Mom's guy (On hold)

Prologue

Wilma sat next to me on the floor, her tiny hand holding my favorite brown-haired Barbie. With long hair and a pink sundress, she was the splitting image of how I wanted to look when I grew up.

Looking down at the Barbie in my own hand, I smiled. It looked a lot like me. Short, curly blond hair with blue eyes. "Hey, Wilma", I said and held my doll up to her face, trying to match the silly smile. "Doesn't she look like me?"

"Yeah, it does", Wilma agreed. She was too busy changing the dolls shoes. "But Stacy is much more beautiful. And she has a new dress!"

I laughed when she pulled out a tiny dress from her bag pack that I had never seen before. Putting on my best posh face, I spun my little lady around. "It's nice, but Ken won't notice you when I'm around."

We had so much fun pretending to be someone else. I desperately needed an escape from my reality. Whenever Wilma was over, we always laughed a lot. It helped me focus on something else than the broken family downstairs.

Suddenly, a crash echoed through the house. We both froze. It was surely a fight between mom and dad again. I had seen enough of their fights to know that. But they had promised not to fight when I had friends over!

"Mia..." Wilma whispered. I looked her over. She didn't look surprised at all that they were fighting. "Hug?" she asked and dropped the doll. I nodded and we hugged, listening to the loud voices downstairs.

Wilma was a year younger then me, but so much more mature. Her parents were divorced and her mother an alcoholic. An eight year old with issues only I knew about. It hurt me to know that she was hurting more than me, but hearing my parents argue and throwing stuff at each other on my birthday still sucked.

I pulled back. "Let's just play, okay?" I said, forcing a smile. Mom had given me a new dollhouse, while dad had gotten me that Barbie car I had wanted for a while. Shoving the voices downstairs aside, I picked up the play where we had left off.

It wasn't until a knock sounded on my door that we were pulled away from our dream world again. "Darling", my dad said softly as he opened the door and stepped in, careful not to step on any of the clutter. Slowly, he sank down to a crouch in front of me. "I just wanted to say good-bye. I'm leaving now." He stroked his hand along my hair.

"Bye", I muttered. Why was he disturbing us? With a sigh, he kissed the top of my head, whispering how much he loved me, and then walked out.

Staring after him fora second I wondered why he had done that, considering he was going to tuck me inlater, but Wilma demanded my attention. So I started playing again instead offollowing him.