The Way I Feel

3. Back to Belonging.

~•~ LEO ~•~

"Leo?!" Fuck...I was just about to get to the good part.

"Leo!" Just let me dream about hot, sexy men please! That's all I ask.

"Don't make me hit my only son because he's too lazy to get up and help his mother lift these boxes!" Wow. She's going for guilt tripping now? Low blow.

"Mmm..I'm up!" Not technically, but definitely conscious at least.

And to think, Jamie Dornan was just about to do the most despicable things to me.

And just as I'm remembering how good that felt, my door is ferociously kicked wide open, my mother barely taking one step into my room before releasing one of those resigned sighs that let's me know she's not happy without me having to see her scowling. She's blurry at first, so I rub the sleep from my eyes, making her scowl much easier to see. Although I had no problem picturing it before. And just as I thought, the fires in her eyes are lit and set to scorch everything in her path.

Take me back to that dream, please god...

"Dios mío! Look at this mess!" And it begins. "Levántate. Levántate! I did not raise you to be such an animal." She stalks around the room, sidestepping what I'm assuming are my clothes strewn across the floor. I sit up, now fully awake and retired from dream land. I chuckle at the look of disgust on her face, which to no surprise at all, she doesn't appreciate.

"Calm down mamá. I'll clean it up." I don't know why I even bother, gathering from the tick in her jaw and the burn of her eyes how much she really doesn't believe me.

"I sincerely hope so. Now get up lazy bones, you're sleeping the day away." With that, she quickly makes her exit, side stepping the clothes strewn across the floor like a fucking salsa dancer.

To my surprise, my frantic mother somehow finds the curtesy to close the door when she leaves, the indents of her glare still prickling my skin. I slide back beneath the sheets, for only a second, having an inkling that somehow she'll know. I swear she isn't entirely human.

The alarm clock on my nightstand tells me it's just past seven in the morning. That fact both surprises me and irritates me to no end. If I didn't have my mother to wake me, I'd have probably slept through the rest of the day. It's not that I'd stayed up all night or anything. No. I'd just always been a heavy sleeper. If I wasn't woken up, I could sleep for at least fifteen hours straight, no matter how much sleep I'd gotten the previous night. Let's just say the jury's still out on whether it's a curse or a gift. But for right now it's definitely a curse.

Because it means mom feels the need to wake me up obnoxiously early. And for no other reason than to ensure I have a healthy sleep schedule. It's ridiculous.

Not choosing to delay any further and risk pissing my mother off more than I already have, I quickly clean the place up. I'm not always such a mess, but the move has really hit me harder than expected. I can't tell if it's the giddiness from being back, or if it's my nerves at the prospect of what to expect now that I am.

After finally tucking away the last t-shirt, which I swear I hadn't even worn, I quickly shower, planning out my day like I always do. I may be a mess on the outside, but on the inside I pride myself on running a tight ship.

My schedule isn't as hectic as it used to be back home. Well who am I kidding? That place was never truly my home. Moving there nine years ago was a fucking shit show. And that's putting it lightly. No. That suburban hellscape back in San Francisco was alright for a hellscape, but I'd always longed to return here. Back to where I grew up. Where I truly belong. And I don't just feel that way because I was raised here, in Brooklyn. And spent ten years here before being dragged to the other side of the country. No. That's just part of it. Being back here, the belonging that I feel deep in my bones, it's not just from growing up here. It's because of what I left behind all those years ago.