Ice

1-'my, my, you're so popular!'

"I don't need to see a therapist," Gabriel Adams Jr. declared, though he was unsure whether it was directed at his mother or himself. He continued knowingly, "I am perfectly capable of handling my own life, and I do not think that bothering someone else with the story of it is worth either their or my time."

"Gabe..." his mom exhaled his name very slowly. He met her eyes with his own coolly. The wooden table they sat at had been in their use for several years, but it had never been more uncomfortable. She sighed again. "I just worry about you, honey. Depression isn't something you can just take care of, Gabe. It would be reasonable for you to be deeply sad at a time like this-"

He cut her off with a short and even more reasonable, "No. It wouldn't." She rubbed the sides of her head as if trying to wipe away everything he was saying to her, as if she were trying to brush it off just like everything else he said when they were arguing.

Chelsea Adams loved her son, and he knew it. However, he also knew that she was very stressed out as of late and was already five times too busy without having to drive her son back and forth from a therapist.

Gabriel had taken notice of her weight loss. She was thin for a woman in her mid-forties with two children to begin with, but over the past month she had begun to look nearly skeletal. And she didn't smile, not really. So while Gabriel was not entirely sure that his constant cynicism was not classified as depression, he knew that it did not qualify as reason enough to trouble his mother.

"What the hell kind of seventeenth birthday present is an offer to go see a shrink once a week, anyways?" he asked, trying to joke. One corner of her mouth turned up. Maybe.

It was a failed attempt at turning the conversation around, so, as it were, Gabriel dismissed himself from the dinner table that happened to bear no food at the time. He left his mother there to be alone with her sighs, head rubbing, old table, and new kitchen.

She didn't call out his name, as he was secretly hoping she would. She didn't tell him to come back and remember that she was perfectly fine and he would be perfectly fine and Dad would come home soon and the whole family would be perfectly fine.

She's overworked, not a liar, the voice in Gabriel's head scoffed. He didn't laugh. Instead, he felt himself frowning. He stepped into the bathroom and caught sight of his angry-looking, round face in the mirror. Gosh, the voice was saying, no wonder she thinks I'm depressed.

He stepped into his bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed. He began to wonder if his father actually would be home soon. He was usually gone no longer than three days, and he had left four days ago. Why an office job kept him away from home so often, Gabriel had no idea. He tried to keep it out of his mind most of the time, being positive that his imagination would run wild with ideas as to what Dad did on his days away.

This time, they were told he would be "in Anaheim for two days tops, I promise." But, again, that was four days ago, and Anaheim was a long way from Minneapolis.

"Minneapolis," Gabe repeated aloud with disgust, then fell back onto the bed. His tongue tasted terrible after saying the name. A frustrated groan escaped him as he rolled over onto his stomach. The word 'Tucson' tasted much better. Even 'Arizona' had more of a ring to it than 'Minnesota' (well, in his mind, anyhow).

He wanted to fall asleep, but it was only early afternoon. So far his birthday had been quite uneventful, something that he didn't mind at all. After waking up around ten o'clock, he went to his phone to find many text messages bidding him a happy birthday from his old friends. After responding to each one, he entered the kitchen and ate the extravagant breakfast his mother had prepared. Then, under her careful eye, he opened cheesy cards from relatives both close and distant. Not long later, she offered the therapist deal.