Taking Chances

23. The Meeting

Stevie went upstairs after polishing off her glass of wine and she slowly crept into her son's room first. Knocking gently on the door, she bit the inside of her lip.

"Hey," he sat up and lowered his stereo down with the remote.

"Hi..." she leaned into the doorway. "I'm sorry that you seen that..." she shut her eyes, not even sure how to explain herself.

"It's alright, I guess. You're happy, right?" he asked.

Sighing to herself, "I'm not too sure of myself and my actions, quite frankly," she admitted.

He pursed his lips and nodded.

"Are you mad?" she then asked, not at all sure of how to approach the situation.

"Mom, I'm okay. I think you need to talk Devyn down. She's got the real issues and I dunno why," he laid back, very relaxed with the situation as he turned the volume of his stereo back up.

"Thank you, honey... I'll be back," she popped out of his room completely and went down a room, meeting her other child's. As she pushed open the door, she was only met by a crying teenager. "Sweetheart..." she lingered with guilt filling her core as she shut the door behind her. "Why are you crying, baby?"

"Because," she buried her face into her pillow.

Coning in further, she took a seat at the edge of the bed and she brought her hand to the girl's back. "That's not an answer."

The girl continued to sob and she tried to keep from talking to her mother.

All the blonde could do was continue to keep stroking her hair and back because she was going to wait for her to settle down, so that they could talk civilly.

After a good ten minutes, the brunette started to push herself up and she blindly searched for her glasses since she had taken them off.

"Here," her mother handed them over, cleaned with the arms folded.

The girl sighed and took them.

"Now, let's talk," she said calmly.

"I don't want to talk."

"I don't care. You've been going through a lot and there's something you're not telling me. You're either super mean to your brother or you cry."

"It's not just that," she shook her head.

"Then tell me. Maybe I can help you."

"Why do you have to have a boyfriend?" she finally outed aloud, through a near yelp. "I thought you and dad were getting better."

"Is that the only reason you're crying and upset all the time?" she asked, not finding what she saw as the only problem.

"I don't know."

"Okay, so let's think back... I told you that dad and I are going through our own thing. That is something for us to worry about and I told you why I was dating somebody else. You told me you understood why, but I should've put more thought into this because I didn't know it'd be too much."

"I just wanna know why you two can't be together. He told me because he's not drinking anymore and he said he didn't like that you were going out either. I don't want you to see somebody else when we're all here."

"Devyn, I can really understand your anger. I understand that you don't like the idea of me replacing your dad with another man, but my love, that is not going to happen. I've told your father that I would always love him and that's the truth and to be quite frank, you don't have to love Ben, all I asked was that you get to know him and you haven't done that at all."