Mommy ✓

eleven

C H A P T E R  E L E V EN

☆☆☆

I

soon discovered that Anna was a pleasant person to co-habit with. I always got home before her but once she returned from work, she’d don on an apron and we’d get straight into preparing dinner.

She always returned with fresh veggies from Food Lover’s and incorporated them into the meals we made.

Anna always made an extra effort into the food we consumed, coming up with different ideas for each night and topping each meal off with some kind of desert and a tantalizing juice from a brand I was not familiar with.


She returned home on the Friday of the first week. I was in the living room half watching the movie playing on TV, half scrolling through SnapChat. Amanda was out with Darren tonight at some party that I’d skipped out on and I’d been torturing myself with snaps of her dancing close to her boyfriend as they swapped spit.

Every time I saw them together, something inside of me always tensed in displeasure.

“Hey,” Anna said as she plopped down beside me on the couch. She’d already changed into leggings and a sweater, with her hair pulled up into a messy bun atop her head. She placed a warm object on my lap.

“I really don’t feel up to cooking tonight so I bought pie,” she said.

I looked down at the golden-crust thing on my lap, “what flavour?”

“Pepper steak.”

I smiled, “glad to know you’re a part of the cool crowd.”

“Yeah? What does being in the cool crowd entail?”

“They eat pepper steak pie, duh.”

Anna smiled so hard that the crinkles in the corners of her eyes appeared, “oh yeah? I’ve never been a cool person before.”

“Oh come on Anna, now you’re just fishing for compliments. You’re like, the coolest over-nineteen ever.”

“Thanks,” Anna said. 

I went to the kitchen to get forks for the both of us and returned. I handed one to her and plopped down beside her again.

The pie was fulfilling, it warmed me to the tips of my toes and the flavour burst in my mouth. I barely ate pie, but pepper steak was my go-to flavour and the particular brand Anna had gotten, (wherever she had gotten it from) was divine.

“How was work today?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders, “same old, same old. School? Did you play a match today?”

“Nope, it got postponed to next week,” I replied.

“Oh, okay. Hey, by the way, what made you go into hockey? I’ve always wanted to know.”

“I’ve been doing hockey since like, grade four. At the time, our register teacher encouraged us to take a sport and majority of the girls wanted to do netball, Manda included. So I tagged along with her and participated in the trials but I didn’t really enjoy it much. After those trials I noticed that the hockey trials had begun and I went to try it out and I had lots of fun. I ended up not making it into the netball team, anyway, but made the B team for hockey. I’ve stuck with it since.”

“I can imagine a ten-year old you getting frustrated that you were far too tiny and fabulous to be catching balls and tossing them to other girls, but totally getting your fierce on the hockey field with that stick-thingy.”

Anna scrunched her face up at me as she spoke, pouting and making gestures with her hands.

“I was not a diva in grade four. I’ve never been a diva. I was so shy,” I said with a disbelieving chuckle.

“Okay, but when did hockey become the passion for you that it is now?”

“Grade eight,” I replied. “I made the A team and I remember one day, during a match I scored the winning goal and the feeling that came to me that day was indescribable. I just knew I had to do this professionally.”

“That’s sweet,” Anna cooed.

I rolled my eyes, “stop,” I whined.

“Okay, sorry,” Anna murmured.

“What about you? Did you have any passions?”

“Accounting.”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“But its true,” Anna replied.

“I wasn’t good at anything in primary or high school but I did so well with accounting and I really love it. I just hate being tied down to an eight-to-four.”

“Working in an office does seem depressing.”

“When you’re not the boss, yeah it is,” Anna said.

My phone dinged at a SnapChat notification and although I knew exactly what to expect, my stomach still rolled when I saw another snap of Manda singing to the lyrics of a song while Darren smoked beside her, then kissed her lips.

“Hey, what’s up?” Anna said and I was a little impressed her ability to sense the change in my mood so quickly.

“Anna, have you ever liked someone that could never like you back?”

Anna nodded, “yeah, many times actually. But it all forms a part of the adolescent experience,” she said, “because one time you’ll like someone but they won’t like you back and someone will like you, but you won’t like them back. But sometimes, it happens that you like someone and they like you back.”

I scoffed, “yeah that last scenario could never be me.”

“Why not?”

“I think I have a sign on my forehead that everyone else can see that I can’t ‘totally undesirable ugly duckling over here’”

“Ugly, where? Paiten, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re like extremely beautiful.”

I actually felt hot under her gaze but I shook my head, “no, you’re just saying that because you’re not allowed to call me ugly because my dad would leave you, or something. But dammit, I’m almost seventeen years old and I’ve never been in a relationship, hell, I haven’t even had my first romantic kiss. What other conclusions are there to draw either than that I’m just not attractive?”

The memory of Collin shoving his slimy tongue down my throat revisited me and I felt goosebumps crawl up my skin. 

