Surviving the Harrison Boys (Re-write)

eighty-nine // bittersweet

My head was pounding as I trudged into the kitchen. Only Hanna was in there, and she was making breakfast.

"What's wrong?" I immediately asked her. "You never make breakfast foods because you always burn them to charcoal."

She cracked a small smile, and it looked like the first smile she had smiled in a minute.

"I just don't know what to do with myself." She turned off the stove and moved her pan of most likely over cooked eggs to a cold burner. "Do you know what happened with Cody?"

I nodded. "I was there."

Hanna frowned. "That isn't something you should've seen."

"I made him see the same thing when I tried." I shrugged. "I'm just glad he's alive."

I sat down at the island and she opened a cupboard. "Coffee?"

"Tea, please." I said. "My head feels like there's a construction site inside of it."

"Me and you both." She sighed.

We both were quiet as she set a kettle to boil. She sat across from me and held out her hands. I put mine in hers and she squeezed them with a small sigh.

"First I almost lost you," she whispered, "now I almost lost my son. Two of them."

I frowned as I watched her tears plop on to the counter one by one. She squeezed my hands tighter. "Everyday since then I've just been trying to hold you a little longer and squeeze you a little harder, trying to make sure you remember that I love you with my whole heart, despite all my outbursts at random times.

"And I had no idea that my boys needed those extra hugs, too. I didn't know that the support I had been trying to give to you should've been spread out between Cody and Jack; to all of them, really." She sniffed. "I didn't know how much you all go through at such a young age. I didn't realize how crucial it is to be able to figure out things like your sexuality, to be able to express your concerns for your mental health, to be able to have those serious conversations about drugs and sex and everything in between. I didn't know that being a teenager—especially in this generation—was so hard for y'all."

She looked up and met my eyes, and started crying even harder. "I'm sorry if I'm ranting."

I shook my head. "Go ahead, Hanna. I'm listening."

"For the last few months, since you arrived, I just haven't felt myself." Hanna admitted and looked down. "Maybe because I was mourning the loss of my best friend that I had abandoned long ago, and then had her daughter, who is an exact replica, move in with me. I tried so hard to protect you but I wanted to protect my boys because I didn't know if you were like your mother or not. When you arrived I realized I never knew how my boys acted around girls and if they treated them with the same respect Liam treats me."

The kettle began to whistle. Neither of us moved.

"I never properly understood how mental health affected kids your age." More tears fell from her eyes. "I was one of the people who would ask why you were depressed because you had nothing to be depressed about, or why you were freaking about so-called anxiety and diminished it and called it nerves. But after seeing you and Cody almost take your lives because of how bad your mental health had gotten, it was finally a wake up call."

"And then my poor baby Jack." Hanna gripped my hands even tighter to stop her own from shaking. "All I did was yell at him. First when they brought the marijuana, I just yelled and grounded them. And then the heroin, goodness God, I blamed it on you. I didn't even bother to think that they're just babies and have the conversation about peer pressure and drug use. And now look, he's lying in that hospital bed and I just feel like I've failed you all."