pizzaface | ✓

24.

4 YEARS AGO

"Why was Dad driving away? Mom what's going on?" The scarves were thick around Noel's neck, suffocating him slowly. Kim was sitting on the living room couch, her frame despondent and defeated.

"We aren't enough for your father. I'm not enough for your father. You're not enough for your father."

His mom wasn't making any sense, her words coming out discombobulated and drugged. Noel and his Dad had literally just went to see a baseball game and drink hit cocoa and eat hot cheesy pizza.

"Mom your not making sense, I just went out with Dad-"

"And when do you ever go out with your Dad?"

The silence was truly deafening after that statement, Noel could feel the hot tears seeping out of his eyes, his pale hands yanked the scarves off his neck, he was hot, too hot. "I am enough." Noel whispered quietly to himself yet he subconsciously wanted his mom to hear.

"Yet your father's still gone, gone to have a new family, new wife, new baby, new town, gone without even looking back and he didn't take you with him."

"B-but." Noel already knew this, he stayed up late those nights were his parents would have screaming matches till their voices were hoarse and eyes were red, Noel stumbled into phone conversations from his Dad that he knew wasn't his Mom, but he didn't want to believe it, he shut his eyes, ears, mouth, head.

"W-where is he going to live? Can I still see him?"

"Noel!" Kim's voice rose, her tone shrill and wobbly, she stood up from the living room chair staring down at Noel's thirteen year old self. "We weren't enough for him. Don't you get it! I wasn't enough, you weren't enough! You want to go after your father! Your father that drove away without even looking back! Your father that's been cheating on me for nine months now! Your father that's having a child with another woman!" Kim inhaled a large breath, her small hands were shaking, the ponytail on her head pulled so tight it gave her a shrewd appearance. She looked straight at Noel in the darkness of their old living room, her voice severely tainted with her own misery and pain. "You can go, you can go find him. I can give you his number, I can find out where he's moving too." Kim's voice noticeably broke, the strangled noise eliciting an unwarranted chill throughout Noel's body. "But that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't want you."

Noel's mom then broke into a series of uncontrollable wailing, Noel could never forget the bright beetroot red that engulfed her petite frame, the never ending flow of tears that she tried to catch into her tired hands but instead lay in an uncalculated mess, Noel couldn't forget his lack of response to the situation. He had subtly slid off from the couch and slammed the door into his room, the dark of the night suddenly becoming more painfully aware.

The moon cast an ominous shadow in his sombre features, a new crass emotion creeping up into his chest, if it was a color it'd be plain black, murky and slimy, the type of substance that's impossible to get rid off, if Noel could give it a name he'd call it unwanted, but he refused to do so, even though he already knew.

That morning his room was cast in a bright golden glow, the sun shining and smirking at Noel's crumpled up frame. He had stalked immediately to his old ornate mirror (now smashed and tucked to the back of his wardrobe) and peered warily at his reflection. What greeted him was a huge grotesque pimple, filled to the brim with pus and resting ever so casually on his forehead, it was so unlike any other pimple he had gotten before, for the main fact that it hurt, it hurt so bad that he fell back onto his bed and began to cry again, Noel didn't know back then, he didn't know that was only the beginning, yet he lay there crying until no more tears could leak from his eyes and the rays from the scathing sun burnt red on his body.

You weren't enough.