Chapter 27 #3
You should be grateful any child of yours was ever open to taking direction.
Patience and obedience were not embedded in the Sokolov DNA.
She tried to calm herself down. Wallace had told her multiple times that he didn’t like talking to her when she was in one of her “fits of anxiety.” He was a really wise boy in that way. Without him, she’d be an even greater slave to her own emotions.
"Wallace… I promise I’m not trying to steal your agency, but this isn't an argument I’m willing to have. You're still human. They could kill you without even trying to,” she said, then paused. “Is your job really as important as your life?"
Wallace's face sunk inward.
"Still human?" he said coldly. "I'm not still human, Mom. I am human. I will always be human. And because of that, I do care about things like my job, and my career, and having a boyfriend, and telling my boyfriend things about myself and about my life."
Yasmine sucked in a breath. Oh boy.
“And that’s—it’s not fine, exactly, but I am coming around to it,” Yasmine mumbled diplomatically.
“Jason seems like an upstanding human male adolescent, as far as that is possible—and I understand all you’re saying, I really do.
No one wants you to have a normal life more than me. I promise. I just want you to be safe.”
Wallace’s shoulders slumped down, his eyes softening slightly.
“I really wish you wouldn’t call him a human male adolescent,” he muttered. “We are both grown adult people. Not sea urchins.”
Before Yasmine could get another word in, Bella stepped forward. She’d been so quiet up until that moment, Yasmine had forgotten she was even there.
“If I may,” she said quietly, then looked at Wallace.
“You have my promise that it will just be a few days. Three, at maximum. People have colds that last three days, it’s not unusual.
And your boyfriend should come with you.
You guys can treat it like a slumber party.
I will ensure Yasmine supplies alcohol and videogames. ”
Yasmine sucked in a breath. “Alcohol? He doesn’t—”
Wallace hummed. “How flexible is this liquor budget?”
Bella cackled. Yasmine stared at both of them with her jaw hanging open.
“God, he really is your son.” Bella opened her purse, and began to flit through it. “If I'm paying, you're getting cheap vodka. If your mother is paying…”
Wallace laughed as Bella, like a clown at a children’s birthday party, began to pick out a variety of random things from her purse: hair ties, post it notes, glittering gel pens, and finally a few stray twenties latched together with an elastic band.
There was something so… domestic about it all.
Yasmine got that feeling from earlier again—the tight, wanting one in her stomach, like a hungry child trapped in a classroom watching an ice cream truck roll by.
She felt like she was catching a glimpse of an alternate reality.
One where she’d introduced Bella and Wallace under different circumstances.
One where they’d taken Wallace to the mall, or to a movie, where they’d bought him new clothes or a new shiny set of headphones.
Where they bickered about the price of milk at the grocery store and Wallace yelled at them because neither of you drinks milk anyway, and Bella would reply it’s a matter of principle.
In reality, Yasmine watched the two of them now as they went back and forth trading barbs in some inane discussion about beer pong, and she realized she'd never seen her son look so loose. It felt like he’d spent his whole life with his shoulders bunched up to his ears, and now they were free and swinging. When did that happen?
He'd always been scared of alcohol, ever since he was a kid. After the incident with the blood, after watching her drink what he thought was wine every night.
But it was strange, the thing with children—the thing with people in general, really—is when you look away for a few seconds, they can molt their feathers.
“Deal,” Bella said, shaking Wallace’s hand firmly. Wallace nodded to her in turn, like they were two businessmen who had just finished a round of negotiations.
“Wait—what did you two just agree to?” Yasmine said, snapping back to reality.
“A private agreement,” Bella said, grinning as she tugged Yasmine around the stomach, and began pulling her to the door, back to the kitchen.
“Come on, you big nosy vampire. I think it’s time we release Jason from the bedroom.
He’s been replaying the same Taylor Swift song for thirty-five minutes straight. ”
Yasmine snorted, and over Bella’s shoulder, she could see Wallace watching the two of them, a small, unreadable smile on his face. It made Yasmine blush.
Maybe she wasn’t too old to molt a few feathers, too.
***
“So,” Bella said, her hair wet with rain as they slid into the driver and passenger seats, respectively. “Which of your seventy apartments is housing a CD player?”
Yasmine clicked in her seatbelt, and rolled her eyes.
“I’ll put it in the GPS.”
As a matter of fact, they all had CD players.
But Yasmine had only one place in mind.