Fractured [SHAWN MENDES]

~7~

Shawn woke up from a fitful night of sleep with Taryn on his mind. He wasn't sure if this was an improvement over waking up thinking about the long-gone love of his life or if it was worse. He reached for his phone and saw that it was much later than he realized. He also saw several texts from his mum inviting him to Sunday dinner, as she often did.

After making some coffee, he took a long hot shower with hopes that the powerful water pressure would relieve some of the stress he was feeling. It didn't. Then he got dressed in a pair of loose old jeans, a white undershirt, and a cardigan and plopped down on his sectional sofa, placing his feet on the coffee table.

"What the fuck did I do?" he muttered to himself as the incident with Taryn replayed in his head.

He really didn't see her or Patricia as charity cases, so that wasn't why he'd tried to help them. In fact, if anyone needed charity, it was him. Obviously he didn't need it in the financial or material sense, but they'd given him something else he was in great need of. They'd given him kindness.

There's this thing that happens when you do something really bad. The people you love and trust tend to back away. It doesn't happen all at once. Nope. At first they tell you that they are there for you and that they'll help you get through it. But that's just a mirage. When you actually need them, they fade away.

When Shawn was released from prison, he had to stay in California for awhile because there was some red-tape with the courts. During that time, he was informed that he'd been dropped by his record label because he'd violated a morality clause in his contract. His manager, Andrew Gertler, said he'd stick with him, but advised him to take some time off before trying to stage a comeback. A comeback. Ha! Like that would ever happen. He told Andrew that he wasn't going to bring down the reputation of his talent agency by being associated with it and they parted ways.

He'd reached out to his closest friends and they'd been weird. They said the right things, but their voices betrayed them. All of them told him that when he returned to Toronto they'd have to get together, but when he finally made it home, that never happened. He talked to them a few times, and they'd texted for awhile, but the fact that he was now a convicted felon drove a wedge between them that he didn't know how to remove. Eventually he stopped replying when they messaged him because that hurt less than having a strained relationship with them.

This was why it felt so good to be able to go to The Good Luck Lounge and be treated like a regular person.

He grabbed the remote and turned on the television, flipping channels until he found a hockey game. When it was over, it was early afternoon and he was starving. He picked up his phone to search for a restaurant to get delivery from and saw another text from his mother.

******

"Shawn! You're here!" Karen Rayment exclaimed when her son walked into her cozy kitchen in Pickering.

"I should have called or texted that I was coming..."

"Nonsense! You are always welcome in our home. Your dad just ran out to get some ice cream to go with the pie he made. He's going to be so happy to see your car in the driveway when he returns!"

Shawn wondered if this were true. He felt unworthy of his parents' love and found it hard to accept that they wanted him around. "What's for dinner?" he asked as he hung up his coat over one of the stools at the counter island.

"Roast pork tenderloin with mini red potatoes, steamed green beans, and a salad. And of course there's the apple pie your dad made."

His mouth was watering in anticipation and his stomach growled so loudly that his mother had to have heard it.