Bleed Until You Heal

10- Night Clubs

"Are you paying all of your bills?"

"Yes."

"Are you doing your laundry regularly?"

"Yep."

"What about your text books, have you bought those yet?"

"Yeah."

"Is your bed made? And your sheets washed?"

"Mom," I sigh into the phone. "I can take care of myself, alright? Everything is fine over here."

"I'm just worried that you're in too far over your head," She explains to me as if she doesn't tell me that same exact thing every single time that I talk to her. "Being an adult is really hard work, you know."

"I know," I agree, not wanting to start a fight or anything. I'm just going to let her lecture me yet again about the same things that she's always lecturing me about and get it over with because I know that no matter what I say to her, she'll never realize that I can actually take care of myself. "And we're handling it."

"Well, what about your dishes? They aren't stacking up, are they?" She wonders.

"I did the dishes this morning," I sigh.

"Only you? Doesn't Jasper clean up too? You know, you shouldn't be the only one doing work around the apartment," She tells me.

"We take turns doing the dishes," I say, "And he swept the floors. Is there anything else that I must be forgetting to do?"

"I know that you think I'm being too overprotective," My mother sighs, obviously able to detect my unstoppable sarcasm. "But it's only because I worry about you. This is just such a big step to make and it was just completely out of the blue."

"Not for me, I've known about it for months," I inform her. "It's only out of the blue for you."

"Which I am still unhappy about by the way, and we didn't even get time to talk about it," She huffs and I don't tell her that the only reason we couldn't talk about it was because every time we spoke after I told her about Atlanta, she would just try to convince me to stay and that was it. "Anyway, have you met your landlord in person?"

"Yes," I say. "She's very nice."

"And you're doing your grocery shopping? Eating healthy?"

"Mom, I gotta go," I decide, realizing that this third degree about responsibility could last for hours and I don't want to just sit here and listen to my mother doubt me for that long. "So I'll call you later. Love you, bye."

I hang up before she can start talking again, to nag me about my hair getting too long or my blankets being too wrinkly. I love my mom to death, I really do, but she's driving me insane even though she's across the country from me right now. Even though I'm here, proving to her that I can take care of myself, she just won't wake up and let go of me being a little girl. She won't realize that I actually don't need her to spoon feed me anymore and it's becoming offensive.

"Are you busy tonight?" Jasper asks me when he sees that I'm off of the phone now. I'm standing in the kitchen so I walk over to the living room where he's sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him.

"Not that I know of but I'm assuming that's about to change," I say, sitting down beside him to see that he's looking at a website for some sort of night club.

"Feel like going out?" He wonders. "I found a gay bar downtown and it looks pretty cool."

"Why don't we ever go to straight bars?" I ask him.

"Because you don't even like straight bars," Jasper reminds me with a small laugh. "You say that the guys are too desperate, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, you're right," I agree. "Well, sure we can go there. We haven't been out in a while."