Page 53 of The Comedown

“My son hates me,” I cry, flopping on to my back, vaguely aware of Julian squeezing past my assistant to come inside the dressing room as well.

“Mom, stop.”

“Quick like a Band-Aid,” Mary mutters.

“I tried!” Holter half-shouts, half-laughs before telling me, “I don’t hate you.”

“But you think I’m embarrassing?”

“On social media, yeah.”

“How?”

“You post a lot of… You’re not always wearing a lot of clothes in your posts.”

“Those are the only part of social media I like,” Julian murmurs from the opposite wall as he leans against it, taking in the room with clearer eyes than he’s had all night.

“Gross. That’s my mom,” Holter says, making him chuckle.

“All right, can we stop with the body shaming now?” I give my son a disappointed look with the best mom-eyes I can muster from my reclined position. This body carried him for nine months, then birthed him. He usually never says stuff like this.

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s not even you, it’s…”

“It’s what? Please just tell me,” I say before shifting my attention to Mary, asking her, “Do you know what’s he talking about?”

“The fight at the mall,” Mary says, deliberately dipping her head at me.

“The one about the shoes?” He ran into a guy he knows from school at the mall and supposedly Holter spilled his drink on him, ruining the guy’s shoes. It didn’t sound like something Holter would ever do intentionally, so when I went to pick my son up from mall security, I was bracing myself for the worst. Because he was the one that got the crap kicked out of him, right? Except he wasn’t. Aside from a set of swollen knuckles, Holter didn’t have a single scratch on him. The other kid wasn’t there, so I don’t know what he looked like, only what Holter told me, which now I’m questioning was even the truth. What is the truth?

Nobody speaks until Irelynn of all people glances at Holter, telling me, “Some of the boys at Holter’s school have…expressed interest in your more revealing posts.”

“Expressed interest? What does that mean? They comment on them?”

“That and they send you DMs about them.”

Occasionally, I’ll check some of my posts’ comments myself so I can personally respond to fans, but I leave my DMs for Irelynn to filter through in case there’s something important that requires attention, otherwise I never, ever check those. Most comments are pretty draining to read as well, but DMs are usually where people shed their inhibitions entirely, and some things you just can’t unread. Or see, because as revealing as my posts may be, my DMs are full of X-rated photos that’d get the senders banned if they tried posting them publicly.

“Okay, but what does that have to do with you?”

Holter’s wounded eyes reach mine.

“The fight?” I ask quietly, and he nods. That’s really what the fight was about, the boy said something to Holter about my posts.

“I didn’t want…”

He didn’t want to give me one more thing to feel guilty about. None of my team did, that’s why they all kept it from me.

If mom-guilt was lethal, I’d be dead where I lay. Even knowing it’s not, I’m still surprised the all-consuming guilt I feel on a daily basis hasn’t killed me fifteen thousand times over already because it hurts, worse than any other pain I’ve ever endured.

“Block them all. Block them everywhere. And at the freshman meet and greet, you better point out the boys, Holter, so I can talk to their parents.”

That is my right as his mother. He shouldn’t be the one to protect me; I should be protecting him.

“What if you can’t make it?” His voice comes out small, intentionally small.

I squeeze my eyes shut, swallowing as much of the guilt as I can to promise him, “I will.”

Julian speaks up and forces a laugh to say, “Your mom’s gonna kick some ass.”