Page 126 of Fake Love

This time when I lean up and meet his lips with mine, there is nothing chaste about it.

If we weren’t in a strangers office, I would make him apologize in another way. I may be adventurous and all but not that much.

When we pull apart, I let my fingers caress his face as I speak. “You have one more person to apologize to.”

36

OCTOBER 27, 2022

Maddox

As a kid, I never liked seeing my mom cry.

It wasn’t very often that I saw her with tears in her eyes since she knew how to hide them, but when I did, it always crushed me.

There was always this pain in my chest every time I saw her eyes swell up with tears, and I hated it.

I made myself a promise at a young age that my mom would never cry for something that I did.

That promise was repeatedly broken last year.

Every time I saw her, every time I talked to her, every time she begged me to stop, there would be tears rolling down her face.

The chest pain was there for every single one of them, yet feeling that pain wasn’t enough for me to listen to her and stop what I was doing.

So the tears continued.

Since I left rehab, I’ve seen her with tears once, but those were different and those were happy ones.

When I saw those, I made another promise to myself, if I was going to make my mom cry again it would be because of something happy.

I broke that promise the second I decided to walk out of the hospital.

When I walked into her house after getting lectured by Dante and Jennifer, with the latter vowing to leave if I don’t straighten up, I expected the same treatment from Nora.

I expected her to sit me down and lecture me about all the wrong that I’m doing. I expected to hear her yell at me as if I was a teenager again getting home after getting into a fight.

But there was no lecture, no yelling.

I walked into the living room, where she was sitting on a recliner that I had bought her last year when she was diagnosed, and found her with silent tears in her eyes.

She didn’t say anything as I walked in and took a seat on the couch next to her.

She didn’t say anything as I took her hand and apologized for not being able to handle hearing her say no to the biopsy.

She said nothing when I apologized for leaving.

Her eyes stayed on mine and it crushed me to see the tears rolling down her face and not hearing her say a damn word.

It was when I was done talking that she finally said something.

“Did you?” She had asked and I didn’t need any clarification as to what she meant.

I told her the truth. That I tried, that I wanted to use again and that I was close to doing it but that I was stopped. I told her, promised her, that I was going to work on making sure it happened again.

For a second, I thought she didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t.

I’ve broken promises before, what would make this one different?

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