Chapter 21 Washed Up
Chapter twenty-one
Washed Up
The heat in the jungle was overbearing, pressing against my skin and sticking my hair to the back of my neck as I moved down the gravel path.
I wasn’t looking where I was going. I just needed distance between me and Stella’s family first speech, and between me and the image of Dex crouching over Amina like she was something fragile and precious while I stood there invisible.
“Dominique! Stop walking!”
I didn’t stop. I picked up the pace, my wet shorts rubbing against my thighs with every step, the loose gravel shifting under my feet.
“Nique, I said stop!”
Her hand caught my shoulder and spun me around before I could shake it off.
“Get your hands off me,” I said, stepping back.
She had the nerve to look like a concerned mother standing there and it made my blood run hotter. “You had no right to say those things in front of the family. Especially not in front of Whitley and Deuce.”
A jagged laugh left my throat. “My bad. Didn’t mean to taint your perfect children with my issues.”
“Nique—”
“Don’t Nique me! What about my feelings, Stella?
What about Nel’s? You want to talk about family first?
Did you know your oldest daughter got in a fight that landed her in the hospital?
Landed her in jail? And the only person she could call was a person she hates because she got in an argument with her brother and cousin over you being here? ”
Stella flinched, her eyes darting around the empty trail. “Nique, I’ve been trying to be there for you!”
“It’s too late! I was a teenager by the time you wanted us back. By then we had friends and family that we didn’t want to leave behind in Mobile to go be with a mother we didn’t know and her new husband,” I stressed, the words shaking in my chest.
Something moved across her face, raw and quick, before the composure came back. “You don’t know the position I was in. You don’t know what it took to build the life I have.”
“I know exactly what it took,” I said, the tears finally breaking through no matter how hard I pressed against them. “It took us. It took Nel and me. You paid for your fresh start with our childhood and then you had the nerve to show up here expecting forgiveness.”
Stella’s jaw tightened. For one unguarded second the perfect mask slipped completely and what was underneath it looked a lot like someone who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.
But she didn’t give me the explanation I had been waiting years to hear. She pulled the mask back on instead.
“I’m sorry, Nique. I’ve been saying it for years and I’ll keep saying it. You can be angry at me for the rest of your life if that’s what you need, but I am still your mother and I will always love you. That part doesn’t have an expiration date.”
“You’re the woman who gave birth to me,” I said, my voice going flat and cold. “A mother stays. A mother doesn’t make her children feel like a secret she’s ashamed of.”
I turned my back on her and started walking again.
“You’re going to miss out on real love holding onto all this anger,” she called after me.
“I don’t need you to love me, Stella!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“I’m not talking about me,” she said. “I’m talking about Dex.”
My feet stopped before I told them to. I turned around slowly, the gravel shifting under my sandals.
Stella stood there with her arms crossed, something settled and certain in her expression.
“I don’t know what happened between y’all.
I don’t know how he ended up with Amina.
But I see the way that man looks at you and I see the way you look at him when you think nobody is watching.
Michelle told me they only coparent. That’s it.
” She paused, letting it land. “People aren’t perfect Nique.
You know that better than most. You’re going to spend your whole life alone if you keep using forgiveness as the price nobody’s ever allowed to finish paying. ”
“It’s real easy to tell the victim to forgive when you’re the one who did the damage,” I said
That shut her up. I turned away for the last time, finally escaping into the jungle and leaving her standing in the dust of the life she’d traded us for.