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“Thanks.” My smile is weak but genuine and his broadens. “I’m sorry for the delay.”
I yawn, looking back at my son fast asleep in the backseat. I chuckle a little because he uses the sleeping bag every chance he gets and has burritoed himself inside of it.
We’re hardly out of town when the company and the road soothe my frayed nerves. My eyes drift shut. Though I’m desperate to hear about what they’ve done together before bedtime, it has to wait.
“Hol, sweetheart, wake up or I’m carrying you up the stairs.”
I lick my parched lips and hum, cautiously pressing my fingertips to my eye sockets so that I don’t smudge black everywhere.
“Hey, you.” Cary coos, using the same tone I do when I call Bhodi “bugaboo”.
He’s standing at my open car door. The sun’s coming up over the horizon and the salt marsh air has me inhaling deeply. I unfasten my seatbelt and slide onto the cement, rolling the blanket over one arm and hugging my boyfriend with the other.
My bushy-tailed child is upstairs, raiding the pantry for cereal and hunkering down to watch his alien animals in flashy balls cartoon for the next few hours.
I love his routine at Cary’s house and that he isn’t sitting around bored, waiting for me to perk up so that we can go build sandcastles and fish off the pier. He has a new wakeboard and wants to practice to show Sylvie Rhys he’s as balanced on the ocean as she is skiing the slopes.
I lean into Cary’s shoulder.
“Gonna make it?” he kisses my temple.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I joke.
The stress of my job rushes at me like the incoming tide on a stormy day. An anchor is tethering me, only allowing the boat to drift so far. I wish like hell that the mooring would snap so I can set an alternate course sooner.
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I take a minute to look out over the sound before closing the curtains in the master bedroom on the third floor. The house’s views are astounding—a reason I bought it—but none more than the one gazing out this window. From this vantage point, I can see everything clearly.
The rising sun paints the world in pinks, purples, and golds. The moon is beautiful. Almost translucent as it fades into the sky, giving an almost ethereal feeling that makes you feel how insignificant your problems are—or would be if you took the time to get past them.
There’s a whole incredible world out there waiting to be explored and the person whose hand I want to take and explore it with is by my side.
I stare at the retreating space between the sun and the moon. The place I’ve been stuck waiting for my future to hit me like daybreak.
Maybe it was my level of maturity, but I’d naively thought the answers to my problems with Rex, my mom, and my teenage years were going to be dropped in my lap. I hadn’t realized I had to grow through those experiences. Step into the future, reach toward the things I wanted most, while not even fully conscious of what they were.
Step one: counseling.
Step two: Did I have what it takes to care about a kid when the man who was my role model failed miserably and with every intent to do so?
Step three: Find someone to fall in love with who saw past the physical things I could provide and accepted the flawed emotional side of me without running in the other direction.
Holly steadies my rocking world by the way she loves me. Forgave me without hesitation for not explaining why she had every right to second guess letting me mentor her kid. Everything about her makes enduring my past worthwhile.
No. That’s not it at all. Finding Holly makes up for it, though. She’s a reward I won’t ever deserve. I didn’t understand love could be like this.
She makes me feel unsullied and, in my weakest moment, she treated me like an equal. Holly is my favorite confidante. The one whose opinion matters the most. She gives me the ability to be patient with myself and I’ve come to the conclusion that’s what allows me to ignore her aberrant lateness since there’s never any ill intent when Holly makes anyone wait.
Holly’s always trying her best for someone else. It’s not my place to like or dislike that tonight she directed her kindness at a jackass like Jake Ballentine, merely accept it was his turn. Holly doesn’t take her own turn often enough. I need to make up for that by not bitching about waiting a few extra minutes for her.
How’s that for growing the fuck up and not making everything about me, my past trauma, or giving power to the people who damaged me?I wordlessly fist-pump.
At my most recent therapy session, I asked my shrink if I could have had an ideal upbringing and still found Holly.
