“I, uh…” My head drops in shame, unable to look my mom in the eye as I confess to her. I can’t see those cobalt eyes, the ones my own are modeled after, lose the light they hold for me. Or watch her face, slightly softer as she gets closer and closer to middle-aged, wrinkle and frown in disappointment. I decide the faster this goes, the better. One hand scratches at the back of my neck in discomfort as I mumble the next words as quickly as I can get them out. “I made a move on Gem.”
Her entire posture changes at once, where she was leaned in close to me, full of concern, she plops back against the back of her dining room chair in an instant, slim arms dropping to her lap with a loud slapping noise.
“Finally! Fucking. Finally.” She lets out a loud laugh and brings her arms up in triumph, still slumped back in her chair, like she’s celebrating after some exhausting challenge. Her loose, dark blue shirt lifts with the movement, the sleeves dropping down toward her elbows as she pumps both fists in the air, delicate gold bracelets dangling and jangling as she does. The entire scene is…bizarre.
My head darts up instantly, shocked into disbelief by her response. Thelastthing I expected from her. Jaw dropped open, I stare at her, uncertain of how to process this.
“Oh, shut your fly trap. Don’t look at me like that,” she scolds, waving a hand at me.
Mouth stuttering, no sound comes out as I try to come to terms with the look ofreliefon her face. Finally, a single word comes to me. “Mom!” It might be a hiss, might be a more of a plea. The only other sound in her dining room is the quiet tick-tick-tick of the oversized farmhouse clock on the wall, centered above the long, nearly black, wooden dining table.
I expected her to feel let down by me not being the man she raised, for a heavy dose of chastising, some brutal life advice, and most likely, a slap upside the head.
Laughter? Relief?Joy? Not on my list.
“Honestly? I thought you were gonna tell me that mood you been in lately got your ass fired and put on a blacklist and you need your daddy to get you a job at the plant.”
I gulp at the thought, not having considered that as a possibility, and make a mental note to call my agent first thing tomorrow and make sure I’m still on the right people’s “good lists.” We don’t do fruit baskets in Hollywood, but I might be sending out much larger tokens of my gratitude to my current bosses here shortly. Ihavebeen kind of a prick to a lot of people lately. And I’m self-aware enough to admit that I donothave the strength of mind or character to work a blue-collar job.
My eyes shut of their own accord, soaking in the embarrassment of the moment, before I have to face telling her the rest of the story. Before I can open them again, my head pops slightly to the side with the sting of a soft slap only a mom can lovingly deliver.
“What the fuck, Mom?”
“That’s for waiting until she had a boyfriend to do it.”
I nod my head and hang it down, allowing the shame to seep in. Of course she knows that part, too.
“But your daddy owes me a new bag.”
“You fuckingbeton me?” The outrage chases just about every other emotion out of my consciousness.
Her eyes shine with a warmth reserved for someone who loves you absolutely unconditionally, even as she tsks me. “Of course we bet on you, sweetheart. You’re a fool where that girl is concerned, and we all knew this was coming. He just didn’t think it would take this long. I know you better, though.”
My mouthandmy eyes pop open wide as fucking possible at that, my head doing this little wiggle full of attitude and disbelief, demanding she explain herself.
“Oh, stop.” She waves her hand at me again. “That girl has been in love with you since you two were barely teenagers. It was only a matter of time before you caught on to what was right under your nose. You call her Gem, sugar. If you two got married and she took your name, she would be Gem Stone.” My mouth drops at the realization, and as cheesy as it is, it does feel like some sort of proof we were inevitable. “You two were always meant to be. If you weren’t so full of yourself these past couple of years…” she mutters, trailing off, looking around the room.
While the insult settles in, finding somewhere deep and dark to start spreading within me, she stands up, darts off, and comes back a second later with a plate of cornbread muffins and a glass of water for me, then slides the butter dish on the table closer to me and nudges her chin at me to dig in.
“We all knew Hollywood was a dangerous choice for you, sugar. But between your daddy and me, and that girl at your side, we’ve all been able to keep you pretty grounded.” My mouth works furiously to devour the comfort food, not delicious only from nostalgia, this shit is actually bomb. “It was hairythere for a while. Those years you tried to distance yourself from us. Got too cool for a while.”
I stop chewing, a few of the crumbles in my mouth falling free as the realization that my actions over the years hurt my parents, too—the ones who’ve done everything to help me live my dream, given it all up for me—is almost too much to bear. I’m starting to see a pattern here, and I don’t like it.
Her hand comes out and pats me on the knee reassuringly. “Oh, don’t beat yourself up about it now. We’ll be doing plenty of that over this shitshow with Gemma.” She winks at me, and I groan in distress. Of course she’s not going to make this easy on me, tell me I did the right thing and let me go. I feel a mom speech of epic proportions brewing. She probably brought the cornbread out to trap me here, glue my mouth shut for long enough for her maternal wisdom to sink in before I could bolt out the door at her making me face my own fuck-ups and the demons that caused them. Sure enough, she starts in on me.
“But you had a few years there where you got a little big for your britches, you were off with all those fancy folks in your industry, all those beautiful women, while that young lady just stood by and waited for when you’d need her again.”
An image hits me of Gemma, off to the sidelines, as I introduced her to a flurry of women over the span of a year or two, ever patient with me, always there when I needed her. The pain of it almost doubles me over. She really has been there for me every step of my fucking way. And thefirsttime she did something without me—made some strides in her life that didn’t revolve around my selfish ass, I fucking threw a Molotov cocktail into it.
My mom must see my wince because she reaches out to pat my face gently.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning. Tell me what you did, and we’ll work out how you’re gonna fix it.”
I told my momeverything.I didn’t leave a single dirty, hairy detail out.
The shame in her face, the way it fell at some of those bits… I’ve never been less proud of myself than I was seeing her son through her eyes tonight. The disappointment in them. She raised me better, and even though she’s made it clear over the years she knows I can be “a bit of a scoundrel”—her words, not mine (obviously)—it’s never been more apparent that she expected better of me. I can’t recall a time I’ve earned honest-to-Godjudgmentfrom her, and the feeling of it is one I’ll do just about anything to avoid repeating.
When the tears started to fall—mine, not hers—hot, fat, leaving trails down my cheeks, she stayed silent, letting me get out all of it, every detail that I regretted, everything that made me embarrassed to be seen as her son.
