Page 52 of True Honey
I’d just add it to the long list of mistakes I’d made over the last fifteen years.
I talked to August about his dad and received the expected answer. He didn’t want to speak to him and had sent his last four calls to voicemail. Moments like that made it harder and harder not to bad-mouth Bradley in front of our son. But it wasn’t up to me to decide how August felt about his father, all I could do was stand by and reassure him when things inevitably went wrong between the two of them again.
“Yes sir, one moment please.” I said through the receiver and transferred the angry customer upstairs to sales. I hung up the phone and before I could even take a breath it rang again. The same conversation happened about a hundred times in the next two hours. ‘No sir there's nothing I can do, you can speak with sales.’ ‘This is the front office, you’re looking for a sales representative.’ ‘Please give me one moment to find you someone who can help.’
It felt endless.
The next caller was a particularly snippy woman with a shrill tone in her voice and a preconceived notion that I was an idiot.
“I don’t want to spend my afternoon being handed off between a bunch of morons on the phone, you’re going to tell me right now why my season ticket price went up nearly two hundred dollars.” She spat through the receiver and I could feel my chest tighten.
The thing about trauma was that it never gave warning for when or how it might show up. With my mind still swirling around the topic of Bradley, it snuck past my defenses and suddenly I was back in the living room being screamed at for a crying baby that I couldn’t soothe. I tried to clear my throat and get a word in against her, trying desperately to slow her down just long enough to transfer her upstairs. But she was relentless, the stream of irritation and rage licked words flowed from her without remorse.
All over tickets to a baseball game.
It felt foolish,I felt foolish.
“How hard is it to be a mother, Drew? You sit at home all day with him and the one thing you’re supposed to do you can’t even manage that. What’s wrong with him?” Bradley asked, raking his anger across my cheek. “What’s wrong with you!? Answer me!”
A surge of pent up anxiety rattled through me and stung at the corners of my eyes and as she continued to berate me over the phone. I tried to catch a full breath of air but my throat was sticky and dry all while her voice melted into the memories of Bradley.
It was a tangle designed to wound.
“You’re useless to me and him if you can’t figure yourself out Drew. You wanted a baby, you begged me for this and now you’ve let yourself and this house go. It’sall in your head, you can make the decision to get up and be better.” He snapped, throwing his glass in the sink so hard it shattered against the bottom. “Clean that up and get dressed, we’re going for dinner.”
“Are you even listening to me?” The woman’s voice whined through the phone.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, you’re looking for the sales offices. One moment please,” I said not giving her a chance to get a word in otherwise. I hung up the phone and excused myself from the desk, Susanna just offering me a distracted smile as she continued to work.
I couldn’t breathe, but I pinned my shoulders back and looked both ways down the hall before turning left and just walking. Eventually finding an unlocked door I slipped inside and luckily found the storage closet empty. It was packed floor to ceiling with equipment, helmets, bats.
I slumped against the concrete wall thankful for the silence as the tears finally poured from me in private. Over the years I had gotten pretty good at hiding my sadness from others, from August. I knew I wasn’t perfect at it, that sometimes I let it slip and he was the first to be hurt by it. But it was never meant for him, sometimes it just got to be too much and I had nowhere to run and hide it from him.
I rubbed my thumb down the palm of my hand, trying to ground myself in touch but the old emotional wounds seemed to split open like they’d never healed. I gasped for air through the tears, only working myself up worse.
Glass smashed, it shattered across my memories and the sound of slamming doors and a crying infant flooded in and filled every space in my mind like a collapsed dam. Tucking my head between my knees I forced my body to inhale, forced my lungs to fill with air before I could drown completely in my emotions.
“Figure yourself out Drew.”
It repeated in the back of my head like if I said it to myself enough times that maybe I would miraculously just figure it all out.
The door popped open and I flinched, scrambling back against the wall to my feet and rubbing the tears off my face with the back of my hands. Silas’s brother, Josh, stood in the entrance. His dark eyes moved over me before he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“I’m sorry, I just came in here for some quiet,” I rambled.
“It’s alright, I don’t mind sharing my panic attack closet,” he said, a delicate curve to his lips, that might have been a smile, formed.
I chuckled through the last sob and stared at him in wonder.
“Are you okay?” he asked after a moment. I assumed he was dressed for warmups before the game and must have been coming down here to grab something before heading out to the field. He was wearing cleats and a pair of athletic shorts with a dark compression long sleeve and Hornets Athletics shirt.
“Yeah, fine.” I said, sniffling.
What he did next surprised me. Instead of grabbing what he needed and leaving, he slid against the door and found a spot on the floor. He stared up at me, waiting for me to mirror him and when I finally did he pulled off his hat and hung it between his knees, picking at the frayed edges with his fingers.
“Dean likes that word too,” he said after a moment. “I’m fine, it’s fine…” he grumbled. “I hate that, when is anything ever fine?” He asked.
“Dean is your boyfriend right?” I questioned and he nodded.
