Chapter 14 #2
Fleetwood Mac continued on in the background against my random thoughts, and I definitely could love this band.
Curiously, I wondered if Scott knew them, and if he liked them, too.
But of course he did. One thing I admired about Scott was his apparent love for music. I didn’t know much about him, but at least I knew my father was cool.
Gently, Dreux’s thumb rubbed the skin on the back of my hand. A new sound was playing, a younger artist stealthily mixed in with Fleetwood. A man was singing, talking about stepping into the light, and not going back.
“Who’s this now?” I asked.
Dreux’s eyes were closed. “Harry Styles.”
Instantly, my face twisted up. “You mock me, but you listen to Harry Styles?”
“Not drawing the connection,” Dreux said matter-of-factly.
He had to be kidding. “Oh come on!”
“So you don’t like this song?” Dreux questioned.
I couldn’t outright say that. “No, it’s good.”
“So let’s circle back to that point you were trying to make.” He angled his head, peeking one eye open at me, waiting, it seemed, for a response.
A stupid smile captured my face and I hated myself for laughing. For feeling bubbly. Free. Happy. All because of this boy.
Dreux let my hand go to grab his phone. He scrolled through it and found another song by Harry. This one was atmospheric and bluesy.
I got closer and laid my head on his chest, taking in the song. It was official, I liked Dreux’s taste.
Soft.
Pink.
Dreux St. Julien was completely out of the box.
“Thank you, for being nice to me, even when I didn’t deserve it,” I said. “I was real nasty to you when I got here, taking out all my issues on you for no reason. I’m sorry.”
“I mean, as long as you acknowledge that and you don’t do it again, it’s fine. We’re good now, right? Friends?”
“Yeah.”
Things were fine, well, almost.
“Marcel?”
Her voice shot through the air, startling us. Angela was on the roof, standing in the doorway behind us, her eyes on the scene we were in.
Dreux sat up and gathered his phone, pausing Harry before standing and facing his mother. He answered to what was possibly his middle name. “Yeah?”
She didn’t look pleased, but then, when did she ever? “I need your help carrying in this new chair we ordered.”
Dreux tipped his head. “Yeah, one minute.”
Angela paused, and then she went back inside, leaving us alone.
Dreux turned back to me. “Be right back.”
“It’s okay.” I waved him off. I grabbed my math book. “I need to be on this anyway.”
He regarded my abandoned books, and then me. “Can you swim?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s this place I’d like to show you, a getaway. I know there’s the local swimming pool, but some of us go to the Pier.”
“The Pier?”
The sun was shining down on him. Dreux grinned, squinting at me, making my giddiness worse. So much worse. “You’ll see.”
Scott was in the middle of cooking dinner when I got in later after my shift at Angela’s.
The smell of fish in the air let me know what was on the evening’s menu.
I greeted Scott briefly with a wave from down the hall before climbing the stairs for my bedroom, my heartbeat pounding hard and heavy in my chest.
Once in my room I felt antsy, jittery—nervous. For the longest time, I paced the length of my carpeted floor before finally kicking off my sneakers and climbing on to my bed.
Sitting cross-legged in the center, I tucked my hair behind my ears and calmly and slowly released a breath before calling my mother on FaceTime.
It was almost five thirty back in LA. Wherever she was, my mother wasted no time in answering my call.
She came on screen, her blonde hair up in a messy bun, her young face surprised to see me. Around her neck I could see where she was wearing an apron. I’d caught her in the process of a pottery project.
“Bad time?” I wondered.
She vigorously shook her head. We hadn’t spoken in forever it felt like. “Oh no, honey, no. Is everything okay?”
My eyes watered and I had to look up at the ceiling to keep the tears at bay. “No.”
“Saylor, what’s wrong?” Concern leaked into my mother’s tone and that broke me even more.
I wasn’t even surprised to find my voice cracking as I spoke. “I’ve been a terrible daughter.”
When I looked back at my phone, I could see my mother was already tearing up as well. She was quick to conceal this as she swiped at her face. “No, you haven’t.”
It was a lie. “I talked to Scott. He told me about you guys, and h-how…how he left you—us.”
Against her efforts, tears rolled down my mother’s cheeks. “He told you about that?”
I nodded, wiping at my own wet face with my arm.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Fuck.” My heart poured out of me.
The lock was broken on all the guarded pain I felt about being abandoned.
