Page 26 of Tell Me When It's Over

He notices that too. “Since when do we bullshit each other?”

I could give him the exact date, down to the time on the stupidly over ornate grandfather clock that Harry probably still has in his foyer, as to when the last time we bullshitted each other was, but that would probably be petty. It isn’t his fault that my mother lied, or that his father told us both to leave and never come back. But the day that I walked out will forever be cemented in my mind, because for once, I didn’t want to go with Mom. I wanted to stay. With Kyler, Mia, and even Harry. I wanted to pretend everything would be okay, even if it wouldn’t.

I wanted Kyler to tell me he’d take care of me.

I wanted Mia to promise me everything would be fine like she usually did.

What I wanted was too much to ask.

It was all bullshit.

Instead of dredging up old memories, I loosen a sigh. “I’m thinking about how much has changed. Mom…” Hesitation takes over my ability to verbalize my rampant thoughts, so I force myself to take a deep breath before continuing. “With Mom being gone, I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. And before you tell me that I have a place with you and Mia, I know I do. But Mom was my only family left. We had…a lot of problems, but I loved her a lot. Down to the last day.”

The last day is one that stays prominent in my mind. We’d gotten into another fight. One that left me wanting to scream “I hate you” as she walked to the door. She’d been through another episode because she wasn’t taking her medication. Again. After she promised she’d be better at it. All I wanted was her to take her condition seriously, to consider me in her choices. Instead, I got a bitch slap to the face, followed by a half-ass apology, onslaught of tears, a kiss on the same cheek she struck, before a “I’ll see you in the morning” like nothing happened at all.

She didn’t see me in the morning because she wrapped her car around the tree two blocks away from our shitty, roach-infested apartment.

I never got a ‘goodbye’.

Or an ‘I love you’.

As always, I received nothing from her.

I don’t realize Kyler has stopped messing with my hair until he’s kneeling in front of me, tipping my chin up to meet his gaze with an ungloved hand. “Hey,” he murmurs softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

It. My mother. The elephant in the room that I refuse to address. Because it hurts. Because it physically pains me that I didn’t get to say goodbye to her even though she made me angry more times than not. My stomach churns every time I think of our last encounter, and I feel the sting of her hand against my cheek before her mood shifts back to the doting mother she sometimes could be.

So, no. I don’t want to talk about her. Or her depression, that was oftentimes manic, that nobody officially knew about when we lived here. I hold onto the fact that, instead of screaming my hatred at her when she left that day, I said “I love you” instead. I like to think she heard me, maybe even believed it.

I know she didn’t repeat it back. She rarely did, and I tell myself it was because of her condition, when deep down I know it wasn’t.

Throat thick, I shake my head slowly.

I think

he’ll drop it, but instead he surprises me with, “Tell me when it’s over.”

Blinking, my lips part. It’s hard to find my voice after hearing those words. “When what is over?”

“You shutting me out.” He stands, going back to my hair. “I don’t like it, kid. Never did.”

An apology is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it. “I don’t like when you call me kid. I’m not twelve anymore.”

The noise coming from him sounds like it’s in disagreement, but he doesn’t say so. No, he has to lodge the knife already in my heart a little deeper. “I get that you miss your mom, and I won’t even pretend to know what that kind of loss is like, but you do have me, and you’ll always have me. Even when you force me to do this stupid hair shit or buy me things when I tell you strictly not to. I go with it to prove that you may have lost Katherine, but you won’t lose me.” His not again is stuck in his throat, but I hear it loud and clear.

Tears prickle my eyes when he adds, “I love you, Leighton. You know that, right?”

I don’t think about it. Or did I? “I know.”

“And one day you’re going to tell me whatever it is that you’re not saying before you combust. You will, Lenny, and I don’t want the shit you’re keeping from me to hurt you anymore than it already is. I’ve never judged you. I’m not going to start now.”

Closing my eyes, I suck in a quiet breath and count down from ten in my head before I trust myself to speak again. Licking my dry lips, I offer him a small, “I’ll tell you.”

I don’t say now.

I don’t say when.

He understands.

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