“Fuck,” Cassie groaned. “Okay. Then what happened.”
Luis forced a rough breath. “I came in and she’d tore the apartment apart. Like, everything open, drawers dumped.”
“What?”Cassie looked horrified.
“She said–she thought something had happened to me. Because I hadn’t been answering her calls. But I think she was just looking through my stuff,” Luis said. He’d come to terms with that moping in bed. She hadn’t been concerned, she’d been snooping. Looking for evidence.
“Fuck, dude.”
“I kinda lost it.” Luis wasn’t prone to anger, but he remembered it overcoming him when he’d seen the guitar in her hand. “She–she had my guitar and I thought–I thought she was going to smash it.”
“She doesn’t know you still play, does she?” Cassie asked.
“No. Or she didn’t. I guess she does now.” Not that it mattered if she was no longer speaking to him.
“This is so fucked,” Cassie said. Her face was pinched with concern.
His throat felt so sticky. The next part required him to confess to what he hadn’t been telling her for weeks. “So I, uh, have kind of been not telling you something for a… while now.”
Instead of anger though, Cassie only looked more worried. “Okay. Hey, whatever it is, it’s okay.”
She was better than Luis deserved.
“So, um. I might have maybe been letting Julien and Karim bite me. As treatment. And it’s been going good. Really good. But when I came home last night, I might have had a bite mark on my neck.”
There was a loaded pause.
“Ho-ly shit,”Cassie said with feeling. “Are you serious? You–! Damn Luis, I didn’t know you had it in you. Wow. Okay. So yeah, I see why you would be holding that tight to the chest. For treatment, and not anything more…?” Cassie probed.
“Uh.”
She stared at him. “Luis.”
“I–I can’t talk about that right now,” Luis said. “The point is, I came home, I had a bite, Mom saw it.”
“Shit,”Cassie said. “Well, you’re still alive,” she joked.
“She did try to call the police,” Luis said.
“What? Why?” Cassie was so close to the screen now, staring.
Then the rest was spilling out. Luis told her everything except the part where she’d hit him. His room was hopefully too dark for her to see that.
Cassie grew more and more horrified the longer he talked. “Your mom is a bad person,” she said when he’d finished. “AndI know I’ve said this before, but I’ve never meant it more. God, can’t she just fucking let you live? You’re over thirty! An adult!”
Luis shrugged, at a loss.
“She broke into your apartment, trashed your stuff and then threatened you with cops. That’s so fucked up and abusive.”
“She… was upset,” Luis said, but he didn’t know why he was defending her. “I forgot I had the mark on me, and I should’ve–”
Cassie gave him a look so cold it stopped his words. “Luis, I love you so much, but the stuff your mom does isnot okay.You are just trying to live your life. She constantly,constantlyberates you and guilts you to keep you at her beck and call. You remember how long I had to beg and plead with you before you finally felt like you could move out? I bet she brings it up all the time that you don’t live there anymore, as if you did it to personally hurt her.”
There was a lump in his throat.
“Luis. Look at me.” He did his best to face the screen. “You are never going to be able to be who she wants you to be. If it weren’t the vampire thing, it would be the gay thing. If it weren’t the gay thing, it would be about your music. At the end of the day, she doesn’t want you to beyou. And that’s fucked up, because you’re great! Like the best guy I’ve ever known. And I don’t know Julien or Karim, but I bet they would agree with me.”
Luis huffed a wet laugh. “I just didn’t want—I didn’t want it to be like that with her,” he confessed. “I know she’s… homophobic,” Luis cringed, “I know she—she’s bigoted in a lot of ways. I shouldn’t give a fuck what she thinks. I shouldn’t even give a fuck about her. I hate that I do. I hate that I care. That I stillfucking care.”
