31. Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Sam
Peeking between two blinds on the front window, I watch until Adrian’s truck pulls out of the lot. As soon as I’m satisfied that he really drove away, I grab my phone and car keys.
Locking my apartment door, I jog down to my car, trying to hold back tears. Starting the engine, I let my mind switch into autopilot for the drive I know by heart.
I know I’m running away. Running away from what just happened with Adrian. Running away from facing the truth of how I just messed up my whole life.
I’m running, but I don’t care.
I need to go home.
Three and a half silent, detached hours later, I knock on the door.
When it swings open, my mom takes one look at my face and says, “Oh, honey.”
Bursting into tears, I bury myself in her embrace.
“I messed it up, Mom,” I sob. She leads me far enough into the house to close the door, then holds me as I break down.
When I finally manage to choke in enough breaths to stem the sobs, Mom leads me to the kitchen and hands me a glass of water. I gulp down half of it, and she asks me, “Banana or apple?”
Shaking my head, I begin, “I don’t want—”
Mom gives me a chastening look. “Blood sugar, Sammi. You need to eat a few bites of something at least. Regulate your body.”
Sighing, I say, “Banana.”
My mom lets me off the hook after eating only half of it and finishing the glass of water. We walk to the living room, and she sits down at one corner of the couch, placing a throw pillow on her lap. “Come on.”
Sitting next to her, I release my ponytail, lay my head on the pillow, and pull my knees up, curling into the fetal position. Mom starts massaging my scalp, gently teasing her fingers through my hair. “I know today is never good. But what happened, sweetie?”
My face crumples as new tears spring to my eyes, and I wipe them away. “I think I messed things up with Adrian. I’m too messed up. He’s never going to want me like this.”
“Why would you think that, Sammi? I think it’s pretty clear to all of us that he’s crazy about you,” Mom says gently.
“Not anymore. Not when I’m plain crazy,” I state bitterly.
Mom’s fingers pause. “Honey, statements like that don’t help. They’re not true, and they don’t move you forward. Tell me what happened without putting yourself down like that.”
Sighing, I explain the entire morning. Adrian showing up, finding me in my typical August-twelfth depression. Him trying to do something sweet to distract me. The time we had at the park when I did my best to fake it, and the moment I ruined it all.
“He was trying to protect me, Mom,” I say, the tears ramping back up. “But it hurt when he pulled my arm, and my mind just—” I squeeze my eyes shut, desperate to forget. To forget this morning. My childhood. Everything.
“It’s gonna be over. I know it is. I love Adrian—it’s not only wanting to be loved this time—I love him.
I finally discover what love really is, what it actually feels like, and I ruin it,” I cry, sobs returning.
“I thought I’d made enough progress. I thought I’d grown enough to be able to handle a relationship.
But I’ll never make enough progress. I’ll never not be messed up. Adrian doesn’t deserve this.”
I hear in her sigh that my mom is biting her tongue to keep from scolding me for making more unhelpful statements.
Instead, she says, “I hear you that you feel that way, Sammi. That you feel like you messed up and Adrian won’t want to continue your relationship.
But I want you to tell me what actually happened.
Tell me what he said. What did he do afterward? ”
Covering my face with my hands, another torrent of tears unleashes. “He told me he still likes me. He promised he wasn’t leaving. He offered to drive me to Griffin’s house or to miss the game today so he could stay with me. He asked me what I needed him to do, but I didn’t know what to tell him.”
“You’ve always had a hard time telling people what you need,” Mom says, and I go still. Her fingers continue scratching my scalp as she adds, “I think most of the time you don’t even know what you need. You sure didn’t know when you were young.”
Sniffing hard, I think about her assertion. I think about all the times I bottled up what I needed at any given moment as a child—afraid to be a burden, afraid to draw attention to myself by needing something. Constantly afraid. Going without was better than bringing it up.
I think about my second life here in the West family. I can’t name a single time that I felt like my parents weren’t meeting my needs. I didn’t always receive their love easily, but that was never because they didn’t give it.
“Then how did you know? I never felt neglected by you or Dad. How did you know what I needed if I didn’t even know?” I ask.
