Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Four

[song to the side is perfect for this chapter, it's "falling" by the civil wars.]

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"Please, tell me you know, I've got to let you go, I can't helping falling out of love with you." 

   SIX MONTHS AGO... 

      From my little nook on the roof, I watched with silent rage as a black SUV molded into the night sky, only being identified by the stream of yellow headlights. The car made its way around the cul-de-sac expertly, as if it had been on this route many, many times before. I pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my chin and squinting just enough to see my mother stumbling out, quiet albeit drunk, of the black SUV. 

   I could hear her faint murmurs of laughter and the faint traces of an unknown man's voice through the thin air.

     "I'll see you tomorrow night, darlin'," his sickly voice wound through the night, making me scowl deeper.

    And the only thing that made it worse was how my mother replied.

    "As always, love. Now go, before my husband comes back."

   I shrunk back and tried to appear nonexistant from my dangerous perch on the roof tiles, trying not to be seen. At the ungodly hour of two am, my mother's behaviors have been getting predictable. She should've known better to make her excursions less traceable if she didn't want to be found out for cheating. 

    The guilt of knowing what my mother had been doing for the past two months had been eating me alive. I didn't know where to go; to confront my mother or father first. And whenever I did make a decision, I always lacked the courage to do it. I found that happening a lot. 

   My stranger of a mother shut the door of the black SUV as quiet as she could after blowing a pathetic kiss to the driver, who I instantly hated with a rapid-fire distaste. I wasn't sure who was responsible for ruining my parent's relationship, but he was part of the equation and I hated him. There was no flowery language to describe it. It completely disgusted me how someone I thought I knew so well could do something so hideous and heinous and downright mean to someone else. 

   Never before in my life would I have thought my mom capable of something like cheating. All I wanted to know was why she wanted to do it. My father did nothing wrong. Was she looking for excitement? Was that it? Well, she would get it now.

    In the faint porchlight, I could see my mom was wearing next to nothing, clad in a simple black dress that was too short. My mom walked up the steps, carrying her stilletos in one hand and the keys to the house in another. 

  If only she knew that this night would be different from the rest. If only she knew that my father wouldn't be sleeping or be working late at the office because I had told him not to. If only she knew that I betrayed her willingly and disclosed her secrets to my dad, who was now waiting for her by the front den. 

   I closed my eyes as the black SUV pulled out of my cul-de-sac and left without another look at the wreckage it left behind. I had left my window open a slight crack to hear the words downstairs. I imagined my mother tripping on her own feet, turning up the lights, and having a heart attack when she saw my dad waiting for her, just waiting for her all this time to tell the truth. 

    I never did hear shouts and bickering as loud as theirs, and my dad, who rarely ever raised his voice at a fly, was now upright yelling. I buried my cheeks in my hands, suddenly feeling the cold temperatures of autumn on my bare legs.