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Maybe I wanted the pieces of my mother I never got. Maybe I could be more than disappointment and anger if those weren’t all I was ever shown.
The husk cracks open, and the last of my bruised and battered heart falls out.
“Because you were all that I knew.” I try to raise my voice, but it shatters. I spit on the mold-covered carpet and try again. “You were all that I knew, and you abandoned me. You pushed me aside and pretended like I didn’t exist, acted like I was a burden because… why? Because I couldn’t pretend to be a girl?”
Dad looks at me like I’m one of the dumb kids in the trailer park running around making trouble. Not his child off at college trying to find something to do with his miserable life.
“Because you went out of your way to make life hard on yourself,” he says, full of exasperation. “I was fine when you started liking girls. It wasn’t my favorite thing, but I didn’t fight you on it. And then the trans thing. And the gay thing. You could have been perfectly happy with your friend without all of this transition nonsense.”
If it weren’t for my jeans, I’d be breaking skin with how hard I dig my nails into my thighs. Anything to keep myself from lashing out. From crossing the space and slamming his face into the dirty ass floorboard.
“I’m not gay,” I say as my voice cracks. “And there was never anything between me and Atlas.”
As much as it breaks my heart to say it out loud.
Dad’s sigh is that of a tired old man and not one born out of frustration like all of mine.
“I knew the way you looked at him. The way you clung to him. You both fell asleep enough times on this couch that I could see it.” He looks up at me, and I’ve seen enough pity in my life to recognize it. “But after talking to the boy, I guess the two of you couldn’t.”
So you could see my attraction to Atlas but not the fact that I’m a man?
Anger rises like a tidal wave in my chest. I kick the corner of that stupid couch he seems to think Atty and I sat too close on.
“I’m not the one who made life hard on myself, Dad.”
I drop to my ass in the middle of the disgusting floor with my head in my hands.
“You made it hard on me.“ I search his eyes for understanding, for any sign of regret, but I can’t read him. “You made it harder for Blair. He resents me, you know? For what you put him through because he protected me.”
“I’m sorry that’s how you feel, son.”
Son.
It should be relief, an inexplicable euphoria that rushes through me to hear that word from my dad. But all I feel is ice and rage. Bottling up and threatening to break the body of the cage it’s kept in.
“It’s not fair that I had to get all of the worst parts of you,” my voice wavers like an earthquake, “and Blair got all the best parts of Mom.”
If you were going to hate any of your children, shouldn’t it have been the one who’s a spitting image of your dead wife?
There’s that broken, disgusting rubble I’ve been fighting down. The piece that proves every horrible thing that’s ever been said about me.
I resent my own brother and wish he were the one with my problems. The brother who has done nothing but take care of me my entire life.
What’s wrong with you can’t be fixed. Not with hormones or surgeries. Not with alcohol or drugs. Not with the filthiest sex in the world.
You’re beyond repair.
“Why didn’t I get to remember her? Why did she become a ghost? A forbidden topic that no one could talk about because it hurt so much. Do you have any idea how much it hurt to lose her and then to lose her? You both kept her from me.”
A sharp pain breaks through the sludge. The surface cracks; water fills my lungs.
“He takes it like a dream. I might have to keep him like this. Drugged up and open for my dick.”
“Blair and Atty are all I have. They’re all I have because you took everything else from me.”
Hands hold my chest down. Touching. Pressing.
Bruises form on my thighs.
