Page 6 of Honest With You

Three missed calls and five text messages. All but one from my mom. The last text is from my dad, basically saying call my mom.

I’m scrolling Instagram telling myself I’ll call her after I’m not so tense anymore when I hear my cousin walk into the room. I show him my notifications and he chuckles.

“You’re barely eighteen, dude. Aunt Phoebe is just doing the ‘mom thing’. It’s called empty nest syndrome. Trust me, my mom was nearly impossible to deal with during my senior year. It got worse the first year I was here.”

Ty hands me a beer and gets comfortable on the recliner. He tips his beer my way before taking a sip.

“It gets better once she gets used to you being away.”

He leaves me to my thoughts as he picks up a game controller and browses his game selection.

He has a point.

My mom has definitely developed a shade of overprotectiveness that wasn’t there before. My parents have always just let me do my own thing. They trusted me. In return, I never skipped curfew and other than the occasional beer or shots at a party, I kept it straight.

“Want my advice?”

I cock an eyebrow and shrug.

“Don’t have a girlfriend. Enjoy senior year. If you know what I mean.”

He waggles his eyebrows and cackles as he tosses me another controller.

I force a laugh out. “I’m not even going to touch that.”

Rolling his eyes, he tips his head towards the TV, apparently done with this conversation.

“2K or FIFA?”

Stretching my arms over my head, I loosen my shoulders and kick my feet back up on the table, getting ready to kick my cousin’s butt.

“2K. I’m playing Boston.”

“Reese Althea! Get your butt down here, we're going to be late!”

Yaya Ella peeks her head out from the kitchen across the hall and raises an eyebrow.

“You don’t want me to drive her?” She slips out the door and walks over to me. She hands me a bag with Reese’s breakfast and I smile gratefully at her.

Standing at five foot three, I inherited my mom’s height. Yet even with my small stature, I still tower over our Filipina housekeeper.

If it weren’t for her, Stephen and I would have failed at this parenting thing. She was friends with myLolaback in the Philippines and never had children of her own. So when I was born, my parents flew her over to come live with us. Stephen was a toddler then and it was too much for Mama to handle. She was used to working and being a full time stay-at-home mom to two babies was not something she was inclined to do. When Yaya Ella came, Mama went back to work with Dad.

It worked out best for us. Yaya Ella introduced us to our Filipino roots and taught us Tagalog. Something Dad couldn’t. He can’t even speak the native language, let alone teach us anything.

I give her a polite smile and shake my head. “I promised Stephen.”

She nods in understanding. As she takes me in, a slight sheen appears in her eyes and I turn away before I too become a blubbering mess. She opens her mouth to say something but is interrupted when a door slams upstairs.

Reese runs down, huffing. “I have nothing to wear!”

I choke on my disbelief. “WHAT? What are you talking about? Wejustwent shopping last weekend.”

She rolls her eyes at me, impatience marring her expression. As if I haven’t been standing here for twenty minutes, wasting my precious time waiting on her.

I wanted to take her to get a quick bite to eat, seeing as she missed breakfast due to her fashion dilemma, but now we don’t have time to sit at a drive thruandeat.

I swallow my retort back, knowing I need to be the voice of reason because Stephen isn’t here. He has early classes today and I know it bothered him to miss Reese’s first day as a middle schooler and mine as a senior. I refuse to give him more reason to worry.

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