Change (Published under The Change For Her)

Eighteen

I wake up with the morning sunlight shining onto my face. I run my hands over my face groaning in frustration of being woken up by the sun. I rolled over onto my right side to reach for my phone, only to discover that it's not there. I sit upon the bed, leaning against my headboard rubbing my eyes trying to wake myself up. My senses start waking from the dead, as I begin to smell smoke inside my room. My eyes shot open, starts looking around to find where the smell was coming from. Just to see Liam sitting on my bench that has stuffed animals scattered on it. He has the window open, dragging out a cigarette between his lips.

    How am I supposed to react about this? I've never been around people who smoked and never had people other than Maria in my room beside my mother of course. "Liam," I say in a croaky tone due to my throat being dry, I guess I slept with my mouth open last night.

    He blows the smoke out the window before taking notice of my sleepy present, he examines my face and followed my gaze to the lighted deadly thing between his fingers. "Sorry." Liam lowly said in a whisper. He lifts his hand to reach outside the window to smush the cigarette out on the bricks.

I move my eyes to admire his tired face, it looks like he hadn't slept at all last night. He looks like something eating him up inside. "I'm pretty sure your mom awake and downstairs," Liam tells me. I nod my head, making my way out of bed to walk towards my bathroom.

After shutting the door behind me, I went over to the sink and picked up my plastic pink cup to rinse out before drinking a cup of water to fix my dried out mouth and throat. I sign at the satisfaction of having a normal talkable mouth. I rinse the cup out before setting it back on my counter and making my way out the door into my bedroom. "You ready?" Liam asks me when he hears me walk in.

His eyes were still looking out the window wrestling with the thoughts in his head. "Liam," I say softly, trying to get his attention. He turns to look at me with his unreadable expression. "Are you okay?" I ask him.

As the words leave my lips it was like they woke him from his trance. He gets off my bench and starts making his way to my door. "Come on, pretty positive you really want to go downstairs and see your mom." He tells me. I nod my head as I weakly smile at him because he was right. Liam opens my bedroom door and holds it open for me to exit before he could.

I walk down the hallway to make my way down the stairs with Liam following behind me. I hear my mother rustling in the kitchen, so we went towards that direction to surprise her. As we step in front of the kitchen entrance I grew the biggest smile on my face, while my eyes watched my mother fix herself breakfast. Liam was standing next to me and I know his eyes where on me, while mine stayed on my mother. I feel him nudge my side causing me to look up at him. "Go on," He mouths to me while he nods his head towards her direction.

I attempt to take a deep breath but it was difficult since I couldn't stop smiling. "Mom." I finally say to get attention. She jumps out of fright since she thought that she was alone in the house. I laugh at her reaction as she turns to face me.

"Oh my gosh." She says as her eyes tear up and rush over towards me with her arms open to engulf me in a hug. I feel her crying on my shoulder as she hugs me a little tighter. "I missed you so much." She tells me.

I rub her back and let a few tears out myself. "I missed you too, mom," I say back. We stood there for what seems like hours, holding each other until we were able to stop crying. She finally removes her arms from me and I do the same to wipe away my tears. We look at each other and burst out laughing.

My mother dabs her eyes with her apron to get rid of the tears. "I should get back to cooking." She told me as she walks back over to the stove. "I'm gonna fix you some eggs and bacon as well." She adds. I look over at Liam to see him smiling at me, with a twinkle in his eyes. Which makes my face heat up.

"Do you want some toast-" She cuts herself off as she sees Liam standing at the entryway. "Chloe, who's your friend?" She asks me as she wipes her hands off.

"Oh, um mom this is Liam," I say to her as I look back over at the boy standing in front of me.

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Lauderdale." Liam smiles at her as he reaches his hand out for my mother to shake.

"Please, call me Amber." She tells him as she shakes his hand. Even though she smiling, I can see the pain in her eyes when he called her that. I knew no one has called her by that name since my father passed away. She clears her throat and turns to walk back over to the stove. "I'm guessing you're hungry as well Liam, so I'll fix you some breakfast too." She says while cracking a few more eggs in the bowl to turn them into scrambled eggs.

    A thought occurred to me that I really need to talk to my mother about before we sit around the dining table to eat. I look over at Liam trying to get his attention without saying a word. I keep my eyes on him until he finally looks in my direction. I let out a breath when he stops watching my mother cook and looks at me while raising his brow. I try to do some type of bat signal with my eyes, averting them at him to the kitchen entryway and nod my head towards my mom.

    Liam gives me a confused look until he caught on that I wanted to be alone with her. He mouths 'Oh," to me. "Where your guy's bathroom at?" He asks us.

    "It's down the hall from the living room, the second door on the right," I answer him. I watched him walk-off fiddling with something in his pocket, that's when I knew he wasn't really going to the bathroom. I ignored the craving question I wanted to ask him and turn my attention towards my mother. "Mom," I say as I lean against the Island, watching her place the eggs on each plate.

    "Yes, sweetie." She responds while turning her attention towards the bacon.

    "Liam doesn't know," I tell her as I look down at the counter.

    She places the last piece of bacon on the plate before looking over at me. "What you mean?" She questions me.

    I fight back the tears and let out a breath, "He doesn't know how dad died. I never told him about our home life." I felt guilty telling her that because now I feel like she might think I'm embarrassed about living here.

    I lift my head up to glance up at my mother only to witness her lowering her head as she wipes her hands with her apron. "Why haven't you told him?" She asks me in a quiet tone.

    "It's just that-" I cut myself off, avert my eyes from her while taking a deep breath before continuing. "Mom, you know that growing up after dad died our lives turn into a nightmare. I was constantly bullied and no one wanted to hang out with me beside's Maria. So I decided not to tell anyone on campus about my home life because I don't want my nightmare to continue there." I explained to her as tears build up in my eyes.

    She looks up at me with tears in her eyes as well. "I understand." She tells me. "But you will have to tell him or any of your friends someday soon. You can't keep it a secret forever." She adds.

     "I know mom, I'm just scared." I honestly tell her.

    "I know you are." She responds while coming over to take my hand. "Just trust me, I may not know that boy but if he drove you all the way here in the middle of the night. I guarantee that he wouldn't judge our family or treat you any differently if you open up about what happened to us." She tells me as she looks me in the eye.

    It's weird hearing my mother talk this way about Luke. Not because she barely knows him, it's the fact that she never cared for people covered in tattoos. So her not yelling at me for bringing a guy home covered in ink. "Go find your friend so we can eat." She smiles at me.

    I start walking away but only to stop and turn to face her one more time before going to look for Liam. "Hey mom, is Maria in town?" I ask her.

    "Sadly no." She answers with a hint of sadness in her voice. I smile weakly as I leave the kitchen to find Liam. I have a hunch that he outside smoking another deadly cigarette.