I couldn’t understand why I’d hesitated for so long. Nothing I ever did would change their minds. Nothing I said would makemy parents or my brother see me for the person I was. What was the point in letting them get to me?
“So, we gonna talk about that car in your driveway?”
I jumped half a foot when Kaleo appeared, grinning like a damn loon. “It’s after midnight.”
“And here you are with a sex guest upstairs, waxing your fucking boards,” Kaleo pointed out.
I fought the urge to throw the wax lump at him, but I was running low, and the good shit was expensive. “My guest,” I said, refusing to add sex, “is asleep. And I’m in the middle of a crisis, so if you don’t mind…”
“Was he an asshole about your leg? Because if he made you feel like shit, brah, I’ll go up there right now and?—”
“No,” I interrupted quickly. “No. It’s Creek, so it would be a real dick move if he had.”
Kaleo’s face fell in surprise when he heard who it was. “Oh, damn. So what’s got your panties all twisted, then?”
“Family,” I said.
Kaleo’s face darkened. He knew too well what they were like. He’d been subjected to their bullshit when he visited me in the hospital. And he’d had the misfortune of answering my phone for me a couple of times. “What now?”
“I filtered my mom’s emails to a secret folder so I didn’t have to read them,” I confessed. “I think she noticed because she had my brother call me the other afternoon.”
“Let me guess—it didn’t go well?” His tone dripped with sarcasm.
“Look, I know it was ridiculous of me to even answer the damn call. I just…” I blew out a puff of air, then stood and put my board back up on the hooks. “There’s this, like, kid inside me that wants his mom and dad to give a shit, you know? And I keep hoping that they’ll have some come-to-Jesus moment and realize they’ve been treating me like crap my whole life.”
“The real Jesus wouldn’t give those fuckers the time of day,” Kaleo said, leaning against the garage door. “And you and I both know you don’t need your folks. You’ve been good on your own since you were eighteen.”
It was true, but that knowledge also hurt worse than having them be awful to me. Knowing I’d outgrown them as a teenager and that the next step—the logical step—was to just end it for good was almost too much. I wasn’t good with this kind of change.
This kind of change hurt too much.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to do it.”
He walked over and took me by the shoulders. “Yeah, you will. Gotta walk before you can run, brah. You know this. I know this. I watched you flailing like a newborn baby seal your first time out on the water. Then you were winning fucking medals. Then life took a shit on you, and you had to start over, but here you are. You’re catching waves.”
“And falling on my face.”
“But not forever. Fall on your face again. You’ve got people in your life who are there to help you up.”
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel the comfort of his hands on me and the knowledge that I had people in my life who would be around for all the rough parts. That they’d be patient while my jagged edges softened.
“Go upstairs to your nice, cuddly, one-legged sex guest and get a few orgasms and some sleep.”
I flushed, but it wasn’t the worst idea in the world. In fact, it was one of the better ones I’d heard in a while. There was just one more thing I had to do before I could crawl back into Creek’s arms, and it was really, really going to suck.
I managed to close everything up and sneak back upstairs without waking Creek. I peeked in on him, and he was starfished on the bed with his mouth open, his snoring a little louder this time. I watched him for a moment, knowing I could do this because I had a soft place to land if I fell too hard.
Then I turned and went into my office and carefully lowered myself into my chair. I took my leg off first. My family would never know, but it felt empowering to do this in the body that was mine with no added parts. I touched the end of my stump and felt all the space that was missing, but I also felt like all the hollow parts inside me that were so, so incredibly full.
I wasn’t broken.
I was just me.
My fingers flew over the keyboard, and I let myself answer my parents in a stream of consciousness. It probably only half made sense, but the sentences that mattered were clear as day at the bottom:And after I send this, I’m going to block you on my email and my phone. There’s nothing we have left to offer each other. My life is my life and I’m happy. And I wish you all the best.
My chest felt like it was going to burst, and there was no ignoring the heat in my eyes the moment I hit Send. Panic threatened to engulf me. I wasn’t sure I could do this. I wasn’t sure I could just…end it. But why let them emotionally torture me when I had so much more?
With a few clicks of my mouse, their emails were blocked.
