Bad at Endings.

Chapter 9

A little bit later my mother brings us a tray with some tea and cookies.
Not because she thinks we actually need some tea but just because my mother can be particularly nosy.
She just needed an excuse to enter my room without making it look as if she is snooping on us.
I don't think she really succeeds.
John probably notices what she's trying to do too.
But, if he does, he's not showing it.
Once again he's this flawless and more polite version of himself when my mother is around.
“Thank you very much, Mrs Rowe”, he says and my mother looks at him as if she's already trying to think of ways to legally adopt him.
“You can call me Violet”, she says.
John beams his warmest smile at her as he replies: “I know, Mrs. Rowe.”
My mother leaves the tray with two steaming mugs and a couple of biscuits on my desk and then leaves.
At this point John and I are both presentable and dressed again.
He sits on the chair at my desk, the bruise around his eye nothing more than a faint and ugly yellow mark at this point, and I sit on my bed. My shoes lie somewhere in a corner of my room and my socked feet dangle over the edge of the mattress.
John hands me one of the mugs and I take it from him carefully.
Our fingers brush against each other as he does so and I pretend not to be affected by it.
I pretend that the slightest touch of him doesn't heat me up more than any form of scalding liquid ever could.

“Your mother is nice”, John says.

I give him a small smile as I take a sip from my mug. The tea is still too hot to drink and it numbs my tongue and throat a bit as it goes down. I blow on it impatiently.
I suppose my mother is nice.
I suppose.
I don't really remember the last time I had an actual conversation with her. We just sort of seem to coexist these days.
It's not that we ignore each other but we sort of ignore what we used to be to each other.....if that makes sense......because.....if we permit ourselves to travel back to 'what used to be' it'll just make it so very much more obvious that we are not whole anymore. That there is something missing. That we will never be what we used to be ever again. No matter how hard we try or want it to or...... it'll just be admitting that things have ended for good.
That there is an ending.
And Lord knows how I do with those.
Maybe I am more like my mother than I am willing to admit.

“Is she some kind of scientist?”, I startle a bit at the sound of John's voice and some of my tea sloshes over the side of the mug and hurts the skin of my hand. I pretend not to notice. I pretend the sting isn't there, “she's always got all those complicated looking papers lying around”, John continues.

I sort of simultaneously nod and shake my head at the same time because she probably is and isn't a scientist at the same time. I mean....I think she is....but probably not in the way John means it.

“She's an ornithologist”, I say.

John gives me a blank look and I can't help but chuckle just a little bit. I like him when he lets his guard down. When he looks non-plussed.

“She studies birds”, I clarify, “more specifically the migratory patterns of birds. Wherever the birds go, we go.”

“Is that why you were in Bournemouth?”

I nod.

“And is that why you moved here too?”

I nod again and quickly take another sip from my mug. It's not exactly a lie if it's partially true, right?
My mother does find plenty areas to conduct her research on around here but it's just not the whole of it....not exactly.
But I can't tell him.
It would ruin the mood.
I've told him too much already.