“I learned to read between the lines with you,” she says. “You would give these tiny cries for help that didn’t sound like cries if you weren’t listening closely.”
My brow furrows, but I don’t move my head from the pillow, too calmed by her fingers massaging my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember why I started scratching your head in the first place?” she asks, and the furrow deepens.
“No. You just . . . started doing it, didn’t you?”
“Do you remember that you and Ian had head lice the day you arrived here?” Mom asks.
Now that, I do remember. More than anything, I remember the relief when my scalp and neck finally stopped itching after weeks of torture.
“We buzzed Ian’s hair real short,” Mom says.
“He didn’t care at all. He was only five and thought it made him look cool.
But you had real long hair, remember? And when I asked if you wanted to cut it shorter, you froze.
A second later you said it would be okay, that if getting rid of the lice was easier with short hair then we could cut it.
But I saw that freeze in your eyes first. You wanted to keep your long hair. ”
I chew the inside of my cheek before answering, “I needed it. It helped me hide.”
Mom’s fingers still momentarily, but she continues. “I know. So we spent hours every night for two weeks combing through your hair for nits. Picking them out, massaging tea tree oil into your scalp after the initial lice treatment. It became our nightly routine.”
A smile springs to my lips, and I say, “I do remember that. Gosh, that must have been miserable for you.”
She chuckles. “The nit-picking was tedious, but I wasn’t miserable.
Those hours gave me my first chance to get to know you.
It let me prove to you that I would take care of your needs.
But then after the lice were definitely completely gone, you kept asking me to check each night.
At first, I thought you were still paranoid about the nits.
But then I saw between the lines. You needed that continued point of connection, that safe physical contact.
You craved it, even though you wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me that.
One night, I suggested we sit on the couch so you could lie down while I looked through your hair so your neck didn’t get tired.
And that became our new nightly routine. ”
Memories of those nights illuminate in my mind. Years of those nights. Of reaching a breaking point by the end of the day because I was so overwhelmed by school and classmates and caseworkers and supervised visits—then experiencing my mind calm as Mom would play with my hair and scratch my head.
“I’ve never made that connection before,” I muse. Sitting up, I face my mom. “I’m sorry that I made you work so hard to figure out what I needed.”
She clucks her tongue. “Sammi, this is not something for you to apologize for. It was my privilege to study the puzzle pieces and figure out how you felt loved. Because I’ve loved you from the second you first stepped through that door.”
“I love you too, Mom.” Sighing, I add, “But apparently I still suck at communicating what I need.”
“How do you wish today would have gone, sweetie?”
Looking down at my crossed legs, I fidget with the elastic in one of my socks. “I don’t know.”
“Sammi, try. I learned to take the side door into your thoughts to figure out what you needed, but if you’re gonna have a healthy relationship for the long haul, you’re gonna need to find the key to unlock the front door.
Try to think about what you needed today,” Mom gently challenges.
“Did you want to go out on that picnic?”
Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrap my arms tightly around them. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” I sigh. “I know that Adrian was trying to distract me. He’s always making sure people are having a good time, and I love that about him. But today . . . I’ve tried distracting my thoughts before. Of course I’ve tried. But I can never . . . I can never get past the feelings.”
“Your body remembers, hon. You’ve talked about that with Amber,” Mom says.
“Yeah. I guess it’s exactly that. It doesn’t matter how much I try to think about other things—the rest of my body still feels the weight.
So the whole time I was with Adrian at the park, my brain was working overtime trying to fake being okay when I wanted to be curled up in a dark room like I usually do here at home.
It’s exhausting trying to convince my body it should be feeling something different. ”
Mom nods. “Would you have liked Adrian to sit in the dark room with you?”
Blowing out a breath, I answer, “Of course I would.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him that, Sammi?”
“Because he had planned this whole thing, and I didn’t want to make him feel like I didn’t appreciate it!
” I exclaim. Mom eyes me. “And . . . maybe because I was scared to let him see me in that dark place. I didn’t even tell him about today being hard.
Griffin did. That’s why Adrian showed up in the first place.
And look what happened. I completely freaked out. ”