Sucker Punch

Chapter Eight

Ivy

Did you love her? My pre-rehearsed pity response doesn't cover this question. 

Things don't usually go this way when I tell people about my mother, and truthfully, I feel relieved. I feel like I don't have to pretend. Still, I'm caught off guard and at a loss for words, so I simply answer Finn with the truth.

"She was my best friend; the only one who I felt really saw me." My face is on fire, but I force myself to look at him and I see his face is red now too.

"What do you mean? Saw you?" I've already gone this far, might as well rip off the rest of the band-aid.

"I've always been in my sisters' shadows. Invisible. But not with my mom. She always saw me," I say, but it's more of whisper and I'm not sure he heard me over the chatter of the coffee shop.

A loud, crashing noise from the kitchen shocks me out of this bizarre moment I'm having with a guy I barely know.

I feel like I just came out from under water, desperate for air, my head and heart pounding.

He nods. We eat in silence for a while and just as my discomfort grows to the point I need to bail, he speaks.

"I don't know why I asked that. I mean, I'm sorry. Losing your mom must've been awful, I'm sure. But I never really knew my mom. I can't say that I love her, or would miss her if she died..." His trails off, as if he's thinking out loud.

This conversation is way too deep for lunch in cafe, but I dig anyway.

"Never knew her?"

"She took off when I was nine, right after my twin brothers were born. We haven't heard from her since," he says. Nine is long enough to miss someone, to remember and love them, but I don't press. Not yet. 

A million questions swirl around my head as I finish my panini, but neither of us says a word until we're walking out. "You going back to the quad?" I nod and we start walking together.

"So I've been thinking," I finally say.

"Oh, is that what you've been doing?" He teases. I roll my eyes.

"How do you know, if you happen to bump into your mom tomorrow, begging for forgiveness, that you wouldn't instantly forgive her?"

He's quiet for a few steps. "Honestly, I don't know that I wouldn't. But for over ten years my dad has been both mom and dad to me and brothers. I owe who I am as a person to him, not my mom."

"Fair enough...I guess. I would do anything to have my mom back."

"That's the funny thing, isn't it? Neither one of us has a mom, but yours loved you. And mine, mine wasn't taken from me, she left me. She didn't want me." I suddenly want to stop and hug him. What's it like to be a mother, then one day decide to no longer be one? 

"Says a lot about your dad though. I mean, christ, taking care of new born twins? A lot of lesser men would have taken off," I say in an attempt to comfort him.

He looks down at me and smiles. "My father is truly the best man I know." I can't relate.

"He taught me how to box, actually. It's a family tradition, passed down from son to son. If it weren't for my dad, we never would have met," he winks.

"So, what you're saying is, it's really your dad's fault I nearly concussed you?" He laughs and I feel mildly proud of my joke.

"Seriously, though, raising three boys alone? I don't know how he did it," he says.