Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The Broken Arrow
“You’ve disappointed me. I thought I raised you better than that.”
My mother’s voice stops me at the front door of my house.
I was about to leave after carrying a sleepy Salem inside and up to her room. Her sunshine yellow-painted room.
Which I noticed while I was depositing her on her bed.
“Is there a reason why everything is yellow in your room?” I asked, looking around her tiny space for the first time ever.
“Sunshine yellow,” she corrected me sleepily. “It’s my favorite color. Reminds me of the sun.”
I draped her blanket over her. “You’re a little too obsessed with the sun, you know that?”
She curled herself into a ball, still wearing my jacket that basically covers her from top to bottom. “I know. I love my sun.”
But now I freeze at the door, my hand on the knob ready to turn it, wondering if my mother saw something.
If she saw me with her. If she saw what I did to her. How I vandalized her virgin mouth that’s been taunting me ever since I saw her at the bar.
No one’s ever touched me there. Before.
Jesus Christ.
“I thought my son wasn’t a quitter,” my mother continues, and I finally get enough sense gathered to understand what she’s talking about.
She’s talking about her sister, Sarah.
Not her.
She’s talking about the girl I’ve been with for eight years. The girl who betrayed me. The girl who made a fool out of me. The girl because of whom I’m a failure.
As I turn to face my mother, my reckoning, all the peace, all the warmth from the past hour is gone.
Instead, I feel them.
I feel the bugs crawling and scratching at my skin. I feel hot under my collar. I feel the jitters.
I feel the shame.
That’s what it is. This sensation is shame.
This is what my mother always reduces me to and that’s why I didn’t want to come to this house.
That’s why I didn’t want to talk to her.
Because I knew what I would find when I looked into her eyes.
Grave disappointment.
The woman who made me perfect. Who taught me to never make mistakes.
Who hauled me to practices, to all my games until I learned to drive myself. Who would stay up late at night to check on my homework, to make sure that I was prepared for a test, until I could handle it all by myself.
My mother.
“I’m not a quitter,” I tell her with clenched teeth.
I’m not.
She’s made sure that I’m not. It has been her life’s work.
It has been my life’s work.
“Aren’t you? What do you call this then?
What you did tonight.” My mother comes forward, shaking her head.
“I gave you everything. I gave you all that I could and it was hard, Arrow. After your father’s death, raising a boy all alone was hard.
Raising a boy who could walk in his shoes was harder.
But I made sure that you did. I made sure that I kept your father alive in you.
That I never let him die. I made sure you had every opportunity to succeed, to be the best. To be the kind of son your father and I would be proud of. But look at you now.
“Your career is hanging in the balance. You’re going to therapy for your issues. Issues I didn’t even know you had. And you broke up with the girl you were going to marry. What do you call it, if not quitting?”
She cheated on me.
I want to shout at her.
I want to scream that she fucking cheated.
And she did it with my best friend, and she did it for months.
I trusted her.
I fucking trusted her but she betrayed me. She made a fool out of me and I was blind. I was blind to all of it.
I was going to marry her and I would have. I would have if not for those texts. I would’ve made her my wife and she would’ve made me a fool. I wonder if she would’ve carried on her affair after our marriage too. I know she says that she wouldn’t have but I still wonder.
I still wonder if she would’ve taken advantage of my trust with my ring on her finger.
The ring I stomped on and broke, the day I left LA.
But I won’t tell my mother that. I can’t.
She already thinks I’m a quitter. She’s already disappointed. How is she going to react when she finds out the truth?
That Sarah was fooling me and I didn’t even know it. That her son was so blind and so fucking stupid that he had no clue about it. That her son got cheated on.
It will break her to know that her perfect son isn’t so perfect after all. That her perfect son is a failure.
I didn’t even want her – or anyone, for that matter – to know about the breakup. But I guess the news broke back in LA and my mother found out too.
But that is it.
That is all they’re ever going to know.
It’s better that my team hate me for punching Ben than they think I’m a fool.
Last season, our leftwing striker found out that his wife had been cheating on him and he had no clue. And I wondered how.
How the fuck did he not know?
Shouldn’t a man know these things? It made me wonder about his ability to play on the field. If he’s so clueless in his personal life, how the fuck do I know he’s going to give one hundred percent on the field? And I wasn’t the only one. A few pitied him, others thought that he was stupid.
I’m not going to be in the same position.
I’m The Blond fucking Arrow.
No one is going to question my judgement on the field.
I knew Sarah would never open her mouth because her reputation is everything to her. She won’t have people thinking that she spread her legs for someone else while she was with me. I also knew Ben would never say anything either; it would make him look less of a victim.
Besides, my mother loves Sarah. She is the daughter my mom never had, and I can’t break that illusion for her.
I can’t hurt her that way.
I can’t disappoint her any more than I have.
“Duly noted, Mom,” I reply sardonically even though I can barely keep my eyes on her. “I think you should go back to sleep now or you’ll be late for your flight tomorrow.”
“I was against your relationship with her from the beginning. But you proved yourself. You proved your worth. But I guess I should’ve trusted my gut.
I should’ve known that a girl would make you lose focus and screw up everything that we’ve worked for.
I’m not going to let you kill your father again, do you hear me?
He’s not going to die again because you were foolish enough to lose your focus.
Do you understand me? Do what you have to do so you can go back and fulfill your father’s dream,” she says and leaves me in darkness.
My father’s dream.
To play in the European League. The dream that remained unfulfilled because he died.
As I step into the night, I fish out cigarettes from my jeans pocket. I light one up and puff out a huge cloud of smoke into the sky.
Sometimes I wonder if my father hadn’t seen that dream with his own eyes, would it have become mine?
Sometimes I wonder if… if I could ever have other dreams. My dreams.
Or if every son inherits his father’s dreams by default.