Chapter 29

I’ve mulled around my room for the last few hours, sitting on my bed and sewing embellishments to a pair of jeans I’ve revamped into a new short denim skirt, trying hard not to get frustrated with the feelings inside. Partly to amuse myself and partly to piss Arrick off after leaving my other one in Amber’s apartment. That childish part always has to win in some way. Too defiant for my own good.

I used to do this sort of stuff when I was bored; customize my clothes and jazz up anything I felt needed it. It has a way of focusing my mind as I watch the small stitches neatly form wherever I work my needle. I forgot how much I missed this.

My sewing box is laid on the bed beside me, my box of assorted trim scattered in front of me and the mess of cut denim and scraps trailing off to one side as the housekeeper finishes unpacking what’s left of my luggage and removes herself with items for the laundry. She smiles my way with a warm affectionate look, and I catch myself smiling back, despite my funk, as I watch her out the door. My mother appears behind and maneuvers around her.

“Sophie, darling, can I come in?” The curvy floral dress she’s wearing suits her bustier figure and I can’t help but notice my mom looks older, with grayer hair and more lines around the eyes. Lingering by the open door for a moment, she regards me with a little hesitation. In the last months we have drifted apart; that close bond suffering badly, and now she isn’t sure how to approach me. I experience that chasm of guilt opening up again like a canyon of fire, and it irritates me, adding to my tetchy mood and inner darkness.

“It’s open, isn’t it?” I huff churlishly and then internally chastise myself at the crushed expression fleeting across my mom’s face. I am so used to being prickly with people around me nowadays, I forget what it is like to have someone, who genuinely loves you, hurt by it. I put down my sewing and straighten up, clearing my throat to try and shove the attitude down where it belongs, and remind myself that this woman is someone who changed my entire life. This woman is my mom in every way, and I need to stop shoving her far away, along with everyone else, like they have all offended me somehow.

She moves into the room slowly and carefully and nestles herself on the end of the high four-poster bed, making the decision to ignore my outburst, and wriggles back until she’s seated comfortably. She seems to be avoiding my gaze and I know it’s while she gathers herself emotionally. She doesn’t want to show me I have wounded her, and it just makes me feel even shittier.

Great job, you’re an asshole, Sophie.

“Arrick stayed a little while and talked to us. I know you two are fighting, Honey, but he means well, and he wanted you to know he didn’t just take off.” Her soft voice warms me despite myself, and the lump of emotion that catches in my throat startles me. I’m not sure if it’s from her caring presence and the way she is looking at me, as though I’m still her lost little girl, or if it’s knowing he didn’t just up and walk out like I thought he did. There’s only confusion at my response.

Arrick can fuck off.

I’ve missed this woman so much more than I let myself acknowledge. Faced with her now, I can’t deny that there are emotions I kept buried deep down inside, which are now floating to the surface and some of that outer wall is shaking. Despite everything that has gone on, all I want is to curl up like a child in her arms and have her fix all this mess for me. She used to play with my hair while I laid my head on her lap and sing to me when I was younger. What I wouldn’t give to have her do that right now and act like this was three years ago instead of now. The chasm between us seems huge, and I don’t know how to mend it.

I make a move towards her impulsively, but that old stubborn part of me, self-reliant and protective when in hurt mode, stops me. I wipe my face clean of weakening resolve instead and pick my sewing back up, as though I don’t really care. I know I have reverted to that gangly kid who came here from New York, keeping people on the outside and putting the barriers up. I don’t know why. If I knew then I would stop it.

“What did he have to say for himself? Tell you what a train wreck existence I was living and how I brought shame on my family?” I sigh heavily, trying to ignore my mother’s pained expression once again, and push down rising waves of rolling bubbling tension. Just can’t seem to get my head and mood to coincide.

“He told us that you needed help and time, he told us that you feel lost and empty and don’t know where you are going in life.” She says it breathily, soft, and sincere, with no hint of malice.

I stop mid-stitch, pricking my finger absentmindedly and throw it down in my lap again. Irritation grinding inside of me at the wave of overwhelming sadness that comes over me, threatening to make me cry.

“Did he also tell you that he no longer likes who I am, and pretty much bailed?” that stab of betrayal goes off inside me, anger at him multiplying tenfold. Arrick appears in my mind’s eye to make that dull thud in my chest grow larger, the consuming black hole inside of me expanding outwards from within and makes me instantly exhausted.

“He said that you’ve changed, that your time with people who mistreated you have put you back into that defensive mode we spent years getting you out of. That your wall is back up and this time, like everyone else, you’ve put him on the outside too.” She slides off the bed and closes the gap between us by walking around to sit beside me instead, reaching for the child she loves in her memory, but I move back out of reach. I inhale sharply, stabbed with a pain in my heart at his evaluation of me.

So many warring emotions going off at once means I cannot handle touch, even a touch given in pure sincere love. I hate that she’s telling me this, hate that he thinks that’s what I am doing, even if it might be true. I hate the fact that even when he’s being an asshole to me, he still seems to understand me, yet still acts like a fucking douche bag anyway and walks the fuck out on me.

Bastard! Who does that? Arrick fucking does!

“How very insightful of him,” I reply blandly. Simmering crazily below the surface, trying not to grind my teeth and shake my head to dispel him from it.

“Is this about the past? About what that vile monster did to you? Or did someone else hurt you while you were gone?” Her voice is so wary and gentle that it just grinds on my fragile nerves. A topic that I always hate her touching on, hate her even acknowledging is in my past. I can’t stand when she looks at me the way she is doing now and reminds me of the kid who came here, so wrapped up in fear and mistrust that I wouldn’t let anyone except Emma and Arry in.

I hate that in all the years, no matter how much I have come out of myself, my parents overcompensate for my past. They have always allowed me to be spoiled, churlish, and stroppy with them in the worst kind of ways. They don’t even try to rein me in or control me all, and never thought of lifting a hand or voice to me, even when I was being an absolute brat. It’s like they always put everything down to what that man did and give me so much more leeway than any of my siblings. If it weren’t for Arrick being more in control, then I probably would have hit the rails years before I did.

“No! That’s in the past, he’s in the past. No one has hurt me in that way since him … I’ve moved on.” I grind it out like a rehearsed speech. One I have given her so many times whenever she tried to broach this painful subject. Mostly it’s true, I’ve moved on in so many ways, just not all.

Yes, I still bear the scars and the memories, but the behaviors, the inability to let people close or to trust, all of that has changed in time. This here, my being closed off and going backwards isn’t about him at all. It’s about this all-consuming lack of worth inside of me. Maybe it stems from what he did, and I don’t really understand, but really, part of me tells me it isn’t about him at all. This is something else, and if I only knew what then I could fix it or find a way to.

“Why do you never let me in that way?” Her tearful question almost ends me; sighing back the weight of how this is making me feel, my lungs restrict in an effort to breathe. Panic rising. I could never handle people trying to probe into this. I let Arrick and Emma in of my own free will, and they never pushed for answers, they always let it come from me in my own time. That shaking inner rage of defensiveness prickles, barbed wire fence going up as heat and then cold travels up my spine.

“I don’t want to do this right now.”