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Our new home.
My mom never talked bad about my dad even though she had every right to. She never uttered a single negative thing about him in my presence, not even once. I respected her so much for it, not all parents took the high road like my mom did.
I saw the pained look in my mother’s eyes…
It was always there.
Haunting me.
But at the end of the day, he was still my father and I loved him.
She bought us a cute house in a nice neighborhood that reminded me of Pleasantville. Oak Island was a small beach town with a country feel. I quickly learned that everyone knew everyone in this town. I secretly kind of loved that, an extended family of some sort. Polar opposite from the hustle and bustle of LA, where everyone kept to themselves, absorbed only in their money and looks.
My mom was an ER General Surgeon and Chief of Medicine back in California. She ran the entire ER unit. When she decided to move us, a friend of a friend had some connections, and she was lucky enough to get a contracted job running the ER at Dosher Memorial Hospital in South Port, which was only a town over. She worked all sorts of crazy hours here like she did back in California. I barely ever saw her. I was alone in a new town, so far from my home.
The more things changed.
The more they stayed the same.
My dad worked from home designing computer software for a telecommunications company. He had only been working for TLCOM the last few years after he went back to college and got his degree. He said he wanted to better himself, but I often wondered if it was because my mom was the breadwinner of the family. I wondered if he felt emasculated.
For most of my life, my dad was a stay-at-home parent. He raised me along with my mom’s sister, Celeste, while my mom worked her life away to provide for us.
It was never a problem.
Until it was.
We got to spend a lot of time together, but unfortunately he also had more time to dwell on the fact that it was usually only him and I at home. There were plenty of times he had to take on both the “mom” and the “dad” roles since my mom was working all those insane hours.
There were instances when my dad was simply not enough. My first period, my first crush, my first kiss, getting ready for my first date, things that only another woman would understand. That’s when my aunt stepped in, picking up the slack for her absent sister. My Aunt Celeste was like a mom to me and still is. I could see the hurt on my mom’s face when I told her about something that she should have been apart of, that she should have witnessed. It was a memory that only a mother and daughter should experience, bonding the connection of parent and child for years to come.
She always listened, though.
I guess that was her role.
I could hear the strain in her voice when my aunt or my dad told her about all the other milestones that she should have been apart of but wasn’t.
Nothing ever changed.
My mom lived and breathed her job. She always said she loved helping people, that it gave her a purpose in life. I couldn’t fault her. She spent years in school, and half of her life was consumed with her head in the books. It was just who she was. My aunt would often tell me stories about how my mom missed out on her childhood, teenage years, college, and all the normal stuff that people should experience because medicine was in her blood, she got her first medical kit for her sixth birthday and it was like a light bulb went off in her head. I once read that doctors were born, they weren’t made.
I never wanted for anything. I opened my mouth, and I had it the next day. Growing up I always had the best toys, best clothes, best everything. That wasn’t my
father’s doing. He often fought with her about how she was spoiling me too much. That I needed to earn things, not just have them handed to me every time I wanted something. I never understood how she found time to buy me everything I asked for, but barely found time to eat dinner with us, or even watch a movie.
Little did she know I would have taken an hour with her over any fancy toy.
I thought with the move that maybe things would somehow change, that maybe she would make time for us now. I had no one here. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
She started working the day after we arrived in Oak Island, which left me to do most of the unpacking. Even though it was tedious going through all the boxes, I was grateful for the distraction. My mom’s inconsistent hours were starting to get to me, I was lonely, and this time around I didn’t have my dad or my aunt to fill that void. I never said anything to her because I knew she had enough on her plate, and I didn’t want to add to it. As much as she tried to play it off, I knew our current situation hit her harder than she liked to let on. That burden just added to the reasons she drowned herself in her work, more so than before.
Which was another reason I was grateful for my friendship with Dee, I spent a lot of time at her house with her family. They took me in like I belonged. I think her parents took pity on me since they knew I was by myself most of the time. Maybe they just assumed my mom was a struggling single parent who needed to work all the time to stay afloat since I never went into details about her position at the hospital.
I was alone with nothing but my thoughts, desperately trying to ignore my feelings about Dylan. I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to just turn his back on me as if our conversation was over because he said so.
Arrogant asshole.
The whole encounter was kind of a blur. I was so worked up I hadn’t even realized someone was in his Jeep watching us argue until Dylan backed out of the parking space and I heard his friend’s voice full of laughter. I instantly felt a sense of pride coming over me that someone had witnessed him getting knocked down a few pegs by a girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that I was the first girl to ever do so. That alone gave me a feeling of satisfaction.
