All I've Ever Needed

Chapter 7

October 11, 2013

"Val, honey. We have to get going if you don't want to be late."

Val could hear his mother's sweet voice through his bedroom door. When he was younger and had felt angry or insecure or frightened, she would hug him tightly and whisper calmingly into his ear. That's all that he needed. Her close to him, telling him that everything would be alright. How he wished that would still work. Cause he felt all of those things, all of the time. It would come and go, like waves, sometimes forcefully and he just couldn't handle it alone. That's why he had to go see him. Dr. Lowebacken. He had tried talking to someone when they lived in New York but it was too soon. The pain was still too raw. The wounds were still healing. But time had only made it worse. The physical pain was almost gone, it wasn't as consistent as it had been but it would flare up occasionally. When he overworked himself. When he danced. He couldn't do that anymore. Too many memories. It always reminded Val of him. And he just wanted to forget.

"Val please. Please come out here so we can go."

He could sense the tiredness in his mother's voice. He knew she was tired. And he knew she tried her best to not let him see it. But it was obvious. This hadn't just affected him. This had affected his whole family. His mother had lost her husband. The love of her life. "My reason for breathing" she had always said as she kissed his lips and walked out the door. Then his father had laughed and told his two boys "You would be the luckiest men in the world if you could marry someone who is half the person your mama is." There was no laughter now. There hadn't been for a year.

New York had been suffocating them so they had to move. His brother had stayed behind and that's how Val liked it. He loved his brother but sometimes ... Sometimes he couldn't stomach looking at him. He was angry at him and he didn't know how to control it.

He grabbed his jacket off the bed. As he was walking towards the door he stopped in front of a mirror that stretched from the floor and at least 2 metres upwards. Val didn't recognise the boy that looked back at him. He was a shell of his former self. He was still handsome like he had always been but there was an edge there. He looked tired. He looked old. Like he had aged 20 years in one. He turned to his side and lifted his shirt. There they were. 6 scars, on his side and back. He was a marked man and he would carry these scars and this burden for the rest of his life.

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"Wait, but, uuuhh, could you like, not be such a bitch?"

"Could you maybe speak in a sentence that we can understand?"

Deja and Dom were quarrelling back and forth while Zendaya cleaned out of her closet. She had too many clothes that were getting too small, her growth spurt had put a serious dent into the family budget.

She had decided to give all of the clothes she could not wear to Downtown's Women Center although both Deja and Dom had insisted on coming over and "check the goods" before anything was sent anywhere.

"So Z, this is like a study date? You know, you and Hotty McHotHot?"

Dom snorted as soon as Deja let go of the question.

"No Deja, Z is not going on a study date with our teacher."

"You're not in his class Dom, you're not allowed to have an opinion."

"Well she's not cause she's still hung up on Zachary ...."

"Spencer"

"Right, she's still hung up on Sawyer and that's why she can't have him teach her addition cause he's a hoe although I'm pretty sure he's gay."