Perfect Doesn't Last Forever

Chapter Two

Perfect Doesn't Last Forever- Chapter 2

            “Ugh, he just makes me so angry!” I exasperated, angrily pushing dress after dress aside on the rack I was looking at.  “Where does he get the courage to call me a bad mother?”

            “I don’t know Britt,” Ella sighed, quickly examining a dress she pulled out and adding it to her pile of clothes she was going to try on.  “He’s Damien.  He’s bitter that you broke up with him and he’s just lashing out.”

            “See, I just don’t understand that.  He knows I’m a good mother.  I do everything for Hayley and she’s perfect.  Hayley is healthy and she is happy.  I did that and he knows it.” It was so frustrating!  Damien used to tell me I was an amazing mother and all it took was me breaking up for him to change into a resentful, angry, and rude guy.  After returning home yesterday from Damien’s, my parents sat me down and asked me where I was.  I stuck to my story and they told me not to let it happen again.  That was it.  I didn’t get yelled at or grounded like I would have if I were still in high school without Hayley and just come back home after curfew.  My parents stopped being so uptight, but I guess it’s hard to parent me when I was a parent myself.  There were new boundaries and they held back more and I learned how to push the line more and more as the months went by, but I was surprised that they were so relaxed on my forgetting Hayley. 

            “How about this?” Ella asked me, holding up a dusty blue high-low dress with a dark brown belt.  “Would you wear this?”

            “That’s really cute!” I gushed as she handed me the dress.  “But what do you think I should do?”

            “Honestly Britt, how could you oversleep anyway?  You’ve never overslept your entire life.”

            “I have no idea!  I was having such a bad day yesterday.  Hayley wouldn’t go to sleep until eight and by that time I was so exhausted that I took a one hour nap and then woke up to catch up on some reading for my biology class and write a paper for my psychology class.  But I still couldn’t read all the biology material before class so I went into the lecture unprepared.”  I literally spent all of yesterday running on caffeine, but by the time I got out of my biology class I couldn’t handle the exhaustion.  “And I don’t know.  I feel so comfortable in Noah’s arm that I never want to leave them.”

            “That’s sweet Brittany,” Ella cooed as we moved on to the next rack of clothing.  “But still, if Damien is getting you so riled up for just forgetting once, I don’t recommend a repeat of yesterday.  And if you are feeling that tired, just call me and I’ll babysit for a night if you need to.”

            “I could never ask that of you,” I told her, grateful that she would even consider taking Hayley for a night.  “Hayley’s my responsibility and I’m definitely not going to ever let that happen again.” 

            “I hope not,” she warned, nodding towards the dressing room.  “You ready to go try all this stuff on?”

            “Let’s do it,” I said, following her to the dressing room at the back of the store.  “But I really want this to work with Damien.  He’s so bitter, it’s ridiculous, like it’s not like this is the first time we’ve been apart.  And if he really wants to be a good parent he needs to just focus on Hayley and not be so resentful towards me.  I don’t want Hayley to know that we don’t get along; I mean yesterday she ran inside crying because Damien and I were fighting with each other.  I feel like she’s gotten to the age where she’s kind of aware of what’s going on around her.”