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It’s incredible how easy it is to love Benson.
We finish our meeting, and then I log off to work on my final paper. I’m starting on it extremely early, but my premise is fresh in my brain. I can add insights and data pages closer to the due date. With all the thoughts and points bursting to life in my head, I want to get them down. Minutes turn to hours, and when my phone buzzes on my desk, I realize I’ve typed nineteen pages.
My grin is unstoppable until I see who is calling. With my phone on vibrate, it didn’t sound with my mom’s ringtone. Damn it. Before she hangs up, I answer, “Hey.”
“So, I’m on TikTok, and I see you’ve reposted something. Much to my surprise, it’s that guy, with you naked in his bed.”
I press my lips together. “I wasn’t naked. I had shorts and a cami on.”
Total lie. I was naked as the day I was born with beard burns on my thighs.
“You look naked, and it’s really trashy that he posted that.”
“I thought it was romantic. Did you listen to him sing?”
“Is that what we’re calling that?”
“Don’t be like that,” I insist, blowing out a breath. “It was sweet. Benson is wonderful.”
She lets out a frustrated sigh. “Cameron, why are you always making such bad decisions? What are you going to do? Wait for him to knock you up again and, when he doesn’t want it a second time but you do, be stuck as a single mom?”
I close my eyes. Her words mean nothing when Benson’s are streaming into my head. I imagine Benson’s lips at my ear, telling me to breathe, before he kisses my lobe. I count to ten, and with each number, I imagine him pressing his lips to my skin. When I open my eyes, I let my shoulders fall. “Mom, for the sake of our relationship, I will not be discussing my choice from freshman year any longer. It is not up for discussion from this moment on. It is Benson’s and my past, and we are looking forward to our future.”
She scoffs. “Our future. Do you have a concussion?”
I want to scream. I want to cuss. I want to tell her never to speak to me again, but I want to give her a chance to see that she is pushing me away. I know she has her own trauma, but it’s not my job to help her heal from that. I’m too busy trying to heal my own self from the trauma she left me with. Each day is a struggle, and I know she hurts, but I can’t allow my mother to inflict that on me.
Not when I have a future I deserve within reach.
“I love him,” I tell my mother. “I love him more than I can ever explain to you, and I need you to respect that. For the two us to have a relationship, I need you to let that go because the choice we made was ours and ours alone.”
“It was the wrong choice—”
“According to you. But for me, for Benson, it was right. I have beaten myself up for years over what happened. I ghosted him, wouldn’t speak to him because of the guilt, and I wasted years without the love of my life.”
“Cameron, he can’t love—”
“He can, he does, and at the end of the day, I choose Benson. Only Benson.”
“Cameron Dianne!”
“I said what I said,” I say simply, feeling way more confident than I expected. “I’d love for you to give him a chance, to get to know him.”
“I have no intention—”
I hear her muffle a curse, and then she yells at my dad before his voice fills the line. “I’d love to get dinner with y’all. When do you two have time?”
Tears gather in my eyes, and even though I try to hold them back, they splash down my cheeks. “I love you, Dad.”
His voice softens. “Oh Cameron, I love you.”
I wipe my face and tell him I’ll get back to him on a time and date since Benson and I are so busy, along with everything going on with his grandparents. “Sounds good to me. I’m proud of you,” he tells me, and I can hear my mom complaining. “And no matter what, Cameron, I’m your father.”
“I know. I love you.”
He tells me the same, and then I hang up. My lips tremble as a small sob breaks from me. I don’t think my mom will come around, not with her trauma. I wish I hadn’t called her when I had that positive test in my hand. I wish I would have done everything myself, but I wasn’t the woman then that I am now. These last three years may have been tough, but they shaped me into a woman who is worthy of Benson’s love. Who wants to love him in every way possible. I swallow past a sob and run my hands down my face, wiping away the tears and snot. As much as I want to have a relationship with my mom, I know I’ll be okay without her. I have a chosen family.
