A Tiny Favour

Chapter 16

I've never been someone who loved relat- ionships that are intimate when it came to emotions. My feelings are mine and when I share them with others I can't help getting the impression that I'm either bothering them or they think I'm needy. So I suppress my deepest emotions until I'm alone.

My favourite way to get rid of anxiety or embarrassment is a bath. So the minute Adam leaves I strip out of my comfy clothing and ease myself into the shower tub. Having a bath tub was a main requirement when I left home, along with bathroom storage for my soaps, moisturisers and best of all, bath bombs.

When I was six my mother came back from Tokyo, Japan with a package of a dozen circular powder balls, each with a unique scent. She told me I could get them in the US but saw them in a store while she wasn't modelling.

That was the first gift I actually enjoyed from my mom, it wasn't some three thousand dollar pearl necklace from Australia or a designer dress from france. Those little scented balls were usable and child-like, and I loved that because I was a child.

To this day when my mother is away I have them and they remind me of her, her perfume especially. Thinking of my mother is another topic I don't like discussing with many people other than my dad and Ashton. The pity is what I hate the most or the guilt some people give for hating expensive gifts.

The gifts are nice but the experiences are better. In the third grade I missed out on the mother daughter picnic because she had a last minute catwalk in turkey. "I'd rather get fancy toys then go to this dumb dance," one girl had once told me. She'd never understand.

Sitting here in the boiling and bubbly water, surrounded in lavender smelling steam I no longer have the energy to fight off the thoughts of the past.

One tear escapes my eye and I quickly whip it away like someone will see, no one will, it's only me here. Admitting my feelings to my friends is hard, but myself it's impossible because of what happened.

It's selfish to not like expensive presents from your mom. That's the big one I've heard and constantly think about.

You get to see her in a week at least it's not a big deal. That's another one, she'd leave for anywhere between a week and a month and when it was a shorter trip no one would care because it isn;t that back. But when she came home it was only for a week and the first three days were dealing with jet lag.

Mommy issues are a big thing for me to work on, but I don't want to. I do but I don't want to talk about it.

I take a deep breath and shift my head under the foam layer on the surface of the bath. The water goes through my let down hair and it relaxes me, the one movement brings my heart rate back down.

I bring happier memories to mind, meeting Ashton at orientation. He wore jean shorts that went to his knees, dark sunglasses, white shoes and the loudest striped shirt imaginable. While with patterned horizontal stripes that yelled "come talk to me I'm having a good time". And I did talk to him.

I am usually a very charismatic person, loving writing and literature but in this five minute conversation I stumbled on every word. I did learn though that he grew up in the big apple, New York City. hes opely gay but had never had a boyfriend and didn't plan on having a serious one any time soon, if not ever. And that he was the good time his shirt said he'd be.

I laugh at myself though before towelling off and putting the close I'd just worn back on and brushed my teeth. And like always the thought creeps into my brain, the accident that wasn't an accident.

The therapist I saw told me to let myself think about it and then forget it, not try and push it away. Doctor Lemieux was an amazing therapist but moved about three months after I started seeing her and I haven't started seeing anyone else.