Taming the Street Racer ✔️

05 | a rude awakening

I come in as quietly as possible through the front door, gently pressing it back into the lock, barely making a sound.

I'd like to finish off my long, emotionally confusing week with the workout I just enjoyed with Violet and Pey, not with an argument against my parents over why I'm coming home after my Friday-night curfew. Nothing pisses me off more than when they ignore my existence, then hang on to every wrong thing that I do as if they actually care about me.

It's been two days since Grayson and I last spoke and I've been trying in vain to scrub him from my mind. This week has been one I'd like to forget completely, with Grayson's confusing signals and the way he completely ignored me at practice today, handing the signed waiver to Violet to give to me.

Immature, that's what it is.

I drop my bag. Immediately as I cross the threshold from the foyer into the formal living room, I hear yells coming from the family room. I stop dead in my tracks, stunned by this - they never yell at each other. I scoot closer to the archway to the family room and as close to the wall as possible, keeping myself hidden from view.

Maybe I can get some dirt on them, something to use against them the next time they sit in front of me talking about my smallest mistakes - a bad grade or getting home late - while sitting on their high horses and acting like they're perfect. I light up at the thought of their expressions when I bring up their screaming matches in the middle of our house, the unforgivable words they threw at each other.

I remember the time I won Defensive Player of the Year at my banquet earlier this year and they were too busy at a charity gala to attend the award ceremony (they didn't even end up auctioning to raise money for the charity, just went to make sure people knew they were there). Or the time they gave away my dog while I was at a friend's house - the dog I'd had for three years since he was a puppy - because he kept tearing up the house and making it 'unfit' for their frequent 'elite' house guests.

Time to shatter the perfect family illusion that they've sacrificed my childhood to maintain.

I hold my breath and listen closely. It's incoherent for a few seconds before their voices rise enough for me to make out their words.

"I always knew you were a different breed of person, Diane, but this...this is a whole new low. Even for you." My dad has never sounded so furious. And loud. Even when he reprimanded me in the past, his voice always maintained that infuriatingly calm tone that somehow comes off as condescending and disappointed at the same time.

My mom's voice sounds so pleading, I'm almost convinced it isn't her. "Tom, you know what I'm going to say. It didn't mean anything. You know me, you know us."

"No, I don't know us. I haven't known us for a while. You're a liar and I've been putting up with it for far too long." My dad takes a long breath. "This is it. Nothing, no bullshit that you could possibly conjure up to justify yourself could ever change that. You make me sick."

"Tom, please. He didn't mean anything." A break in my mom's voice causes her usually confident tone to falter. "I need you. I love you."

He. He didn't mean anything. I can't believe what I'm hearing. An affair.

Hot, wet tears are bubbling in my eyes and I can't justify why. I should be happy, happy that they've cracked and finally proved what I've known all these years. But it feels like a part of me, a part that I didn't even know I cared about, is splitting down the middle.

This. This just drives home the fact that my own mother doesn't give a single shit about our family. About me or my father. I don't even know what to think of my father right now.

I drag the back of my hand across my face and hold down the pathetic sounds threatening to erupt. But a lull comes in the conversation exactly when a stray sob rips out of me and my parents fall silent.

The silence hangs thicker than ever. "...River?"

I rush toward the front door, not bothering to mask the heaviness of my footsteps or care about the ones behind me.

"River! Stop! River, I told you to fucking stop! Listen to me!" my father yells, using the same voice he wielded against my mother.

I fling open the door and, before I can think through it, I turn around to meet their tight stares. They stop in their tracks, suddenly unsure of what to do. I'm seething but all they see is the tears. I hate the fact that they probably feel bad for me, but I see pure red. I turn to my mother, not even sparing a look at my father.

"I hate you. I hate you so fucking much that it hurts and I never want to see your pathetic face ever again. You're a disgusting excuse for a mother and I wish, I wish with all my heart that I'd been born with a different mother."

I slam the door shut behind me, realizing too late that I'd left my car keys in my workout bag, dropped in the foyer in the heat of the moment. I rush down the driveway, my phone the only thing with me, not bothering to hold back the pained sobs anymore.

The door doesn't open after me. No yells or shouts are wasted on me, no parental guidance or maturity to guide me. Neither parent even pretends to care about how I'm feeling or where I'm going at this time of night. Some things never change.

I call and text both Violet and Peyton several times, barely seeing the screen through my watery eyes. My SOS messages and voicemails go unanswered for several minutes and I'm reaching the end of my neighborhood. It's pitch black outside and the streets are empty.

I push all my conflicting emotions down - the fear, pain, sadness, confusion, the fury - and do the only thing I can think of in my unstable state of mind.

I run into the darkness.