Camryn Quinn is finally getting what she wants...sort of. Moving into a dorm and away from her not so supportive father is a good first step, but like everything with him-it comes with strings. She must attend the college of his choosing for at leas...
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I unlock the door to my house with the code and quickly take the stairs two at a time to my room to avoid any of the guys who have made it back from the bars. I can hear Anderson in his room with a guest so I shut my door and turn music on my speaker a little louder than normal. I flop down onto my bed on my back and stare up at the ceiling. I thought about it the whole way to her dorm, and then the whole way back to my house. I pull my phone out of my pocket and pull up an old message thread.
Me: Offer still good?
Cal: Of course.
Me: Im in.
My stomach feels uneasy. I don't have a choice, I remind myself. My mind immediately goes to my mom. The same way it has every few minutes since we ended our call hours ago. The constant nagging in the back of my mind, asking me what the fuck I'm going to do about it, reminding me that I was given a choice to do just that.
I didn't expect to see her there tonight, but in a way I'm glad I did. It allowed me to see that she is nothing like her brother described, that Cal doesn't know what he's talking about. Even over a span of hours, no problem surfaced. Camryn wouldn't be an issue, I could fake my way through updates to her brother. It's something she said tonight that even had me considering her brother's offer.
You can't fail as long as you're trying.
And I haven't been. I haven't tried hard enough to find an actual solution for my mom. Instead, I've presented problem after problem, allowing myself to just be pissy about the situation. Making it about myself, what it's doing to me, not even thinking about what I can do to fix it. So I have to try. Taking Cal up on his offer is me trying.
The only other option I can think of is reaching out to my dad. But I've hated him for walking out on us without a second thought when this happened the first time, like we were always just people in a picture in a frame. I never understood how he could just easily turn the frame around and pretend it wasn't there, that we weren't there. That is why I'm in this position in the first place. His responsibility to take care of his family passed down to my shoulders overnight. So I decided to just say fuck it.
I talked myself into walking Camryn back to her room. The money will allow me to pay the copay on my mom's treatments and to make sure that Nora and my grandparents don't have to worry about anything. Not leaving them to rely on someone who will just let them down again. I send a quick text in the family chat to tell my mom and sister that I love them and that I'll call them tomorrow. I roll over and fall asleep quickly, finally able to sleep deeply for the first time in weeks.
