Look After You {Completed}

IX. September

~September~

                        There now, steady love, so few come and don't go

                        Will you won't you, be the one I'll always know

                        When I'm losing my control, the city spins around

                        You're the only one who knows, you slow it down.

*Flashback-

            Mina tosses a rock into the lack, frowning when the rock sinks down to the bottom of the pond instead of skimming across.

            Suppressing a laugh, I grab a rock and skillfully flick my wrist so the rock bounces of the water.

            We both watch the rock hit the grass on the other side of the pond, the sunlight dimming as the sun disappeared.

            “Will you tell me about your parents?” Mina suddenly asks quietly.

            I freeze, my throat clogging up.

            “There’s nothing much to say,” I mutter out huskily.

            Mina turns her head to face me, her green eyes piercing mine. “There’s always something to say about the people who brought you into this world.”

            I snort, avoiding her gaze. “They left me when I was baby at an orphanage. I really have nothing to say about them.”

            Mina falls silent.

            That’s what Mina did every time. Instead of rushing in with the condolences and sorry’s, she went silent, contemplating the situation for what it was.

            “Do you miss them?” She whispers.

            I swallow hard and rub my throat absent-mindingly. She didn’t know how many nights I spent awake, picturing what my mother and father would look like. How they would react to me. Would my mom make cookies? Would she laugh if I called her mommy? Would my dad clap me in the back and congratulate me if I got in the football team.

            I guess my silence spoke volumes.

            “You still love them even though you never knew them,” Mina observes quietly.

            I feel myself get slightly choked up and my immediate response to her words is to be defensive and to find a way out of this personal talk.

            It was to close to me.

            I wasn’t ready to face the facts. Heck, it’s been nineteen years since they left me and even in fifty years, I don’t think I’ll be able to face the facts.

            They left me.

            Everybody leaves.

            Nobody stays.

            It takes time and energy to love a person. To care for them as yourself.

            I don’t know if I blamed them for leaving. After all, if they could see the way I was now, they would probably never look back on what they did.

            Nobody stays

            Everybody leaves.

            That was reality.

            “They left me on Christmas day. What kind of screwed up person does that to their own child?” I ask in disbelief, my voice becoming slightly pitchy. “Every Christmas, while every kid from school cried because they got ear muffs instead of a scarf, I sat there in the cold with only a thin jacket and holey shoes because my foster parents were to busy using that money for drugs. But did the cold hurt?” I laugh coldly. “Every tear that I cried realizing that I wasn’t going to get my family back hurt more than anything.”

            I could feel my face turn red with emotion, my eyes stinging. Guys didn’t cry.

            Screw that.

            Screw everything.

            “And to think that maybe one day they would come back. That they would feel sorry for leaving. Even as I was thrown from foster family to foster family, I still clung to the idea that maybe, just maybe, even if my real parents didn’t come and get me, I would find a new family who would be with me forever.”

            I am briefly aware of Mina taking my hand.

            “But jokes on me I guess. Because everyone leaves,” I spit out, coughing hard.

            When I glance briefly at Mina, I see her quickly swipe a hand over her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheeks.

            Catching it with my finger, I feel all my anger and sadness of the past drift to the back of my mind.

            “Why are you crying?” I murmur.

            Mina sniffs, furiously wiping her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

            I just let her to herself, looking back out at the water.

            “Not everyone is going to leave you, you know” Mina says quietly, her small hand in mine.

            I smile sadly, staring out at the trifling water. “That’s what everyone says before they do.”

            Mina jerks my hand and I turn to look at her, an angry and determined look to her eyes. A look I knew to well.   

            “Well this is what I am going to say. I won’t leave you,” She says adamantly.

            She was almost like a child who believed that the world was still mostly good, that love still existed.

            And I didn’t want to do anything- say anything that would make her hope deflate

            The hope that lit her eyes and paved her future.

            The hope I didn’t have.

             Rub soothing circles with my thumb on the back of her hand, and smiling thoughtfully at her, I say the truth.

            “Then don’t let me run away.”

* End of Flashback-

            I lean back against the slippery booth, the quiet hour of three a.m. stilling everything as I stare blankly at my book and a photo.

            I guess she didn’t have to worry about me running away. I would always be where she was…or at least that’s what I believed.

            I raise my hand for my fourth cup of coffee.