“That incident, that series of incidents, with the third letter and the Superintendent and the charges thatstillmight be brought against me…” She laughs, shaking her head, but there’s no humor in it. “It brought all that stuff up with Jake, I think. He held power over me, and I realized that you also hold power over me. And I hadn’t addressed it before, and I shoved it down, and it came out… the way it did. I’m sorry about that again.”
It takes everything in me to keep my mouth shut, but inside I am raging to prove that I am nothing like that asshole. But I don’t have to, thankfully.
“When I say you hold power over me, I don’t think it’s like… intentionally or maliciously. But it’s just because of the nature of our relationship. You are literally my boss. Everything lies in your hands.”
I blow out a breath, sitting back on the couch.
“But there’s something you did that I wasn’t okay with. It was my fault for not communicating that I felt this way with you, but…” I know what she’s going to say, and it makes me want to claw my eyes out. “…you went ahead and fixed everything, anyway. You wanted to fix this horrible thing, but you ended upcontrollingthe situation instead, so that it suited your needs, with no regard for my feelings or opinions or choices, or whatever. And I know you did it because you…” she falters here, “but I can’t…” Her voice breaks here.
I become very, very still, the blood pounding in my ears.
She takes a long, measured breath. “Oliver, I need to learn to make my own choices. Not have them made for me. I need to learn to be my own rock. But I can’t…”
I subconsciously take this moment to start mapping every inch of her face, her body. The individual strands of her hair. The freckles across her face. The slope of her nose. The curve of her waist.
“I can’t do that while you’re my boss. I can’t be with you while you’re my boss. I just… can’t,” she says, tears rolling down the soft angles of her cheeks.
The urge to fix this, to fight back, is all-consuming. But I run through what she’s said, and somehow, I manage to swallow it down.
I feel something through the pain currently crushing my chest, through the self-loathing currently coursing through my body, but I don’t know what it is, can’t identify it right now.
I swallow, picking up her hand, running my fingers across the soft skin of her palms. I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss every single finger. “Okay,” I manage.
We spend another minute looking at one another, eyes damp and roaming. “Okay,” I say again, after I can’t bear it anymore. I nod, stand up, and leave without looking back.
I identify the feeling as I walk down her stoop. It’s pride. I’m proud of her.
I call my mother, of all people.
“Hi,anak,” she says, picking up on the first ring.
“Ma, do you remember how I got the PS 2 job?” I ask.
She scoffs. “You mean that time you steamrolled all of us during your father’s cancer? Of course, I remember how you got that job.”
My heart drops. “What?”
“You left the job that you loved because you thought we needed you to.”
“Of course you needed me to. Dad had cancer, for fuck’s sake?—”
“LANGUAGE, Oliver. And no, we did not need you to. But of course you didn’t know that. You never asked us!”
Fuck. I run my hands through my hair. “But?—”
“We didn’t need you to move closer to us to take him to his appointments. I was fine taking him. Your sisters were fine taking him. We could’ve come up with a schedule. But instead, you just did it, you brushed what we wanted aside and steamrolled us, because you thought it was the right thing to do. You felt out of control, so you needed to control the situation, so it was okay foryou.”
I digest this. The parallels are astounding. I’m such a dick.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” I tell her.
“I know.”
“I’ve always done this,” I say, and I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question.
“From the womb,” she says, answering it as a question.
I sigh. “I fucked up.”
