Her long auburn hair is straight, falling down her shoulders. I hear a dog barking—must be Zeus.
“Hey Stel-Bell.” I use the nickname that developed sometime in the last few months. And I can’t help it when my lips tug up at the sight of my best friend.
“How are you? How is everything?” She leans back on her gray couch.
I sigh louder than I intended and slouch against the hood of my car.
She laughs. “That bad, huh?”
I run my free hand through my hair. “It’s Becca.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, figured that much. When is it not Becca?”
“Yeah, yeah. Our team’s staying at her hotel during training camp, and … I don’t know, Stel. I just can’t get her out of my fucking head.” My fingertips jab into my hairline, out of frustration.
She throws her head back. “I know, Cal. That’s how it’s always been. I just want to see you happy. You deserve that, and I’m just not sure she’s ever going to be able to give that to you.”
The front door of my parents’ house opens, and my mom squints at me. And her words roll from her lips with no sincerity. “Are you going to come in or what?”
I wave to her, unpleasantness twisting into my chest at her “kindness.”
I ignore her. She turns and slams the door shut behind her.
“Stella, I’m slipping you into my pocket. Walking inside,” I inform her right before I slide my phone into my sweats pocket.
I turn and shout to my mom, “I’m coming.”
She ducks back inside the door without saying a word, and I walk the short few feet from my car to the chipped front door. A door I only have a desire to pass through for one person—Gran.
I twist the cool metal handle and walk inside, a sense of dread instantly settling onto my chest.
“Is that my boy?” Gran’s raspy, old voice carries down the hall from her room.
My lips instantaneously lift the smile that only she can form. I call down the hall as I kick my shoes off and start to her, “It’s me, Gran!”
My mom is already walking into the dining room.
I don’t know if there was ever a defining moment in my life when I noticed how my parents treated me was not the same as how my friends’ parents treated them. I just remember that over time, I enjoyed being anywhere else but my own home. And the times I was home, I was holed up in my room or with Gran.
Gran didn’t move in with us until my grandpa died. Watching her lose her soul mate had crushed my heart. I saw a piece of her disappear after he died, like the light that shone within her had started to dim.
Gran moved in when I was about seventeen. It took her all of ten minutes to learn the dynamics in our house. I did the dishes, took out the trash, did the laundry, and my parents spent their free time trying to keep up an image that didn’t really exist.
There were noI love yous, no hugs, just pats on the shoulders and if I was lucky, a good night.
I learned the reason my parents didn’t particularly like me when I was nine years old.
My mom got mad at me because I had worn a dirty hoodie to school.
“We are better than that,” she said and walked away.
I silently followed her.
She didn’t know I was on the other side of her bedroom door when she told my father, “We should never have kept him. He takes up so much of our goddamn money. I had to go buy him new clothes for school today because he can’t take care of his own shit! And last week I had to buy him a new pair of sneakers for gym because the teacher complained about the condition of his current ones. But he didn’t tell me that they were so bad. I have never been more embarrassed in my life.”
I’ve never told them I heard that. And maybe she didn’t really mean it, just said it in the heat of the moment. But that would be a lie. Because compared to some of the other things my parents have told me, that would be seen as kindness.
That was the day I learned that vulnerability hurts you.
