “It seems like it’s going to be a huge event.”

“Yep.” I took another bite and committed full force. “If I win I’ll get $5,000 and a permanent spot on the corner of main street by the shopping and event centers.”

Money was nice, but it was that spot that I needed. A place where my family passed by daily, where they would see my sign and my truck and know that, diagnosis be damned, I was enough on my own.

“Obviously, you’re going to win.” Marigold chimed in. “I still have dreams about your elote.”

Liam nodded. “Ugh, seriously, she talked about it in her sleep for a month. I’m not convinced it wasn’t the baby saying it herself.”

I smirked a grin. They did always like my food. It was where I thrived, in a kitchen.

“Is that what you’re going to make for them?” Calla asked.

I shrugged. “Not sure yet.” More like I committed to this plan about two minutes ago and was playing a game of impromptu lying. “Maybe some carne asada tacos with a beet root coleslaw.”

“That sounds incredible, dear. If you need to practice over here, come by anytime. You know the key is always under the mat for you.” My mother smiled at me knowingly, like the key being for me meant more than a practice kitchen or a place to ask for help with recipes.

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