Sweet Dreams-48...Tears of My Childhood

Chapter 48

It’s amazing how you can go from fighting off a two hundred pound plus football player and screaming and stuff to being a cold weak wreck. I know it’s the dropping off of the adrenaline and some actual shock.

Alex looks at me when we get to the cars. “You going to be alright?”

“Y..yeah just sort of coming down or up from all of that’s just hitting me.” I’m really glad for his jacket because I’m shivering a little.

“Okay…let’s get you cleaned up and take a breather before going…”

I reach over and take his hand and step up and kiss him. “’Kay…I think I need it.”

I do but he does too. He gets the car and he rev’s it some and gets the engine warm and he’s fiddling with the dash and I know he’s adjusting the heat for me. I mean it’s just him…and everything he does and that he’s done already even that little thing has part of my heart curled up and happy hugging a pillow.

Those seats felt good and so did the heat from the vents. Gotta love new cars and that independent climate control stuff. I’m quiet and smiling a little at the fuss he’s making. I’m not normally all high maintenance and stuff but right now it feels pretty damned good really.

Alex drives and we head to one of those gas bar places that has the attached mini-store there and even some fast food places like the rest stops you see on the highway but this is more like a micro-mall? Anyway he pulls in and gets my door and sends me into the Starbucks to get us some coffees and he goes and does some shopping and he meets me at the little table they have there and takes a sip of his coffee. I went pretty basic with him while me I like mine with all the bells and whistles except soymilk.

I like my vente mocha caramel with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

Sue me I like my girly coffee.

Alex takes out peroxide and gauze and white bandage tape and some cloths and he starts to clean my hands up and stuff. I think I’m twisting him up because he’s got a smile on his face.

A smile sideways one but it’s there.

A girl goes past us and stares. I blink and smile at her. “He’s really good at mani-pedi’s too.” She blinks and she looks utterly confused by that and we smile at each other some more. He takes my other hand and starts in at that and he’s working away at cleaning it when he say’s in this really, really bad oriental accent. “So Wot you want me do, I give you cwazy good nails okay? You be talk of all little bang-cock.”

That was so unfair. He doesn’t usually do stuff like that and I almost have some of my coffee coming out my nose. I punch him in the arm with my free hand after setting my coffee down and he winces. “Ow…shit watch it those boney little things hurt y’know?”

I grin and we’re getting some more looks from passers by and he looks at them. “Training, she’s actually in the running to box tonight on a major card.”

One of the guys looks at me and asks. “Really?”

“Really I mean she’s like completely pale and stuff but she’s actually one of Sugar Ray’s kids.”

Totally a straight face.

He’s such an ass sometimes.

The guy looks at me. “So like hey can I like get your autograph?”

“He’s joking guys he’s just being an ass.”

“Oh…well…” He and his friends are looking at my hands and the scrapes and stuff and the little pile of bloodied tissues there on the table.

Yeah I’m getting oh…she’s crazy and damaged goods look again. The thing is and I know that it’s fucked up and that I should be talking to people about this and other stuff but…

I kind of like being the freak.

Even if it hurts and sucks there’s part of me that’s been abused and messed up for so long that the only way I’m used to seeing myself is through the broken mirror of my past.

It’s a problem and I know it.

When you’re abused and stuff your life goes on this tailspin of things and…

Okay it’s like you see all the other kids on the play ground and you want to play and have fun and be like them so you go on the slide and you climb up to the top and instead of getting the payoff of going down the slide someone pushes you off.

You never get to slide like the other kids.

And while the landing sucks, the real shitty thing is at one point or another you sort of convince yourself that the fall is the fun part and is your normal part.

So there’s this whole very real and very in my head thing going on all the time of why fight being what I am.

But I am fighting it.

So today I slipped and let it out and hurt myself and went there and stuff but I also read dad a poem and we talked and I put stickers on his grave and I claimed my love for him from my side of things as me as Hunter.

But to me being an abused kid, it’s like being and addict or an alcoholic we look for the abuse because that’s our normal the thing that keeps us from getting the shakes when life is too good.

