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“Right,” Joel replied and repeated the goodbye, the hang-up.
And made another call.
My heart, meanwhile, was thudding in my chest.
“Yo, Joel,” Axel said. “What’s up?”
“You and Bailey there?”
A blip of quiet. “Yeah.”
“Speakerphone.”
Rustling, then another, “Yeah.”
He asked about me again.
And, my heart still thundering, I listened as Bailey and Axel declared I was the hardest working person they knew. Then Dessie. Then Ryan and Fox and even Frank, the sheriff.
This exercise was ridiculous.
I mean…it shouldn’tmeananything.
It shouldn’t matter because I knew in my heart that Ididwork hard.
But it did.
Because the people that Joel was calling were people who mattered to me and they weren’t even hesitating in taking my back, without even knowing why the hell that Joel was asking such a random question. About something important to me, critically important because I’d spent so long with my dad in my head and my mom was sitting there totally disengaged from the world around her, it wasn’t an easy thing for me to accept.
I always felt the need to do more.
Because maybe then they would see.
Because maybe then I’d be enough for them.
But I was beginning to understand, even with the crumbs of love and acceptance, I wouldneverbe enough for them. And…maybe I needed to find that place of being enough in myself. Look to Joel and my friends when I wasn’t feeling it, wasn’t trusting it.
But…maybe I needed to look at myself and…
Be happy.
In inhaled deeply just as Joel asked sharply, his cell clattering to the table, “Do I need to go on?”
My dad bristled even as my mom sat there, not touching her garlic bread, staring at her plate, not seeming to hear the conversations. I waited for implosion as I watched the vein throb in his temple.
“Boy—” he began.
“I stopped being aboya long time ago,” Joel said softly. Softly, but firmly, and my heart was still thundering, still pounding against my ribcage. Because Joel was right. Sitting there with his arm around me, his jaw tight, and his tone firm, he was very far from a boy.
He was a man.
A good one.
Who…wasn’t going to sit there and let me be a punching bag.
Even if I kept trying to make myself one.
“Kids these days don’t respect—”
