Games of Power and Prowess

Chapter 23: She Loves Me

As soon as I got home, my mum practically pulled me inside the house without saying so much as a word to me. She sat me down on the couch and here is where I've been as she walked into the kitchen, returning with a glass of whiskey in her hand.

"What the hell were you thinking dating the principal of your school? Did you think it would do something for your grades? You'd get to graduate without even trying?" She asks question after question without leaving me any time to respond. She pauses to take a sip of her liquor and I speak up.

"That's not what happened. I've been working really hard this year, you'd know that if you were actually home for more than three days at a time." I mumble the last part to myself so she doesn't hear my snarky comment.

"Allison. You had to have known that I would've found out about your little affair soon enough, right? I didn't raise an imbecile." She paces across the floor and places her glass on the coffee table, kneeling in front of me and looking into my eyes as if she'd find an answer there.

"Mum, please let me explain." I plead with her, knowing that she'd never understand if all she did was speak at me about this instead of with me.

"Let me speak, child." She stands again and places the palm of her head on her forehead as if I've given her a horrible migraine. Her footsteps come lightly but they're the only sound in the room as she collects her thoughts. I watch her feet instead of her face because I figure I'd get dizzy if I watched her pace back and forth through the living room.

She looks at the glass on the table and drinks from it as if she's been walking through the desert for years and this is her first sip of water. I haven't seen my mum drink this intensely since, well, you know. It pains me to think that I am causing her as much distress as my dad did when he left us.

"I tried to be supportive when you told me you were dating a woman ten years older than you. The way your face lit up when you spoke about her made me realise that maybe you knew what you were doing. I was even a little relieved when you told me it was someone my little sister loved so dearly." She pauses, looking down at my face where the tears have finally dried. "But this? This crosses a line." Her free finger points to the ground as if my relationship were down there and she was pointing it out. I notice that her hand is shaking, another thing that happens when she gets upset. It is quiet for a long time so I decide to finally make my argument.

"Mum, I really want you to hear me when I say this." I tell her, grasping her attention. The whiskey finds itself back on the coffee table with the satisfying sound of glass clinking against glass. "Natalie loves me." My mum scoffs and turns her body away from me with her hands on her hips. "Listen to me! God, you want to have a conversation about this but it seems like all you want to do is push your only daughter out of your life." I yell at her with my own anger coming into the argument. Finally, my mum meets my gaze and actually urges me to continue. "She loves me and I love her. What does her occupation have to do with anything? I'm legal and graduating in, like, two months. She's just another woman that I could've easily met another way."

"Ally, sweetie." She comes closer to me, attempting to touch my cheek but I brush her hand away from my face. "Don't you see? I told you when you first admitted to your relationship with her that you have to be careful of that kind of power dynamic. She could prevent you from graduating just to keep you in school with her. She could threaten your grades to make you do things with her. You're still barely an adult, still vulnerable to manipulation. She could be forcing you to make love with her and you wouldn't even realise it isn't consensual." Something in my mum's voice changes throughout her speaking and it sounds like she's in pain just at the thought of me getting manipulated. "The worst part is that you wouldn't even know." She whispers, kneeling in front of me with her hands on my knees as she looks into my eyes.