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And I sighed. My mom had a point. We’re poor without a lot of options, and were lucky to see Dr. Jenkins every other week. It was either him or no one, that was the sad truth.
So I fiddled with my book again, stuck in the smallness of my life, going through the motions of a high school girl without really living it, my heart locked inside a case of ice. Because this is what life is like now. I live on the other side of the trailer park with my mom, helping her get better, doing school work, and on the outside I look fine, but inside, I’m a mess. I can’t get over what happened between me, Jason and Brent, and I have no clue what to do next. There’s so much that’s already happened and my mind is tangled, twisted, tying myself in such knots that I could scream. There are nights when I wake up at night in a cold sweat, bolting up in bed only to have it all come crashing down on me again, the enormity of the situation, the incredible stuck-ness that I feel, with no clear answers, no path forward. Because I have no idea how to resolve the situation. I absolutely love Jason and Brent, and they’d made clear that they’d take whatever I could give. But the thing is, how in the world would this work out? I was going to be pinned with a scarlet letter if I did the trio, if I entered into a relationship with them. And I wasn’t ready to be labeled “that trashy girl,” not yet, maybe never.
And Tina could sense my inner conflict, the tension thick in the air.
“Baby girl,” she drawled, leaning back and lighting up a cigarette. “What’s going on with you? Why haven’t you seen Brent or that other guy, Jason, since I’ve been back?” She shouldn’t have been smoking, but with her issues, that was the least of her problems.
“Why? What’s it to you?” I asked quickly, a little too sharp.
And my mom let out a throaty chuckle which ended up in a series of hacking coughs, really painful sounding with a deep rattle in her chest. But nervous breakdown or no, my mom is smart, with an uncanny sixth sense about people and their emotions, and as her daughter, I was especially under the microscope.
“Well, there’s the fact that you lived with them while I was gone,” she drawled, taking another deep drag. “You lived with two men for a year, ate their food, slept at their place, watched their TV, and as far as I know, haven’t thanked them for their generosity. So it’s strange that you’ve cut off all contact, wouldn’t you say?”
And I flushed. Because I had thanked Brent and Jason, in a way. I’d fallen in love and thanked them with my body, gifting them my cherries, letting them take and taking for myself along the way. But how could I explain that to my mom? So I just mumbled, “I said thank you when I left.”
Tina shook her head again, taking another deep drag.
“No baby girl, there’s more to it than that. You’ve been distracted since I got back, cloudy, dreamy, looking like a lost soul. What’s going with you? Out with it baby, I’m the queen of therapy.”
I choked a little, but before I knew it, the whole story came spilling out, how it had started so innocently with a few looks, a few heated glances and then become a full-on affair, both men loving me, our bodies wrapped around one another in sensual delight.
And my mom’s no dimwit, she heard every word that I said, every syllable loud and clear.
“So Katy,” she said slowly, taking another deep drag, “what you’re saying is that you’ve fallen in love with not one man, but two.”
And I nodded hopelessly, tears coursing down my cheeks.
“Ye-yes,” I stammered. “I don’t know how things got so complicated but it’s just so fucked-up and I’m so confused and things shouldn’t be like this and …” My voice trailed off painfully, my chest hurt, like my heart was crumpling and folding in on itself, a hole it its place.
Tina was silent for a moment, looking at me contemplatively.
“Well, at least you love each other,” she said wryly. “Having two men in love with you is better than none.”
There was some truth to that. Trust my mom to be dryly efficient, stripping things down to their bare bones.
“I know, I know, I’m grateful, but love shouldn’t be this hard, right? It should be easy, everything should come easy and this … this is the opposite,” I cried.
But Tina shook her head at that.
“Who said love is easy?” she hacked, voice raspy from the cigarettes.
I paused for a moment.
“Well, I mean … I mean, I guess I thought it would be,” I blubbered. “I mean, I thought love was like soaring through the skies, things would just fall into place.”
