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It buzzes again and Gideon arches a brow at it, picks it up, and brings it over to me.
Mom:
Call me right fucking now.
My stomach drops. My mom never swears at me. She doesn’t care enough about what I do to swear at me. I uncurl from the couch and step into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. She’s already calling on video chat again by the time I hoist myself onto the counter.
I take a deep breath and hit the answer button.
“Hi mo-”
“Tell me what the fuck is going on right now, Rosalind Juliet.”
Is there some way that she knows the conversation I’d been having with the men in the other room? I disregard the idea as soon as it occurs to me. Thankfully, I’m saved from asking what she means when she continues. “Why did four boxes of your things just arrive from SSU? Did you get kicked out? What did you do?”
I shake my head. “No, mom, I didn’t get expelled. I-I dropped out.”
“You didwhat?” I wince at the tone of her voice. “Why, Rosalind Juliet? Why would you do that?”
“It was too much. I couldn’t handle the workload and keep up the videos.” Where some parents might actually listen to their children when they say that they’re overwhelmed, this has never burdened my mother.
“After everything that I have done for you. After everything I’ve been through for you, You can’t do this one thing for me? You can’t just stick it out?”
I can’t look at her, so I stare past my phone at the shower. Back over winter break, I’d tried to tell her about how bad things were. I’d tried to tell her about the bullying, but she hadn’t cared, not in the slightest. She’d just told me to suck it up.
“No, mom, I can’t just stick it out. Look, I know you’re mad, but it’s over now. I can’t undo withdrawing.”
Her jaw clenches and she looks over her phone like she also can’t look at me while we finish this conversation. “When exactly were you going to tell me about this? I can’t believe you would keep something like this from me, just like you were trying to hide money from me from you sex channel.”
“It’s not a sex channel. Though if it was, it’s nice to know that you’re upset about the money and not the content.”
“Are you sassing me?” She snaps, furious gaze coming back to me.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Of course not. I’m sorry.”
My mother looks around her house, her mouth tight. “Well, this is just great. I could finally enjoy my life with you and your sister gone, but I guess that’s over now.”
“I’m sorry having children has been such an incredible inconvenience to you,” I mutter.
She hears me, but doesn’t respond to my comment. Shaking her head and looking over the screen again. “I have to go. Don’t think this conversation is over, because it is definitely not. We’re discussing this more when you come home.”
“Oh, goody. Can’t wait,” I say, but she’s already hung up.
I drop my phone to the counter, lean back against the mirror, and pull my feet up to brace them on the counter. Overall, that hadn’t been that bad of an interaction with my mother. I had expected a lot more yelling, but I suppose if she was in a hurry to get somewhere, likely a date if her smoky eye is any indication, the yelling will come later.
And probably the grounding, even though I’m almost twenty.
And the taking all the money I got back from my tuition.
But I still need a minute. I still need time to process everything that’s happened, not just with my mother but with the Effers. They just dumped a lot of shit on me without much warning, and now I have to come to terms with living in a world where magic exists.
A soft knock sounds on the door. I lift my head when it slowly begins to open and Gideon slips through before closing it behind him. The space is compact, so it’s a good thing I’m on the counter otherwise we wouldn't both fit. He stands in front of me, his hands resting on my knees, practically swallowing my knee caps, they’re so big.
“Are you okay?” He asks for the second time in an hour.
I take a deep breath. “Honestly, I’m not sure.” He doesn’t say anything, just watches me, with his thumbs making soothing circles on the fabric covering of my legs. “She wasn’t always like this, you know? Before everything happened with my dad, she was happy and she loved us, even though she hadn’t really wanted kids. My dad did, though. He’d wanted a huge family, at least six kids, but they’d compromised on two.” I shake my head. “My mom loved him so much, more than she’s ever loved us, and that’s fine. He was herperson, her entire world. She only had us to make him happy. But he made a choice when he did what he did to me. He knew he wouldn’t get away with it. He knew they’d take him away. He chose to leave my mother in order to save me. I honestly don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for him loving me more than her. And then she was left with all of this debt from my hospital bills, two kids, one of them always sick, and she just never recovered.”
Gideon’s hands slide down my calves to my ankles, where he gently tugs my feet off the counter, leaving them to dangle so he can pull me forward and into his arms. I nestle into the solid wall of his chest, my arms reaching around his waist to pull him closer. “This is why you work so hard, isn’t it? Why you have two YouTube channels and are going to one of the top schools in the country. You feel guilty,” he murmurs against my hair. “And she just lets you keep on turning yourself inside out for something you had no control over.”
