She placed her hand over mine. “It matters to me.”
I stared into my mother’s eyes and tried to come up with a reason to move away from this conversation. Because I knew if I started, I wouldn't stop until it was all out on the table. Including the shit I had to deal with when it came to her.
“You really don’t want this, Mom.”
She squeezed my hand. “I’m a bigger girl than you give me credit for.”
All right. Your funeral. “I don’t know if C.S.U. is for me, Mom.”
She nodded. “That’s fine. We can find you another school, if that’s what you want.”
“I went to a college party and got so plastered I told Clint I needed a new boyfriend.”
She blinked. “You got drunk?”
“And high. I lost complete control, Mom. I’m not ready to be on my own. Not like that.”
“What else happened this weekend?”
Tears crested my eyes. “Everything, Mom. I said so many disgusting things to Clint. I ruined my friendship with Michael. He won’t even talk to me. He’s so angry for what I did at that party. The mess I made of things and the hurtful things I said to Clint.”
“Oh, honey. Come here.”
Mom scooted her chair closer and wrapped her arms around me.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m petrified of going off to school. I want school. But I don’t know if I want English. And I don’t know if I want school right now. I don’t know if I’ll like teaching kids or if I’m playing it safe or if me going off to college will ruin me and Clint or if I’m not going to be friends with Allison and Michael anymore and I probably won’t now anyway because they hate me and want nothing to do with me and Clint didn’t sit beside me in the car so I think he hates me, too--”
“There, there. It’s okay. Sh, sh sh sh sh sh.”
I drew in a shaking breath. “And you’re always asking me for money. And I don’t have money to give you. I have my own plans to have my own place and you stopped looking for a job and I don’t get why you did that and I’ve had to hide money from you just to keep it for myself and I’m so tired of you complaining about me contributing to a house I don’t want to call home in an area of the city that I want to leave in a part of the state I don’t even know I want to continue living in!”
I felt my mother’s arms go slack and I pulled back.
“What?” she asked.
I wiped at my eyes. “I know you stopped looking for a job because I had money to contribute. I became your financial enabler and I didn’t speak up until it was too late.”
Mom blinked. “You’re upset with me about money?”
I sighed. “Not just money, Mom. Everything. It’s like you’re scared you’re going to fail at a job or something, so you don’t even try. You psyche yourself out before anything ever happens and you fall back on what’s easiest because you’re content with the life you have. Even if it does make you miserable most of the time.”
“I’m not miserable, Raelynn.”
I rolled my eyes. “And now you’re upset with me, too.”
“Yeah, rightfully so. Just because I ask you to contribute to some of the bills you help rack up around here doesn’t mean I want to drain you of all your money.”
“So, the fact that I pay for all these lunch outings we randomly have now and order the pizza all the time for our movie nights and do all the grocery shopping and pay over half of the bills doesn’t strike you as odd. Especially when I only worked a part-time job at a grocery store?”
“I mean, you had the money from all those--”
She stopped herself in her tracks and I nodded slowly. I stared at her with tired eyes, waiting for her to look at me. Waiting for her to respond to me. Waiting for her to say something--anything--acknowledging that I was right about this.
That my assessment of the situation wasn’t completely off.
“Mom?”
She licked her lips. “Everything will be okay. It always is.”