Coffee People - Pedro Pascal by Emma Star

Chapter five, Someone New

'I don't know how to say this, but I'm telling you anyway. I've met someone.' I hear my mom telling me over the phone.

She has met someone. Romantically. My mom hasn't dated anyone since James. She is still scarred from her last relationship, we bring it up occasionally. She had met James a year after divorcing my dad. At first he had been charming, kind and generous, but as time went by he grew distant, hateful, violent. My mom was a strong woman, but she had a weakness for destructive relationships and staying in them. My dad was never physically abusive with me or my mom, but emotionally abusive? Yeah you could say that. I never really realized it until I described my parents relationship to my therapist. They sent me to therapy after their messy divorce. I was an angry twelve-year-old. My first therapist was awful. She'd talk down to me like I was stupid. I hated her guts, when my mom realized this she pulled me out of therapy immediately. I left with a hatred for therapy and a fear of relationships.

James was both emotionally and physically abusive. We should have seen it from the start. By the way he would get irrationally angry at football games. He'd storm out of the house without saying a word and come home drunk. I'd hear them screaming at each other at three in the morning. The next day he'd go to work and come home with fresh flowers for the dining room table. I came home from school to fresh flowers more often every year.

When I was sixteen I waited in the hallway of the emergency room while my mother was getting stitches. One night they were fighting, he had thrown a vase at the wall and one of the shards had cut her arm. The cut was deep and needed medical attention. She had driven us to the hospital after James had fled the house.

I was eighteen when she left him. It had only been two years. Two years since the night he had taken his anger out on me. He had never laid a finger on me until then. When my mom came home to her crying daughter, a red mark forming on her left cheek she had finally kicked him out. I had never seen such rage. She had been with him for five whole years. She had submitted me to the same abusive relationship for the three years he was living with us. I love my mom but I was still learning to forgive my mother for not leaving him sooner.

'Mila? Are you there?' She says.

'Yeah I'm still here.' I say, weakly.

'I know I don't exactly have the best track record in choosing men, but this feels good, this feels different.' She says, carefully, 'I've been seeing him for a little while, casually, it's getting serious and I needed you to know.'

So that's why she sounded off the last time I spoke to her on the phone.

I wrack my brain for something to say, but I come up with nothing.

'Derick is delightful and he'd love to meet you, but you don't have to if you don't want to. That's your call entirely.' She continues.

Derick, my mom's new boyfriend is named Derick.

'Mom, I don't know. I need to think about it.' I finally manage to say.

'Take all the time you need honey.' She says, comforting me. I can hear the quiet disappointment in her voice even over the phone.

'I'm going to go, I have to make dinner for the girls and I.' I say.

'Okay goodbye darling, text me when you've decided.' She responds.

'I will, bye mom.' I disconnect the line.

When I open the bookstore on Thursday I've had some time to think about it. I decided I was going to meet my mom's new boyfriend. Not immediately, but sometime in the future.