4
Arm Twisting
When Dad left,it wasn’t by his choice. He loved Mom until his final heartbeat.
She was never told she wasn’t good enough. In fact, the last words Dad ever told her were, “I’ll be home soon. I love you both. Bye.”
Yes, heartbreaking. But different from the soul-crushing rejection I was currently going through. How could Mom expect that some grilled meat, music, and a day with a bunch of smiling people would turn that around for me?
“Everyone is excited about seeing you. Me, your aunts, and especially your brothers Reece, Julian, and Nathan. They were asking about you just the other day. I think it’s been a couple years since you’ve seen each other.”
Huh. Those guys. Mom was married to their father when we were all in high school. Imagine being the new frumpy stepsister of the three best looking and most popular guys in the high school that you had to transfer to mid-sophomore year. You arrive new to town, you’re trying to catch up because now you’re in a better school, you have no friends, and the stepbrothers who your mom swore would look out for you acted like you didn’t exist.
I don’t recommend it.
But they did stoke my sexual curiosity, which until that time had been limited to a couple clumsy attempts to find my clitoris. Little did the brothers know, the porn websites I heard them talking about, the viewership of which they hid from our parents, were also available to me, in my bedroom, via my iPad. While I didn’t know much, I figured out that most of what I saw was kind of fake, it still helped me realize exactly where things were and what you could do with them.
And then there was the time my stepbrother Julian brought a girl home when our parents were out of town. I wasn’t surprised by how quickly he got her up to his bedroom—the guys had all sorts of girls chasing after them—but I was taken with the sounds she made, which started as low moans and quickly reached a crescendo that nearly made the house shake. I could hear Nathan and Reece snickering down the hall, but I closed my own bedroom door and touched myself, imagining Julian was doing to me whatever he was doing to make that girl scream.
Afterward, I couldn’t look at him for days. Not that he’d noticed.
But time brings maturity, and the guys were much nicer to me ten years later, always greeting me with hugs and kisses during our infrequent get-togethers, and even remembering the occasional birthday.
I knew they hadn’t meant any harm during our high school years. They’d just been doing what douche-y teenage boys did.
Mom leaned toward me over her tiny house salad with the dressing on the side. How someone ordered that at The Cheesecake Factory, where the temptations were endless, was beyond me.
“I’ll send you an email with all the details again, but just remember that it’s at Lake Hyde Park, this Saturday, eleven a.m. It will be so much fun!”
Mom was happy. Her work was done.
She set down her fork, her salad finished, and started looking around. I got it. It was what she did when she was ready to go. She’d never been good at hiding her antsiness.
But she had another think coming. As soon as I finished my entrée-sized Chinese chicken salad, I’d be ordering carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. If Mom was dragging my ass out of the house, she’d better believe I planned on returning home with a full stomach and a doggie bag.
I ignored Mom’s impatience and enjoyed eating something other than Pop-Tarts. How bad could the reunion be? I had nothing to do next Saturday. Not even my soap opera was on. And the park was only a half hour drive away.
It might be nice to see Reece, Julian, and Nathan. Maybe one of them would have a little weed to share.
Just then, Mom’s hands flew up in the air, startling the shit out of me. “I almost forgot! I have a box of Peter’s things in the trunk of my car. You know, things he’d left over at the house over the years. Don’t forget to take it when I drop you off.”
I almost choked on a piece of chicken. “Wh… what am I supposed to do with that? I just got all his crap out of my house.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Well, just tell him to come get it. It’s really not that hard, Gigi.”
“That’s easy for you to say—”
But she cut me off. “You know, Gigi, you could handle all this with a little more… grace.”
Grace? Was she fucking kidding me?
“Thanks for the support, Mom. But I gotta tell you, my feelings are my feelings. You might handle my situation differently, but I’m handling it my way.”
I waved the waitress over and instructed her to pack my carrot cake in a to-go box. I was done with lunch.
On the silent ride back to my place, I pulled Amazon up on my phone to see if I could find a cute little dress to wear, seeing as I had to attend the reunion after all. A new outfit would soothe my soul. And maybe keep me from eating any more Pop-Tarts that week.
Was it so bad to try to look cute for the reunion? Not that I was trying to impress anyone.
Really.
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