Page 2 of Don't Love Me
“That’s the pool. You can go swimming whenever you want. We keep it heated so you can even swim in the winter if you want. And over there are the tennis courts.”
“Tennis courts,” he repeated.
“Do you want to play? I can get us rackets.”
I wasn’t really supposed to play. My dad didn’t like it when I did anything too physical. I didn’t know how, either, but if Marc wanted to hit balls at me that would be okay.
He stopped following me, so I turned around. I still had to show him the carriage house where he would live with George, which was down a path from the tennis courts, deeper onto the property.
He walked up to me and got super close. He was a whole head taller than me. I was small anyway, but he made me feel like a dwarf.
“Get this straight,” he said in low, soft voice. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to know you. And I sure as shit don’t want to play tennis with some stuck-up baby bitch.”
It was hard to know what startled me more. The cursing or the fact he’d been so mean to me. Nobody spoke to me this way. Everyone was always so gentle around me. So careful.
I couldn’t stop the tears that rushed to my eyes, and that only made his sneering face meaner.
“Go ahead, cry baby. Go run back to daddy.”
I did exactly that. I wasn’t fast, but I ran as hard as I could to the house and to the kitchen where George was putting together sandwiches.
“George!” I took a few breaths because I was panting from both running and crying. I could feel the strain in my lungs, and I hated it. Hated that breathing should hurt this bad.
“Settle down, Peanut. Look at me.”
I did. George was easy to look at. Soft brown eyes, a round face with dimples in his cheeks. Kind of like he was always smiling. He could always relax me, no matter what.
“Easy in, and easy out. Breathe in and breathe out.”
He made me breathe with him until I felt normal again.
“Now tell me what happened.”
“He was so mean to me! He cursed and everything. He hates me already, and he just got here, and I didn’t even do anything wrong!”
George picked me up then, and set me on the kitchen island next to where he was making his sandwiches, and nodded.
“Marc doesn’t hate you, Peanut,” he said gently. George was always gentle and kind to me. I’d never heard him curse ever.
“He called me the “B” word!”
George sighed, but I could see he wasn’t going to punish his nephew for cursing.
“Marc had to be taken away from his mom and that’s about the worst pain anyone can face. So all that pain is sitting in his stomach and he doesn’t know how to get it out. Yelling at you, me, anybody around, is the only thing he knows how to do. You’ve got to let him spew for a while until the pain subsides enough for him to breathe easier.”
“He has a hard time breathing?”
“Not like you. Not because of asthma. Just because of how much he’s hurting right now. It’s filling up his whole body.”
That sounded bad. I knew what it felt like not to be able to breathe. Sometimes it made me want to curse, too. I knew the words from TV, I just wasn’t allowed to say them.
George didn’t like it. And neither did Ms. Susan, who was my tutor.
George walked to the smaller drink fridge built into the island and pulled out two cans of grape sodas.
“This isn’t going to make him feel better, but at least it will taste good. And he’ll know that no matter how mean he was to you, you understand what he’s going through and you’re there for him. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. In fact, it might be better to wait a few days…”
I hopped off the counter and took the two sodas from his hands.
