Broken Home // mashton

chapter one

"Your mother pisses me off."

He's heard it before. A million times in fact. If there was a time where his father never started a conversation with the line, he honest can't remember. It was his starter line, and if Michael had a dollar for every time he heard it then he'd have enough to buy himself an apartment and get out of there. He'd do it to.

"She can't take no for answer! I tell her we need to save money but she just gambles it away! Money doesn't grow on trees!"

He didn't care. Maybe he should because they were thousands of dollars in debt from personal loans to late utility bills to phone bills and car payments. They didn't have money to spend wildly, and their mortgage was due soon and it's not like they can just keep pushing it back without it negatively reflecting on them, but he couldn't bother himself to care. He'a ran out of cares.

"She makes me drive her to the casino. It's like her arms and legs are broke sometimes. She's a child."

He rolled his eyes and sighed as he looked out the car window, his hum drowned out by the gentle rumble of their car and the wind against the windows. The words went in one ear and out the other, he's trained himself to let it just pass, a bookmarked memory that's pushed to the back of the folder that is his brain. It didn't come up until he found himself in his head late at night, and that's how he liked it.

The trees and buildings passed in blurs of sepia and oak, the colors merged into darkness as he closed his eyes, the cold glass of the window freezing his skin. It felt good though. His skin was heated, painted red with embarrassment? Frustration? Sadness? He doesn't know what it is, but it's hot and it's soothed when the winter glass touched the fire.

"I tell her too. I tell her one day when's she's out at the casino, I'm going to pack my bags and just walk out. She won't have me to depend on anymore."

He knows it's all talk. He knows his father would never have the guts to just leave in the middle of the night. It's just a game at this point. She pushes his buttons anyway she cans, he threatens to leave, and he has to watch as they forget their differences like it never happened because he always backs down and she always claims victory like it's a game. A back and forth, merry-go-round-like game that's old, tired, and over-played. He's tired of the song they sang, the dance they moved to, the everything that made every day feel like deja vu.

He's drained.

"She thinks I won't do it, but I will."

Will he though? The anxiety of waking up one day to see his father's belongings gone scares him to no end, but reality screams it'd never happen. If it was to happen, it would have happened already. If he was truthful, he'd have been long gone by now and it wasn't a surprise.

He thinks it hurts more being caught in the middle than having to take trips to either side. Maybe it's be better if he really did leave, filed for divorce, and broke them apart. Everyone could see the glue was old, drying, barely holding them together because of blood bonds and responsibility. He thinks he'd rather see one parent one day and the other another if it meant he wouldn't be pulled apart at the seams between his father's unheated threats and his mother's taunting.

He doesn't dare say it. He doesn't think he has the voice to even if he wanted to.

"Now here I am, driving all the way across city just because she's lazy and can't do it herself. Daryl do this. Daryl to that. I never get a please, or thank you!"

They were almost home. They were so close he could taste the left over pizza he had in the fridge and the sweet serenity of his room after he's locked the door. He could feel the warm embrace of his blankets already, and the fluffed presence of his pillow and the weight of his dog on his lap.

When the car turned down their street, he was jerked from his seat when his father hit the brakes abruptly. "Watch out, asshole!" The adult yelled angrily out of his window as he honked his horn loudly. 

Out the moving truck window was an arm, a silent gesture of apology as it pulled into the house right beside his. His eyebrows furrowed and he stared out the window as he saw it back up into the driveway and three people began to open up the back trailer and extend the rails. There was a young girl, blond and dressed in anything but clothes meant for moving heavy furniture and boxes, an even younger boy who was more preoccupied on his phone than actually helping, and the eldest looked exhausted as he carried some bags over his shoulders.

He said something, but between the distance and his spot in his dad's car, he really couldn't understand what he was saying. "I guess Mr. and Mrs. Wilson moved. It was inevitable, I suppose." His dad sighed and Michael hummed in agreement as he reached beside him blindly to unbuckle his seatbelt.

"I'd offer a hand to help them, but whoever was in that truck can't fucking drive so their help card is revoked." He scoffed and Michael looked back at him as a bag was tossed at him. "Give your mom her shit."

He nodded and then opened his door, stepping out to hear his new neighbors arguing. The boy he saw with bags walked out of the garage, and before he walked up the rail to the trailer he turned his head to him. He nodded at him in acknowledgement before disappearing back into the truck, and Michael's eyes widened as he immediately rushed to his front door with the bag of his mom's most recent belongings.

Oh no, he thought to himself as he found himself safe within the confinements of his house, he's hot.