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“Kayla, are you in there?” Relief floods me as I hear Tim’s voice. Him I can handle. “Are you okay?”
“Erm, yes, I’m fine.” I slip off the bed and take a quick glance of my reflection in the mirror. I don’t look great, but I don’t think I look as rough as I did most of yesterday. “Hold on, I’m just coming.”
I swing the door open and find a smile spreading across my face at just the sight of him. I don’t know what it is about him, but he always makes me feel a little bit better. The weight is lifted a tiny bit.
“Are you ready to go and get your car then?” He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Unless you’re hungry.”
“Er no, I don’t think so.” I feel sick not hungry after that dreadful conversation with my mother. “I would like to get back to my car and get it all fixed up. Then I need to… to start again, I suppose. You know how it is.”
Tim parts his lips and for a moment I think that he’s about to give his opinion on that attitude, but he says nothing. He simply nods and points towards his car indicating that it’s time for me to get going.
“Can I just have five minutes to get showered and dressed? Packed as well? I won’t be long, I promise.”
“Sure, sure.” Breezy as ever, Tim doesn’t mind what I do. “I will wait for you out here. Don’t worry.”
I feel a little bad as I close the door behind him, blocking him out, but I really can’t face any of the world without having a shower, least of all my mother. My scruffy appearance will be just another thing for her to berate me on and I’m pretty sure that she has enough material right now. I don’t need her to have more…
The plan is to wash up as quickly as I can, but once I step under the hot jets of water and my muscles loosen just a little bit, I find myself taking longer than I planned on. I don’t ever have a long time to get washed and ready in a slow and relaxed manner, that just doesn’t happen, and now that I have someone who isn’t knocking on the door and giving me hell, I have someone who is prepared to wait for as long as I need, I can’t seem to resist the temptation. I rub the soap over me slowly and enjoy how long it takes to wash my hair.
I could get used to this; I think idly to myself as I do. The slow pace. I actually kinda like it. It feels nice.
But reality comes back to me far too quickly as me and Tim speed down the high way back to where my car is still stuck on the side of the road. I put in a call to the tow truck man and he’s on his way too, so all will be fixed soon. Fixed and then life will return to what it once was. Me, doing my best to please my mother, attending job interviews for big law firms where I will be scared to work, me, fixing that mask firmly to my face.
There will be no long showers then, no time to myself, no dinners and motel rooms. I guess I’m just lucky that the hang over isn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be today or that reality would be harder to face.
“You are looking good today,” Tim tells me, surprising me. “Better than yesterday, I mean. Less stressed.”
“Oh right, thank you.” I nod slowly. I don’t know if I feel better but it’s always nice to be told that I look it. “Er, yes, I guess so. I mean, what happened is… shit. But I can’t change it now, can I? It’s happened and I just need damage control to try and make it right.” I sound like my mother. I hate that. “It will be fine.”
“Damage control on your life…” Tim muses. “You make it sound like you’re a project rather than a person.”
I think that he might be joking but those words hit too close to home. I have always been a little bit of a project to my mother, but I haven’t thought of it like that, in such clinical terms, and it’s a bit much. I don’t totally love the way that it makes me feel inside. Have I ever been a person to my mother? Has she ever seen me for who I am? I’m not even sure that I know who I am in reality. People usually find out those sorts of things through hobbies and experimenting, through socializing and being around other people, but I haven’t ever had any of that. Unless I’m not really anyone, just a husk I suppose. That could be true as well.
