Wayward (Wayward #1) ✓ [bxb]

Chapter 26 (Greendale)

This chapter will contain triggering content.

SONG - WALL F*UCK - FLUME

"Ryan Michael Perry. Tell me where the hell you got this wrist watch from." Mom demanded. I shrugged "I don't know."

"Be serious and tell me where you got it from." Her patience was thinning. Too bad I could barely give a crap. It was my mistake to forget the watch that Gerald had given me in my pocket. When the clothes got sent down for laundry, Mom found it and that was how the shit storm began.

"Where did you get it?"

"I bought it."

"Bullshit." It spoke volumes about the level of her anger if she was able to carelessly swear "This thing must be worth hundreds of dollars. Where would you get that kind of money?"

"Working at the ice cream shop downtown."

"Don't make me punish you." she threatened.

"Do your worst." I challenged.

"What's going on here?" Dad waltzed into the confusion in the laundry room. Mom angrily let it all out "I found this watch inside his pants and it's clearly not his. I've been asking your son for the past twenty minutes but he's refused to tell me a word. I don't know how the hell he got it or if he-"

"If I what Mom?" I cut her off. "Stole it? Trust me that would be the least of your worries."

"Well I don't know what to think." She snapped causing Dad to cautious hold her arm. I had no real problem that my mother had found the watch. I didn't care. I'd shut her out of my life in such an unreal way that we'd almost become strangers. It wasn't as though we were close in the past. With my previous pains and sorrows it was easier to cling to my Dad because he understood better.

Mom may have tried to understand me. I didn't notice it if she did. What I did notice was that she didn't really have the skills to remain as patient as I needed. It certainly wasn't a walk to in the park raising an outcast of a son.

Dad tried to intercede "Ryan, I think it would be better if you tell us where you got it." His voice was gentle, pleading. I could never deliberately disappoint my father. He was my rock. My protector. Yet I desperately wanted to let him understand that this wasn't about him, it was about Mom.

In my pain, I desperately wanted to hurt her. Draw it out and start a fight. Push her to the very edge she'd been too careless to stop me from reaching.

But I couldn't lie to my father in the end "My boyfriend gave it to me."

Cue the gasps. Dad remained patient; his shock was well hidden "Oh. Who is he?"

"You don't know him." I mumbled. I hoped that they would never, considering the fact that I wasn't playing around with just one person.

"I realize that now. He gave this watch to you?" Dad asked.

I nodded "I'm not lying."

Mom mumbled something. I glared at her "Right, of course I'm lying, because you can never think anything but the worst of me."

"Ryan-." Dad tried to soften the storm.

"No Dad, it's true and you know it. I'm her one and only disappointment." Each word was a bitter vial in my mouth. It hurt. Just because it was true and I had accepted it didn't mean that it was easy to accept. None of it ever was.

"You never tell me anything." she tried to defend.

" 'Cause you don't care." I shot back.

"That's not true. I didn't even know you had a boyfriend." Mom interjected soberly.