Insubordinate ( Gay ) ( BxB )

Chapter Eighteen ✓

NOTE: LOONGGG chapter ahead folks, pace yourselves.

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                                     I'm plagued by nerves when I wake up in the morning. The smell of rain is still soaked into my skin along with the sweat of hours attempting to sleep in the heat of California and my own thoughts that night. Returning home yesterday, my mother offered me a dinner that I refused. On my way up the stairs to my room, my father watched me from a picture on the wall. I feel monitored by the universe, this entity that watches in wait to see if I can withstand its heft. I went straight to bed in hopes that a few hours of nothingness might alleviate my angst.  It didn't.

I shower, brush my teeth, and gather my clothes from my dresser. Everything goes in sequence. Compulsory cleanliness from stress has turned me into a neat freak. I thought frequent normality would make the oncoming truth I've promised a million times to tell less difficult to face. Nothing has worked. Not the running, not the cleaning, not my desperate attempts at just not thinking about it. Nothing. 

"Good morning." My mother says as I slink through the kitchen. 

She stands in her blue bathrobe pouring herself a mug of coffee and sugar. Her brown hair is thrown into a bun on the top of her head, dark eyes staring into the same shade of dark brew. Growing up, no one could ever tell which parent I looked more like. My father was fully Hispanic, just as dark headed and almost dark eyed as my mother. I call him Matias, though, as he had never been any kind of father to me. 

The difference was in their skin; my mother pale as paper, his was the color of coffee with too much milk. Before I was conceived, there was never even half a chance I'd come out any different than either of them. But as split as my resemblance may be, I take after Matias most. It's in the eyes. My mother's are practically black like a pool of tar, but Matias's used to turn golden in the sun. His eyes were so pretty that you'd never believe what kind of person was behind them. I have those eyes. I see them every time I look in the mirror. My mother must see it too, because she can't make herself look at me for very long. 

I know that every time she looks at me, all she'll ever see is him. 

"Morning." I return, stepping beside her to pour a cup for myself. My elbow brushes my mothers arm as I lift the pot. I see her flinch out of the corner of my eye before stepping out of my way.

"You smell like smoke." She says. 

I fill my cup up halfway. I put no sugar or milk in my coffee. Once you're accustomed to the bitter taste, it tastes too sweet any other way. It was how Matias drank his. As a kid, I thought it was cool how he didn't make a face when he drank the bitter shit, so I did the same until I liked it. A funny memory is that I actually wanted to be like him up until I began maturing and the weight of a desperate situation began taking its toll. Right and wrong became more fine lined the older I got. 

The thought crossed my mind for the first time when I was eleven that maybe the way we lived wasn't normal. I think that's when I first began to hate him. Seeking comfort in my mother wasn't something I could do after I saw the wrong in our so-called "family". Matias was the rift that prevented it from there on. Why is he on my mind, this morning of all mornings, I wonder? He's been dead for a long time now, and there's different obligations I have now without him, bigger problems. Maybe it's because I'm wondering what he'd say to me on a day like today if he knew.

His son ended up some kind of faggot.
The constant hardship must not have worked after all.
It certainly didn't do a thing for my mother. Yet she still loved him.