by Mj Fields
“Dad, I’m almost—”
“I don’t care if you’re fifty-seven, if—”
“Zandor,” Mom cuts him off, which is, again, rare in situations like this, “she’s telling us now. And she has never flat-out lied to us when she’s asked a question.” She looks at me. “She tells us when she feels she can.”
“Or when I’m forced to, like now. And if you say a word to Zoey, who definitely wasn’t okay with it and certainly rides me about it, I won’t. They don’t know I’m a shitshow, and I’d prefer they just think I’m a recluse over that.”
“Have you told your therapist?” he asks.
“No way in hell. She’s an idiot.” Because even she can’t see what I am.
“Then she’s done, and you start seeing Marley, Brisa’s therapist, tomorrow.”
“Brisa is—”
“Shit.” Dad runs his hand through his already worried hair.
“Oh, hell no. She knows I’m crazy. Only fair—”
“You asked us not to tell anyone about the—” Mom stops and shakes her head. She can’t even say the psych ward, even though she was there when Dad basically pumped my stomach, via a hand down my throat, and freaked out, telling them to put me in one so I didn’t die.
“She feels everything deeply, and it’s caused her some issues.”
“Empath.” I scoot back against the head of the bed and lean against it. “Of course she’d have an issue that was enduring.”
Dad arches a brow. “Wasn’t enduring when she lost a bunch of weight and we thought she was anorexic. Isn’t enduring when she can’t sleep or focus because she’s worried about—”
“Me.”
“Not just you, Tris. Everyone.”
God, I wish I could scream at them, make them see that she’s not the only one who worries about others, so do I. Then I name my monsters and label myself, and they continue being miserable, because I am.
“After tomorrow’s show, I swear I will take them. And about four days before you have to swear you won’t force me until after RFC. I need to be able to feel when I’m up there.”
“You also need to sleep, Tris, and you need to do it without getting drunk and having someone carrying you back to the room.”
“And I’ll figure it out.”
I see the doubt in his eyes. Can’t blame him.
“When you and Mom go back to the States for Brisa and Amias’s last few weeks of school, and Momma Joe is here, I’ll be fine. I swear it.”
“We can stay.”
“No, you freaking can’t. They need you, too.”
“You’ll start talking with Marley then, immediately,” Dad says sternly.
“Three days a week, if necessary,” I agree because, if I don’t, I’m fucking things up worse than I already have for them.
The hardest part of this “issue” that I have is the guilt that drags me back three steps for every one I take forward.
“Momma Joe is getting older, Tris, and—”
“Dad, I’m not suicidal, and I’ve never been disrespectful to her. The only reason you even see this”—I wave my hand in front of me—“is because I had an issue with Marcello. I’m over him. This new life has gotten me over him. No part of me wants anything to do with him.” Except to make him hurt, like he did me.
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you kiss boys in hopes it hurts him.”
Thanks for blowing my spot, Mom, I think.
I shrug. “He screwed my cousins to hurt me, because when I got depressed after the move, I withdrew, and he knows me. He knows that’s what I have always done.”
He knows me so well that, sometimes, when I went to hide, he’d already be waiting in the place he thought I’d go. And he always had fruit snacks and picked out all the red ones because he knew I didn’t like them.
“We talked to Valentina.”
“Of course you did,” I huff.
“You can get upset, Tris, but if it were your cousin’s, Truth, kids, you’d do the same.”
I say nothing, because I hope I would, yet fuck those two twats. I hope they get herpes or something as equally as nasty.
“The girls played along with Marc’s plan to hurt you because, apparently, they felt like you abandoned them all because they weren’t ‘true crew’.”
I laugh. “Is that so? Do you think they’d tell their parents about the incestuous ménage they are involved in or being lying little hobags?”
Mom takes my hand. “I don’t think they lied to their mother, Tris.”
I pull my hand away. “See? No matter how honest I am—”
“Francesca has a girlfriend,” Dad says.
“Yeah, her freaking sister.”
Mom shakes her head. “A girl at the Seashore, Meghan.”
“Francesca thought it would be easier to tell her parents that she and Antoinette were with Marc than tell her she likes girls.”
“Or maybe it’s easier to tell them she likes girls than admit she is an incestuous hobag. I know I’d rather go down on a girl than admit I was an incestuous hobag.”
“They didn’t tell her, Tris. It came out in therapy.” Mom delivers the news like it’s going to change my mind about them.
“PTSD from the roses?” I shrug.
She looks down.
“If that’s true, awesome. It doesn’t change the fact that they are hobags, and traitorous ones, at that.”
She pushes my hair away from my face. “We all make mistakes, Tris.”
“You ever hear the phrase, screw me once, shame on you; screw me twice, shame on me?”
She smiles sadly.