“You are the strongest woman I know, and I’m so sorry I wasn’t good to you.
Your father. Scott. You’re so brave, Mom.
“A-And, you picked me. You had your whole life ahead of you and you chose me. You’re so fucking brave.
” I covered my face with my hands, embarrassed for how entitled I’d been to treat her this way for so long.
She gave me everything and I took it all for granted.
“All I’ve ever had was you, and I wasn’t good. I wasn’t good, Mom.”
My mother had to look away from the camera, her wet blue eyes glistening.
“Oh, baby. It’s okay.” She took a breath, gathering herself, seeming to be smoothing her hands over her lap as she peered downward.
“I never…I never wanted to talk about that. About my parents, about how ashamed of me they were. I never wanted you to feel like an accident or a mistake or a burden. From the moment I first held you in my arms, you became my only family, the only thing that counted to me. You were wanted, you were loved, and that’s all that matters. You can come home.”
My sadness halted. “W-What?”
My mother attempted to clean herself up, leaning offscreen to gather a tissue.
I could hear her blowing her nose soon before she came back to me.
“I shouldn’t have sent you away. I should’ve talked to you, I should’ve listened, I should’ve done more.
I just thought this was what you needed, and oh, Saylor, I miss you so much.
You can come back. We’ll figure it all out. ”
Everything stopped and I didn’t know how to feel or what to do. I was free. Able to go back home to where it all made sense—but then, it made sense here, too.
I sniffled, unable to block out my treacherous thoughts. “I…I can’t.”
“Why?” she asked.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I felt awful and whole at the truth of it all.
“I’ve been so angry for so long, and I never knew why.
And coming here I realized that I never knew myself, because I never knew my father.
I have Scott’s temper. I have his eyes. He loves music.
There’s so much about myself that makes sense now. ”
That damn Harry Styles song circled my brain and I cursed Dreux. “I don’t completely know who I am, but I feel like I’m finding out.” God, here came the worst of it. “I want to learn more. I want…I want to know my father. I want to have a dad.”
Betrayal didn’t surface on my mother’s face. Instead, a smile, love—understanding. “Yeah?”
Scott was ashamed of himself for what he’d done to my mother, to himself.
Twenty years old or not, he had been just a kid.
I was just a kid, screwed-up, finding my way.
In so many unknown ways, I was just like my father, just like Scott.
Unlike me, he didn’t seem to have a spiteful bone in his body.
Not the man who didn’t deny my coming to live here.
Not the man who reached out to Dreux and gave him a place of refuge.
Not the man my mother had once fallen in love with.
“I love you,” I told her. “You did the right thing in sending me here. I wasn’t on a good path back home. I see that now. And even though I want to stay, there with you, in LA, is home, Mom. Thank you for choosing me, for taking care of me, for loving me.”
Her hand fell upon her chest, over her heart. “Saylor.”
Slowly, I loosened up. “God, look at us, so sappy.”
She chuckled. “Stop, it’s been a long time coming. I love you, too, honey.”
“We get a week off at the end of the month, maybe I can come visit?”
“The door is always open.”
I told her I loved her once more and we soon ended our call.
Better. I felt better. Full. Deep down, I’d probably always feel like shit for the way I’d mistreated her, but this was a fresh start. So many incredible things were still possible.
Soft knocking on the wall behind me turned me around.
There, awkwardly, in the doorway, was Scott. He hung his head, gazing at my cream carpet. “I, uh, heard you crying…was worried.”
I cleaned my face. “I’m okay.”
“Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” His brown eyes found mine, matching my own. “She said you could go back?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re choosing to stay?”
I was. “I get my strength from her and my fight from you. I barely know you, Scott, but I’d like to. I have my mom and she’s my rock, the one person constantly in my corner. But I need a dad.”
Scott came more into the room. “You don’t know how sorry I am for what I did in leaving Maddie—Madeline.
When she said you could come back home, I got scared that you would.
I missed seventeen years of you, and I just got you back.
” He looked around my room, at my newly black walls.
“You’re my kid, Saylor, through and through.
I’d love to have my daughter, because I need you, too. ”
On my nightstand was the teddy bear he’d gotten me as a welcome present.
The first guy who got me a teddy bear was my father.
I stood from my bed, going and throwing my arms around him, burying my face in his strong chest, feeling tingles when he wrapped his arms around me, firmly, as if he’d never let me go.
I needed that. To never be let go.