Trevor holds his hands out, palms facing me, waving them erratically. “No! No, no, not this. Not tonight. The past six months. What I did.”
“Oh.”
“I was selfish, I was…” Trevor looks down. “I was scared.”
“I know, Trev.”
“But I haven’t told you why.Reallywhy.”
We know everything about each other. Well, almost everything. I have a secret I’ve held back because I don’t like that part of me, but nothing that could hurt him, nothing that would push him away.
Something that pushes me away from myself.
Apparently, though, I’m not the only one holding something back.
“You know I don’t have a relationship with my stepfather. Not since my mom died.”
“I do.”
Trevor’s mom died when he was seventeen. As far as his stepfather goes, I’ve never met the man. He lives somewhere in the suburbs with his new wife, a woman he married soon after Trevor’s mother’s death. Trevor always said he was an asshole, and I believed it.
Who moves on from someone so quickly?
I never pushed harder for more information. He’d found a new family in the Hawthorns, and he seemed to have recovered from whatever trauma there was in the past.
“Jake, he raised me, practically. I mean, I never knew my real dad. I even have his last name,” Trevor says. “He was in my life from the time I was six years old.”
I don’t know how this has to do with us, but I’m not going to question it. To this day, I want to know all of Trevor. I still do, despite…everything.
“And when my mom got sick, he…he was never an affectionate guy, but he got even more distant. I suspect he was already seeing his new wife by the time my mom passed away.”
I shake my head. “That’s terrible, Trevor. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, she didn’t deserve that.”
I wish I could meet his mother and thank her for the amazing man she raised. Even if he isn’t mine, even if he broke my heart, he’s amazing.
He’ll make someone very happy.
I just can’t help but hope it’s me.
Trevor chews on his lower lip and leans back on the window. “Anyway, I was still a minor, but once I turned eighteen, he got even colder to me. Made me start paying rent until I went to college.”
“What?”
Trevor jumps. “Yeah, he…I get it, it was his house, but–”
“You were his child.”
“Only his stepchild. Not legally. Besides, I was an adult, and–”
“That’s wrong, Trevor.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“That’swrong. You needed him.” My heart breaks for the boy Trevor was.
Losing his mom so early, and then his stepfather turning into his landlord.