“I find it hard to believe that you’ve never been kissed. Maybe the boys were just too scared of you.”

“Maybe I don’t want boys to kiss me.”

A long, painful silence ensued where I focused my gaze on the floor but I could feel Anna’s smothering gaze on me.

“Paiten?”

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “never mind that.” I stood to leave because I wanted nothing more than to hide under my sheets for all of eternity.

“Wait, no, Paiten don’t go,” Anna replied and gripped my wrist.

She prompted me to sit beside her.

“You know that you can talk to me, right? I’d never judge you and that anything that you tell me stays between us, yeah?”

I drew patterns on the couch arm with my finger.

“I think I like girls,” I mumbled.

Anna remained silent.

“But I can’t be sure, I’ve never even kissed a girl or held a girl’s hand that way or anything like that but yeah.”

“Well, it’s okay to be unsure.”

Anna’s voice was soothing to me and although I wanted to look up into her eyes to gauge her reaction, I was far too shy.

This was my biggest secret, something I’d been carrying with me for the past three years. It had plagued me and tortured me for my entire high school career so far and it oppressed me even more when I was around Manda.

I shrugged, “it feels so, alienating. Other girls are so comfortable with boys. They get happy when a boy gives them attention, when the boys kiss them and... touch them and it makes me feel weird that I feel so uncomfortable when it happens to me.”

I felt Anna’s hand on my lower back, her hands warm as they rubbed back and forth. I still couldn’t meet her gaze.

“Remember the day you picked me up from Manda’s? And I was crying?”

“Yes,”Anna replied.

“Well, something happened that day and I’ve never told anyone about it, ever.”

“Talk to me,” Anna urged. Her voice was so gentle and her energy was so comforting, I wouldn’t have held back even if I wanted to.


“We went to Manda’s boyfriend’s house that day and he was there with his friend and I’d been trying to give Collin a chance because he was nice. But he, that day-”

“Paiten, did he hurt you?” Her tone was sharp and biting and it had never occurred to me that someone who wasn’t my dad would feel so protective of me.

Despite the fact that I’d told myself that I was over that incident, I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

“No he didn’t, he just made me feel so... I don’t know. He kissed me and I didn’t like it but I tried to force myself into just laying there while he did what he wanted. I know he would’ve stopped if I asked him to but I didn’t. I just lay there while he tried to make me feel good and maybe if I was a normal teenager I’d have found it to be ‘good’ but I didn’t and it makes me feel so stupid because-”

“Woah, hey, you aren’t stupid for not liking something that was done to you. Your body reacts to stimulus and if it feels off then you should listen to your body’s signals. You also can’t force yourself to like someone you don’t like, even if it’s what other girls are doing. You’re not the other girls, you’re Paiten and your feelings are valid.”

I laid my head on her shoulder and wiped at the tears.

“But why didn’t I like it Anna? Why couldn’t I just be... normal. I don’t like this feeling, it feels like I’m so alone and so weird, god I’m crying again, wow.” I sat up and furiously wiped at my tears again.

“Can I tell you something, Paiten?”

I nodded.

“When I was fifteen I figured out that I was bisexual and I was really, really scared. I’d been bullied in primary school a lot and it made me keep to myself in high school but when I got to university, I met this girl and she made me realise that it was okay to be myself and I haven’t looked back since. I just regretted that I spent so many years hating myself for something I couldn’t change.

If I could go back in time, I’d tell that fifteen year old girl that what she was feeling was okay. It’s okay to be gay, or bi or unsure or questioning. It’s all okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. One day you’ll get that first kiss from someone you really like and you’ll feel your whole world explode into a million colours and you’re going to feel so at home and none of this angst is going to mean anything.”

Watching Anna speak with all those stars in her eyes made something inside of my chest tremble in awe. She was beautiful, inside and out and she made me feel warm inside, she made me feel so safe.

Even when I’d been wary of her in the beginning, she still had an allure to her that made me question if it was possible for any human being to be this beautiful. She was an enigma and she made everyone fall in love with her, everywhere that she went.

Anna was looking down at me and there were these butterflies inside that made my knees feel really week. In the minutes that passed, I’d never be able to remember if she leaned down or if I pushed upwards but when her soft lips came into contact with mine, I melted.

With her cheeks in my palms and her lashes fluttering against my eyes she wrapped her lips around my bottom lip and held me tightly. The kiss didn’t last long but it gave me the feeling I always got whenever I took a long sip of chilled water after a long, hot day. It replenished me.

Anna’s cheeks were on fire when we pulled apart and I was sure my eyes looked as dilated as hers.

“Wow,” I murmured with a hand to my lips. I couldn’t believe that had happened. My eyes fluttered back to her and she was biting her lip in concentration.

“I think we need to call it a night,” she said. She delivered a soft kiss against my cheek, “goodnight Paiten.”

My phone dinged with another snap and this time, the image of Manda with her boyfriend had no effect on me whatsoever.