Pesy One Shots

June 🌈

a/n: ik this screenshot is grainy as hell, don't @me

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June, 2016

How could I be so stupid! I think angrily, not even bothering to try and stifle my cries now that I'm finally home. Stupid stupid stupid! I always ruin everything! I-

"Perrie Pet, what's the matter?" Mam asks as she rounds the corner, wiping her hands on her apron so that she can hug me without getting flour all over.

"I, I-" I start, crying too hard to even get it out.

"Hey, hey," Mam soothes, wrapping me in her arms and running a soothing hand along my hair.

I cry into her shoulder, clutching her tight as she hums at my forehead like she does when I can't calm down. She quietly hums a song she's sung to me my whole life. All 16 years of it. I pretend to be bothered by it at this age, 'cos it's a baby song, but in reality it still brings me quite a bit of comfort.

She manages to lead me over to the couch and get me calmed a bit. My cries go much quieter but are still continuous, so she starts singing again.

"I love you forever, I like you for always..." she sings. Usually, this calms me more than anything could, but when thinking about it in the context of today, how I learned that sometimes a mother's love is conditional...

I start sobbing again.

I can tell that Mam's really worried now, but she knows I'm in too much of a state to ask any questions, so she just keeps holding me and rocking me and humming softly.

After what seems like days of crying, but is in reality probably no more than 30 minutes, I've finally cried out. The tears have become slow, and my throat is scratchy.

Mam kisses me on the head before she walks out of the room, coming back with a glass of water and the blanket gran made me on my eighth birthday. The big, pink, fluffy one.

She wraps me in the blanket and pulls me close to her, handing me the glass. I take a few sips before handing it back, and she sets it on the table in front of us. Well, on a book on the table. She'll have no watermarks on that table, emotional crisis or not.

"Can you tell me what's wrong, Petal? Or do you want to sit a while longer?" She asks, pressing another kiss to my head.

"If I tell you, you can't get mad," I say tearily, a phrase I've repeated often over the years. "At least, not right now. Please."

"I won't get mad, Perriewinkle," she assures me. "At least not right now," she finishes with a wink.

I can't help but smile. She's not the type to get mad when things are really wrong. She only gets mad if I'm being rude or if I forget to take my shoes off at the door and carry them to my room. I usually manage to get my shoes off at the door or get them to my room (still on my feet), but I rarely remember to do both.

She doesn't love that.

"I was over at Jesy's," I start, already feeling my throat close up again.

She rubs a soothing hand along my back but says nothing, allowing me to just go on.

"And we was- well, I was trying to teach her how to play the guitar, 'cos she wants to learn but she's- well, she's really bad at it 'cos she won't practice for her lessons, so I told her I would come over everyday so she would have to practice," I say, and Mam nods. She already knows this. I go over to Jesy's every day after school for about an hour to make her practice, and she helps me with my English homework. Since we moved to Essex, I've learned that I speak Geordie, not English, and grammar is really hard, turns out. Jesy just gets it, so she always helps.