Page 47 of Honeysuckle
As if he could read my mind, Silas’s head popped over the chair in front of us. His hair was messy from sleep, and he was definitely half awake, but he gripped the chair as he spoke. "I have you in the guest room downstairs on the main floor until we can figure out a room to put you in that won’t cause a fight.”
“You can put him in my room,” Dean offered, before I could say anything, and I groaned. “Ella is with Arlo, which meansmyroom is the guest room, and I’m sick of sleeping with Van. He smells like an overheated hippo,” Dean complained.
“Uh—” Silas stopped to think about it.
“He can either bunk with me, or bunk with Mitchell…” Dean shrugged. “But I’m captain now. It’s literally the rule that I get my room back, and if it’s not, I’m making one right now.”
“Alright, alright.” Silas laughed. "You can have the captain's room.” He put his hands up in defeat and almost lost his balance as the bus turned into the Harbor stadium parking lot. “Your choice, Logan. Do you want the hippo or the chainsaw?”
“I do not snore!” Dean scowled.
I didn’t want either of them. I would almost have rather slept on the couch than have to share a room, but from the looks on their faces, it wasn’t an option.
“Tuck.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to know what an overheated hippo smells like.”
“Disgusting. It smells disgusting…” Dean grumbled and started to pack his backpack up, before slinging it over his shoulder and climbing off the bus.
I stayed in my seat until everyone else was off, and then slid my phone out of my pocket to finally answer a call from my mom.
It barely rang once.
“Joshua?” Her voice was manic through the phone, and I had to take a deep breath before confirming to her that it was me. “Where have you been? It’s been… it’s been…”
“Two weeks, Mom. I had a baseball thing,” I explained quietly.
“A baseball thing?” She scoffed. "That was more important than me? Abaseballthing? You sound likehim.”
I resisted the urge to snap at her. “What do you need, Mom?”
“I need my son to love me the way a son should love his mother.” She said it like it should have been under her breath, but she made sure it was loud enough for me to hear.
“Anything else?” I asked gently, just trying to avoid her getting wound up.
“Jimmy left and—”, she stuttered over her words, “he took that new stereo I bought and I was going to pawn it for cash…”
“How much do you need, Mom?” I asked her. The story didn’t matter. I didn’t even know who Jimmy was, and he couldn’t have been any better than the previous fifty guys.
She didn’t answer, and I could hear her in the background, rifling through cupboards, looking for something. My eyes were focused on the small crowd of players in the parking lot, just outside the blue-tinted bus window. They were so blissfully unaware of the challenges everyone else suffered.
“Mom,” I said again to get her attention. "How much money do you need?”
“This is your fault, you know.” She came back to the receiver. "If you were normal like the rest of us, you wouldn’t have gotten kicked off that team. But no…my crooked son had to fuck other little boys and now we’ve been cut off from…” She stopped, unable to say his name, but I could hear the pain in her voice. “And I can’t pay rent or buy groceries without that, Joshua. But you justhadto play baseball! Follow inhisfootsteps!” She snarled. “Is it worth it?”
“Mom.” I sighed. "How much money do you need?”
“Throwing balls with your new family while your mother is starving!” She hissed.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said to her, knowing that visiting was the only thing that would stop the spiral of vicious insults happening over the phone. “Don’t leave the apartment. Don’t go looking for…”
“Jimmy?” She said, as if I should know his name. “That bastard is never getting back in my bed; piece of shit…” She trailed off in a slew of insults before she set the phone down on the counter without hanging up or saying goodbye.
I sat, listening to her destroy her apartment, the familiar sounds of her crashing from a high echoed through the receiver. Going down there was exactly what she wanted; yelling at me through the phone never gave her the same rush as doing it to my face.
Hanging up, knowing full well she’d call back the second she realized, I climbed off the bus and started toward my car. It was the oldest piece of shit on the lot, but it ran and that’s all that I needed. A way of getting to and from Lorette to keep my mother from ending up face down in an alley.
“Where are you going?” Dean’s voice was too warm and worried at my back.
“I have to go into the city,” I said.
