The Shores : An AkkGaipa Story 🌴

Chapter 1: To Chonburi We Go

AKK

Given another choice, I'd never go back home. Some things in this life are just too painful to face and 10 years later, I still feel agonized by what happened just a few months shy of finishing my high school education as the Head Prefect and Best Student over all.

When the only school that had not withdrawn the scholarship offered to me out of the other dozen that did was a school in the US, I took this opportunity to start over and try to forget the scars of the past. I never even went back when my father had passed away, I didn't think he wanted me to anyway. His voice still rings loud and clear in my head when he said "I don't need a useless faggot son who had fallen from grace."

I understood him though. The disappointment must have been profound. Being the only son, when I managed to land a scholarship in the ultra exclusive and reputable, Suppalo; my father had spent days bragging about it to all our neighbors. How embarrassed must he have been when the incident became public.

But now, driving my newly purchased black Mercedes G-Wagon in Bangkok towards the place I used to call home, I am filled with apprehension. I just couldn't leave my mother alone. Despite everything, my mother had continuously reached out to me and made me feel that I was still somehow Akk, her beloved son. Well... for 10 years in the US I had been Alan, still my mother never gave up on me. So here I am now. I just hope that my arrival doesn't spread too soon, preferably it only does when I am already on the plane back to the US. I don't want to face anyone.

Arriving at our modest seaside home, a wave of nostalgia hit me. Maybe calling it a tsunami is better. The flood of memories is overwhelming and my heart has constricted so tightly, I'm afraid I'd just die right there in the driver's seat of my wagon, staring at the place I called home for the first 18 years of my life. Placing my head on the steering wheel, willing myself to calm down and get a grip, whispering to myself, "you're a grown up now Akk, you've made your peace with all this." Finally, feeling calm enough, I got out of my car and took down my suitcase and backpack.

My now frail mother had come to the door, smiling so widely, not even noticing my tears had fallen even before her familiar warmth and smell had engulfed me tightly.

"Mae... I missed you so much. Why are you standing up, let's sit Mae," I assisted my mother back into the house.

"Oh Akk! My baby! I thought I will never get to see you again in this lifetime. You've grown so much and so handsome still my Akk!" Mae hugged me again as we sat on the bamboo sofa in the living room. I let her hold me close and basked in the familiar affection of my mother while also taking this time to look over my childhood home. Not much had changed it seems. Maybe it's just that my father's overbearing presence is no longer here and my mother looks a little too fragile now compared to the active woman who left before the break of dawn to fish with my father.

One thing I had not forgotten to do was send home money monthly. I wanted to be a good son and take care of my parents despite everything. When my father got sick, I made sure to take care of all the medical expenses and funeral expenses. It looks like though my mother had not spent the money I sent them judging from the way the house still looked the same. Making mental notes to get everything that needed fixing, fixed and everything I needed to buy for my mother, bought before I would leave.

Life in the US had been especially hard the first four years. Working part time and going to the university to make sure my grades are maintained at the same time is draining. I barely get a decent 5 hour sleep everyday. But afterwards, my stellar grades and spectacular recommendations from my university professors had landed me a lucrative position in a Trading Corporation. I loved the fast paced life when I started because it gave me less time to dwell on the past. When the pandemic hit though, everyone had been forced to readjust their lives and working from the comforts of home had become the new norm. So here I am, free to go wherever I wish to go, as long as I have my laptop and internet. My income puts me well above what everyone in Thailand calls middle class, so that must mean I can be considered successful.