Omission

Avoidance

The end of Roy and Ellen's visit came far too soon for some and far past too late for others. Thankfully, the older couple had other engagements to attend to, and couldn't continue to use getting to know their grandson as an excuse to extend their stay indefinitely.

My bocce league won't forgive me if I miss another practice.

If you call donuts and coffee "practice."

To Sharon, saying farewell to her parents at the end of their visit felt like throwing a bunch of complicated emotions into a food processor and setting it on pulse until they were all mixed together and unable to be separated from one another.

Obviously, there was a healthy injection of relief in the mix. Sharon would swear in front of a jury that the relief came from no longer having guests in the house and not because she was tired of walking on eggshells around her toxic mother. Receiving honorable mention in the complex concoction, however, were dread, shame, regret, and a dash of fondness,

Dread stemming from her mother's declaration that they would be back to take Riley just as soon as Sharon gave the okay.

An okay that Sharon had absolutely zero intentions of giving. If anything, with all that's happened with her son recently, she felt this would be the absolute worst time to have him leave. Letting him leave, between the suspension from school for fighting and the roller coaster track their relationship had taken, would feel to Sharon, like giving up.

Giving him up.

She had been without her son before (upon circumstances in which she could blame on no one but herself and Keith), and Sharon didn't think she could handle being without him again. Not when she'd seen glimpses of what her family could truly look like with its long-lost member in his place.

Riley and Sharon didn't speak to each other for several days after their latest and greatest clash. It wasn't as though they refused to talk to one another. Mother and son just kept such a wide berth between them, keeping to their separate corners of the house so they wouldn't be faced with even the slimmest prospect of talking to the other.

Riley expected the task of avoiding his Mom would be a futile endeavor during his suspension, given their close relationship during the early days, before he'd started attending school. Back then, they had nearly spent the entire day together, school and preschool drop-offs and pick-ups, dog walks, grocery trips, and even cooking together. Riley didn't like to think of himself as clingy back then. He was just, well, attached to the surreality of being around his Mother. Every positive interaction was like living in the fantasy world of his six-year-old self. And he had a hard time denying a little Riley what he wanted. Because he didn't get that very much (read: at all.)

But, as it turned out, being grounded by his Mom gave him a failsafe excuse to stay holed up in his room for hours upon hours. No one could complain about him hiding out in his room like it was a safehouse if Riley claimed he was studying. Because one of the terms of his grounding was that it was in place until his grades improved (note: FAT CHANCE.)

Riley also knew Sharon's daily comings and goings well enough to sneak down to the kitchen and grow his snack and drink stockpile while she was out. It wasn't as though he thought he would face starvation again (though the ghoul was annoyingly insistent in shouting otherwise), Riley just didn't want to get hungry or thirsty enough that he had to choose between further depriving himself or speaking to his Mom.

Sleeves of cookies, bags of chips, and a pilfered family-sized box of Froot Loops had accumulated, along with enough bottles of soda to host a modest party.