affluenza (1.) | ✔️

To Be Good Enough

IT FELT AS though we'd waited ten minutes for her to open the door. I turn to Sebastian, fully ready to suggest heading back to the hotel and forgoing this entire trip, when suddenly the door clicks.

        I turn so quickly that my neck hurts for a few seconds afterwards. She's dressed in a long sleeved black top, complete with yoga pants and bracelets. She looked healthier than my memory of her, tall and lean. Her skin had lost all of its pallor, giving her a healthy complexion that reminded me of Aunt Amanda's. She looked good.

        And, I noticed begrudgingly, she looked like me.

        I find her eyes last, brown and full and staring at me. It suddenly hits me all at once that I was standing before my mother as a man, no longer the child that she knew in the past.

         She didn't recognize me. I wouldn't have recognized me.

        But then her lips turn up and a surprised gasp leaves her mouth. I feel numb as tears prick at the edges of her eyes before spilling over, and then all too soon I'm wrapped up in her arms. My arms fall limp at my side, the child in me wanting to hug her back as tightly as I could. The other side of me, the one that lived with her absence for ten years, won the battle. I didn't move. I was a statue.

        "Braylen," she whispers, squeezing me once and then pulling away, looking at me again. I watch her as she watches my face, picking apart every feature, new and old. "You're so much like your father. My God."

        I gnaw on my bottom lip. "Hi."

        My mother smiles widely at the sound of my voice before glancing behind me. She takes in Sebastian and then me and smiles once more. "You two come in. It's freezing out there."

        Sebastian and I share a look before we both walk into the tiny home, Sebastian crouching over as he towered over the room. The walls were a lilac purple and completely bare, save for one picture. It was me as a baby, a photo I'd seen a thousand times in copies. This was the original one, though. I could tell by the coffee stains and sunspots. I was in my mother's arms as she laid in a hospital bed, only minutes old. She looked tired but happy.

        I tear my eyes from the photo and focus on the dining table instead. "Do you want anything? Water, tea, coffee? You look like you haven't slept a wink."

        I seem to have lost my voice. I shake my head no and swallow hard.

        "That's all right, then. I'm awful at making tea," she says with a laugh. Her eyes fall back on Sebastian. "I don't believe we met."

        Sebastian, to his credit, gives her a warm smile. "Sebastian. It's a pleasure."

        "Anne. Pleasure is mine. Please, sit, boys," she says, pulling out a chair and sliding into it. My feet feel frozen to the ground and it takes Sebastian ushering me into a chair for me to find movement again. My mother watches us interact before speaking again. "I wasn't expecting visitors. My, you've grown. How old are you now?"