As Sin

welcome home

"Hey," Xia came up to him while he was in bed. He rolled over and squinted his eyes to block out the sunlight. Xia bit his lower lip. He kept taking in a breath to speak, but no words came out. He eased himself up. A spark of pain shot up his back from the bruise on his ass. His best friend looked at it in awe as he got undressed last night.

"You went crazy on him," Xia remarked. "Looks like he tried to take a bite out of you."

Xia was usually the one to come to him bruised. Whether it was sex or fighting, being reckless was his specialty. There were many nights where he would lay on Nate's bed while he iced the purple and yellow spots on his body. He understood why Xia liked it. You could lose your emotional pain to your physical pain. Pushing your body past its limit made your brain forget about anything else.

"What is it?" he asked. Xia sucked in a breath and sat on the bed. He eyed the smaller man. He hadn't seen him lost for words in a long time.

"Your mom called," he said.

Everything in his brain stopped. He took his phone from Xia's outstretched hand. When he turned it on, he found one missed call from his mother. How long had it been? Not once had he seen his mother's face in rehab. He thought that being in there would finally make her visit him. He remembered texting her the address twice. Sleepless nights where he would call her in near tears, telling her he missed her. Begging for her to tell him that he should keep going. That it would be alright.

Nothing. He never received anything from his mother.

But she was calling now, wasn't she? Didn't that mean something? Didn't that mean she still loved him. That he was still her son? She was thinking of him. He couldn't leave her alone. Maybe... maybe she thought he was busy. Maybe he was supposed to call her more. She wanted to see him.

He held the phone to his ear and imagined her voice. He wanted her to sing to him again. Her voice was the first one he ever knew. It was the first one to sing to him. She used to tell him how she sang to him in the womb.

"I wanted God to give you the same gift he gives all of us," she said. "To love music, and to know how much I love you."

Love. She loved him. He remembered her love from the way she sang him to sleep. The way she sang when she cooked. That was how he learned to sing through everything. Music could be there for you when you were lonely. His mother must have been lonely a lot. Who else did she have but her son? He tried to remember being a toddler, slung across her hip, listening to her sing. When he got too big, she would put him on a barstool so he could still be with her.

Why did she stop wanting him to be with her?

Xia spoke slowly. "She didn't see you at rehab at all, did she?"

He put the phone down. Stared at his hands. That wasn't fair. His mother went through a lot. He was never able to understand it as a kid. His mother had no one, why should he expect her to baby him through everything? He was an adult. He needed to act like one.

"You don't get it," he said. "She's just like that. She's... tired. People must bother her all the time about me."

The excuses spilled out of his mouth. It had been that way ever since he was a child. She didn't come to report card day because she was working. He couldn't go to field trips because there wasn't any money. They never left the house because she was tired.

"She's not going to get better," Xia said. "She's your mom, she's supposed to-"

"You just don't get it!" Nate snapped. He stormed out of the room. Xia followed him to the doorframe. Nate put his hands on the stair railing and stared at the level below him. "She doesn't have anyone else. I can't leave her."