So I got to be careful of that stuff.

I wonder if there’s an AA or NA like place? Maybe I should just go as is and see it I can find something in one of those meetings. NA I’m thinking because of Mom and the Stepshit.

I blink and take another sip and those guys are gone and Alex is sort of frowning at them and he’s staring a little at me and he very gently gives my hand a squeeze.

“You’re back?”

“Yeah…”

“Stress moment?”

“No just the way they reacted got me thinking I guess.” I look to them leaving. “Thinking a little too deep right?”

He shrugs. “You do that sometimes.”

I do? “Really?”

Alex nods. “You sort of space out. Given things that happened you are kind of allowed to.”

I nod and take a sip then get up and get my purse and lean down and softly kiss him. “Next time or times if you need me or just because shake me out of it. Not all PTSD is screaming freak outs Alex and if I’m out of it sort of trapped in my head it doesn’t mean I wanted to.”

He nods and kisses me and I leave to have a pee and then actually fix my face since my experience at the graveyard has me looking pretty rough and I’d rather look somewhat normal when we meet up with his grandparents.

I head back out and take his arm when he offers it and we head back out to the car and we start to drive I give him the address and he just nods.

Okay yeah it’s starting to be his turn for all of this isn’t it.

It’s kind of a very quiet drive and a little strange going were we’re going and not having Adam and April there with us like at mine. It’s also in a very different part of town and takes about forty minutes to get there.

First time I’ve actually see a well off cemetery. How well off well there’s paved lanes with sidewalks and other concrete walks and nice flower beds and trees planted just so and all the grass, all of it is just as nice as the lawns at a golf course.

And really expensive headstones…I have that kind of winge of kind of being torn to want something like that for dad because he deserves it and wanting to leave it as is because of today.

My message is there. My blood and tears are there. It’s all really personal now.

We stop and Moira is there and George I think I’ve never talked to him and only seen pictures and I’m actually surprised but so is Adam and April and Adam looks so much like he wants to be anywhere else on the planet but here and April has a tight hold of him her fingers interlaced with his and they look like they’ve both been crying already.

She nods at me and I nod back and once we’re out of the car I get the flowers from the trunk and I walk to Alex who’s still sort of standing by his door and he looks. Hurt, angry and a little pale. I nudge him with my hip and he looks down at me.

“Hey….you can do this. We know things are shitty and they hurt and they’re complicated but she’s your mum.”

“Yeah…I know but look at what she did.”

I hug him and put my face into his chest. “Alex she was messed up, we need to face this, you need to face this and let it go.”

“I know…god Hunter I know it’s just…”

“She loved you.”

“Did she?”

I look up at him and this might be royally screwed up for me to say but it’s also sort of true despite how wrong it is.

“Alex…she loved you that much when she was lost in that darkness….she…I think as fucked up as it is as her life was that she wanted you with her.”

He stares ant me and stares at me and he looks up at the sky and his voice is doing that upset guy kinda breaky thing. “Oh fuck Hunter that is really fucked up…”

I tip toe and use my free hand to run my fingers through his hair and make him look back down at me. “If I thought that there was not one thing right in this whole damned world I can see why she’d want just that one important thing.”

He looks at me and his lip does this shivery thing and I can see pain and tears bubbling up inside him…so much hurt and pain from this that he looks like it’s killing him inside.

I kiss him pulling him into it and hold myself close to him and it’s not the romantic kissing no it’s me kissing him as deeply as I can and over and over while he’d trying to kiss me back and he’s shaking and his lips are trembling and he’s sort of snuffling around the kiss and he’s even trying to rapid blink but the tears are coming anyway and some are falling on my face.

We break the kiss and the tears become streams and he wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my shoulder and pulls me in so tight it hurts a little and makes my bones creak.

He just say’s. “……Hunter…” His voice cracking on the pain and I open the car door and sit him backwards and crawl onto his lap.

“I’m here babe; I’m not going anywhere Alex…promise.”

I wave the others off and set the flowers on the dash and just hold him as tight as I can and I push my forehead against his and look right at him.

“I love you, I love you, I love you….”