rubble, came to the surface in a torrential wave. The stain morphed, turning into something I hadn’t seen since I was ten, shortly after the accident. Jake’s spilled glass of milk, and Mom’s screams at me to clean it up. The spot shifted, now it was ice cream, smeared on the kitchen floor after a tantrum Jake had thrown. Mom, grabbing my arm and pulling me along to mop it up.
Another shift, another spot, another spill. I was sixteen, hanging out with my friends. Jake couldn’t hang out with us, he couldn’t skateboard or rollerblade, and he’d thrown a fit out of jealousy and rejection. There’d been chocolate milk everywhere. I’d told him we could hang out later, told him that we’d build Legos and watch Gremlins, and the bargain had been enough for him. But not for Mom. She had scolded me in front of my friends, treating me like a child, and had thrown my skateboard in the trash. Because, as she’d said, Jake came first, before friends and skateboarding. Before me. It was the least I could do, after everything. After what I’d done.
“You resent me,” I quietly stated. “You … you have spent over two decades making sure I’d hate myself as much as you hate me—”
“Good Lord, Blake, where are you getting this stuff from?” Mom huffed exhaustedly. “Tell me this is some garbage that girl’s feeding you. You know she doesn’t like us.”
Anger battled with my heartbreak as I growled, “Don’t you fucking dare talk about her.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, you barely know the girl!”
Another realization struck me and I blurted, “You don’t want me to be happy. Fuck, you’ve never wanted me to be happy. You—”
“All right, Blake,” Dad intervened. “That’s enough. I think we all just need a little time to calm down, okay? We’ll talk to you on—”
“Why the hell did you let her do it?” I asked my father candidly. “You became a fucking zombie and let her manipulate me. You let her treat me like shit over a fucking accident. You let her make sure I’d grow up to hate myself and—”
“Don’t be dramatic, Blake. Come on,” Dad cut in, sighing as Mom said, “That’s what he does.”
My vision re-focused with a crystal-clear view of what my life had been like. We’re all taught that our parents are here to protect us, pat us on the back, and tell us how proud they are to call us theirs. To ensure that we grow into happy, confident adults. But my parents never did, and I am the miserable, broken result of that.
Now, I’m blue. And I’m pink. I can fight, and I can love, and I decided then that I would fight them. And maybe, despite it all, I could learn to forgive them. But I couldn’t see any room for love.
“I’m hanging up,” I announced calmly.
“Okay, that’s a good idea,” Dad said. “Maybe we’ll come over for dinner—”
“No,” I interrupted. “You won’t. Neither of you are welcome in my house for the foreseeable future. I’ll see Jake on Sunday.” And I hung up.
***
“Hi, Blake, what can I do for you?”
Dr. Travetti’s voice was a lifejacket held too far from my reach. I coached my breaths in and out of my lungs until I could reply. “Hey, Doc. Sorry to disturb your shopping day.”
She laughed lightly. “Don’t apologize. I do all my Black Friday shopping online.”
“Smart.”
There was a brief lull as I struggled to find the words I needed to say and how to say them. The more I struggled, the more I wondered why I had called her at all. What the hell was she even going to do for me? What was she going to tell me that I didn’t already know myself?
I tipped my head back against the kitchen wall and eyed the shelf of liquor bottles. The numbness kept within the multicolored vessels pulled at me with a temptation I’d never known before. It worried me, how desperate I was to succumb to the black nothingness, but what worried me more was to allow this pain to swallow me alive.
“Blake?”
I cleared my throat and replied, “Yeah, Doc?”
“Are you okay?”
“Would I call you if I was?”
“Fair point,” she said, immediately sympathetic in her tone. “What’s going on? Is it your girlfriend?”
Girlfriend. Dr. Travetti had been the only one to call Audrey my girlfriend in the time we’d been seeing each other. It was nice; it made me smile, even now.
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head and