“Neither them, nor Marc, will ever get the chance to pile any more shame on me. So, it will remain; shame on them.”
Dad looks at Mom. “Not gonna disagree with her on this. It was wrong.”
“Zandor, how is that helping her heal?”
“I think she’s doing okay.” He now sits back against the headboard. “I mean, aside from the drinking and drugs.”
“I promise not to do it again, if you promise to get back to Jersey for Brisa and My.”
He looks out of the corner of his eye at me skeptically.
“Dad, I have Momma Joe, Ranger, and Tricks, all one hundred percent on your side.”
“And Xavier and Taelyn.” Mom moves to my other side.
“Maybe Taelyn, but Uncle X”—I hold up my pinky—“wrapped.”
“Mom and I think one of us should stay.”
“No,” I say firmly. “And you and Mom need to realize I’m ready to date, so stop trying to—”
“Maybe you should talk to Marley first,” Mom interrupts me.
“Trust me; I know.”
“Because Matteo Arias’s lips didn’t taste like a rubber chicken?”
“Oh my God, of course you know his full name,” I groan.
“You bet your behind I do. And seriously, what’s the rubber chicken thing even mean?”
I don’t want him to know how crazy I actually am, so I tell him the partial truth. “They felt warm and real. No one has made me feel that way, not since …” I shake my head. “No, he doesn’t get to share the same space. And you—”
“As your father, that’s my duty. I’ve done the same with Brisa.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “But not Amias.”
“We know Amias wouldn’t treat a woman disrespectfully. And we know we’ll make damn sure you never will be again.”
Maybe not now, and not to a girl’s face, but he’s said some crap, I think.
“Matteo hasn’t been anything but respectful.”
“Matteo is a twenty-five-year-old man whose family’s wealth is generations deep.”
“So is ours,” I defend him, even though he ghosted me, or I think he did. I shut off my phone when notifications began popping up from the pictures that I was tagged in online after the kiss.
“Ours came late in life. We lived struggles, and we’ve made sure you all never took it for granted, even when our
friends didn’t do the same.”
By friends, he means Melyssa and Sabato, Marcello’s parents. Marc and his sister, Torrance, have never tried to hide that they are privileged.
“He’s a famous sculptor and painter, Tris, and he disappears for months at a time and reappears with a new woman on his arm, and sometimes, apparently, men.”
“So?” I cross my arms. “I’ve kissed girls, too.”
“Tris,” Mom sighs. “We don’t want you to get hurt again.”
I whip my head around and look at her. “No one, and I mean no one, will ever get deep enough to do that to me, not ever again.”
“Sweetheart, you may think that, but hearts”—he pauses—“they break easily.”
When I yawn, Dad pushes his arm behind me and holds me while Mom rubs feather-soft circles on my back in a slow, steady rhythm.
“You can’t drink any more, Tris. Doesn’t matter if it’s legal here or not. Not when you blacked out in Paris, and not when you drink three glasses of wine and get belligerent with a bartender here.”
“He was a dick,” I tell him.
“When we figure out why you get messed up so quickly, then we reassess. Until then, no drinking.”
“Fine.” I yawn again. “As long as you and Mom promise to go back home for Brisa and My, after this show, I’ll stay off the sauce.”
“And after the show, we figure out your meds until we get home and can see what else we can put you on.”
WiZink Center
Madrid, Spain
Tris
“It was sweet of them to come again.” Mom hands me a bottle of water between saying goodbye to Matteo’s nieces and the next group of VIPs.
Would have been sweeter if their hot uncle came and not their father, who looks at me like I wish his brother would, is what I would like to say, even though he ghosted me days ago. Obviously, that’s bitchy and, of course, I loved seeing them.
“Do you think they’ll be in Italy?” she asks as she peels back the skin from the banana that she’s probably going to try to physically feed me, and I will let her, because I need a break from them, from guilt and shame, and she needs this in order to head back to Jersey without me.
I shrug as I lean over and take a bite before she has a chance to put it in my face.
Her eyes light up, as I knew they would. She’s so simple, and not in a bad way. I wish I could be more like her. I wish that little things could make me happy.
After I swallow the bite and take a drink of water, I answer, “I hope so. It’s nice to see familiar faces in the audience that don’t know all the bad things about me.”
Her face falls.
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. It’s just … you know.”
“I do know. But please remember you’re not the first woman, nor the last, who will have to make that decision.”
I snort. “Then you better keep Dad tied up, because he may singlehandedly try to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
“He’s not upset about a woman’s right to choose, Tris; he’s upset about the law that allows children to go through it alone.”
“Yeah, because I could have said, ‘Hey, Dad, you wanna go grab an ice cream milkshake and an ab—'”
“He would have surprised you. However”—she smiles faintly—“I’d be a better choice.”
“Well, I’m all shot up now, so no need to schedule anything anytime soon.”
