You don’t realise how precious some moments are when shared with your favourite person, until you can’t have those moments back. And it was the simple ones too – the ones where there was no sex, no spontaneous date or adventure. Just us, in the comfort of one another.
As Sam and I drove the two hour drive from central Seattle to Redmond, I could only appreciate the numerous attempts he had made along the way to calm my nerves, but nothing was working. On top of not being able to look Sam in the eye after the events of last night, my kiss with Theo still fresh in my mind, I now also had to face my parents, which was something I hadn’t prepared for at all. The weekend was bound to end in tears and misery from the beginning, and I knew that Sam and I would return to our apartment on Monday night exhausted and fed up, but this was something we had to do.
I knew my mum was the most persistent one of all. Sam’s parents were always the more chill ones out of the two families – they respected Sam’s and I’s choices to make the two hour move from our hometown, so that we could pursue our dreams at the college we had wanted to attend since childhood. It’s like we had our whole lives planned out ever since the beginning – I didn’t mind though. I couldn’t imagine a world where either one of us was unorganised and had no clue what we wanted to do with our lives. I liked that we were sure.
I liked being in control of aspects in my life – and when I wasn’t, things rapidly went downhill for me, for us.
We parked in my parents’ driveway, and bile rose from my throat as I tried to keep a positive attitude, but it was impossible.
Both my mother and father had always been so controlling, so intent on getting their ways throughout my life. For eighteen years, I lived entrapped. I was an only child, and this made me golden – their little plaything, which they could manipulate into doing things as they wished. They were down right perfectionists, and I felt like I was constantly gasping for air under their roof. Their marriage was far from perfect too; they grew to detest each other over the years, and I was surprised they hadn’t yet considered a divorce. Their relationship was so toxic, and so incredibly irritating, that I found myself counting down the days to when Sam and I could escape this miserable little town. There was nothing left for us here, besides his family, which actually liked me for me and never once tried to change that. His parents took me in every single night mine couldn’t put their fights to rest, so that I wouldn’t have to sleep through screams and shattering plates.
So that I could live the kind of childhood that everyone deserved, and needed.
His younger brother became the sibling I never had, and for a while things were normal again. But then I would return to my own house down the street, only to face what I had left behind.
It seemed that after Sam and I left for college, much to my parents’ dismay, things between my mum and dad looked somewhat normal again. Their refusal to split gave me the indication that they still held so much love for each other, even though they couldn’t stand one another.
And I guess that was admirable, because Sam and I were slowly starting to turn into them. I hated it, but it tested us, and in a way I’m glad it happened – because now I know that, unlike my parents, we weren’t able to survive this and come out of it hand in hand.
Together.
“Dove, darling!” My mum runs up to the car as I climb out, wrapping her long arms around me and squeezing until I could barely breathe. “Oh, I’m so glad you two decided to join us for thanksgiving! I haven’t seen you both in so long!”
“Mum, it’s been three months,” I reply, but she pays no mind and goes to hug Sam equally as tight.
“Oh, how was the drive? You two must be hungry,” my mum gushes, and Sam and I both give each other knowing looks as we watch my mum go back and forth between the two of us, making herself look extremely busy whilst doing the most mundane thing of greeting.
“Look at you, all grown up,” my dad comes out, and ruffles my hair as he once did when I was a child. Perhaps I still appeared a child in front of them. They would always treat me like one, despite how old I got. Always trying to hold on more tightly than the last time, scared to let go and let me do as I please. I didn’t even introduce them to Lilian when they dropped Sam and I at college, because I knew exactly how they would’ve reacted, and frankly I didn’t have the energy to fight them on my first day.
I didn’t have the energy now. I wanted so desperately to get back in the car and drive back to campus.
Even Theo’s presence was more tolerable than my parents’ in this moment.
But of course I was thinking about him when my mind needed to think of literally anything else, like for example my boyfriend, who was standing right beside me and guiding me inside my childhood home. He was on my mind every second of every day since I had met him on the pitch, and no matter how badly I wanted him erased, he wouldn’t leave.
Like a tattoo.
Just as permanent as his own.
As the four of us sat gathered by my parents’ newest addition of a fireplace to their living room, drinking mum’s hot chocolate and catching up on the last three months, Sam led the conversation, whilst I sat there occasionally confirming the events he had chosen to share with my family, thankfully none bad or too personal, all the while transfixed on one thing –
his green eyes engraved in my living memory.