“Tris,” she says sadly, and I take a bite and smile big, squishing the banana through my teeth to make her laugh.
She does, but I see a faint sign of tears in her eyes and realize that may be the first time I have really wanted to make her feel … better.
Take that, monsters!
“There’s my little super star,” comes from behind me.
“She’s here?” I ask Mom.
She nods.
“Which means you and Dad really are going back? You trust me?”
She swallows hard and gives me an unconvincing smile.
“Well, at least you’re trying, huh?” I make a joke out of it. Otherwise, she won’t leave.
After giving Momma Joe a kiss on each cheek, Dad walks over and wraps his arm around Mom’s shoulders.
“Well, Mrs. Steel, are you ready to head across the pond?”
She looks shocked. She didn’t know.
“Zandor,” she whispers, shaking her head.
“We have two seniors who need us and a rock star who needs some R&R before her biggest show yet.”
He wraps his other arm around me, but before he can say anything, I do.
“I promise.”
“You sure Uncle Xavier isn’t going to be upset that I’m ducking out?”
“I’m still his momma.” She waves her hand to the door of the SUV being held open by her driver.
I slide in, even though it feels weird leaving with a line still waiting to meet me.
“And you look tired.”
Twenty minutes after I took the pills that I promised my parents I would take after the show, I started fading. That is what it feels like.
As she slides in, I tell her, “It’s the pills.”
“I understand, and my boys don’t know this, but after your grandfather’s death, I took an antidepressant as a precautionary so that they didn’t see me upset. I lasted a week before I realized the boys were moments away from taking over, and I’d be losing control.”
“Did you have trouble sleeping when you stopped?”
“Between you and me, yes, but the obsessive crying was exhausting, and then I would eventually pass out. I was outnumbered. I had to hide it.” She grabs my hand. “So, bella regazza, for the next few days, you need to remember you are not. You want to cry, then you do it. Sleep will come much easier after that than worrying.”
“I don’t love him anymore,” I say, looking out the window and wondering where we are going.
“Ah, I see. But the real question you need to answer, but only to yourself, is: do you love him any less?”
I look back at her, confused.
“Has the pain dulled? The rage begun to evaporate?”
When I don’t say anything, she laughs.
“Well, my dear, if you have to think about it, then I say it has.”
“That’s the problem, Momma Joe, when I do think about it, it brings it all back. I just wish I could forget.”
“Then we won’t speak of it again, unless of course you want to. But, right now, I’m famished, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve gorged on patatas bravas and then stuffed myself with authentic paella until I could barely move. I’d still have to get churros to go, of course. And since Thomas isn’t here, I can eat them in bed.”
“I could eat.” Even though I’m not hungry at all.
“Perfect, bella regazza, perfect.” She pats my hand. “How about you get changed into some street clothes so I don’t have to fight off your fans with my new bag?”
“I think I’ve proven I’m the fighter in this family,” I half-joke as I unzip the duffle that Dad clearly packed for me, because one of his handwritten notes is laying on top of the pile.
“That you are,” she says with pride. At least, I think it’s pride in her voice.
I change quickly, which I have learned to do just off stage, and settle back in my seat.
After a few moments of silence, I know the right thing to do is to say something, but all I keep thinking about is that maybe Brisa and My will stop messaging me every morning and every night when Mom and Dad get home, and they will be able to enjoy what’s left of their senior year, even if it is at Suckshore Academy.
I also wonder if Brisa sits with Torrance Effisto, Fawn and Dramida O’Donnell, or the ho twins at lunch, or if they attend parties pushed out on the Seashore Sound app. I already know Amias and Marc are on the same baseball team; that’s unavoidable. I also take comfort in the fact that, even though he always denied it, Marc is seriously jealous of Amias’s raw talent and athletic ability, whereas he has to
bust his ass to keep up.
“We’re here,” Momma Joe interrupts my downward spiral into the darkness, a place those pills always take me, a place where hatred seeps into my pores and doesn’t allow a reprieve.
“Awesome,” I say with enough mustered enthusiasm that I actually sound convincing.
Sliding out of the vehicle, I make a point to tell her, “I may fall asleep after I eat. I’m exhausted.”
“Nothing beats a good food coma, nothing.”
I walk behind her toward a restaurant that has me looking down at my torn black jeans and clingy, heather gray, off-the-shoulder top, and realize I’m extremely underdressed for the restaurant I’m walking into.
Great.
We eat, and we eat like Steels eat together—with gusto and absolutely no regard for calorie consumption. The only thing different about this meal is there aren’t twenty-plus people surrounding us, and there is no wine.
“You can drink, Momma Joe; I don’t have a problem.”
I see her eyebrow start to arch and find it amusing when she fights her own nature—to say what she is thinking—and brings it right back down.
“Fine.” I laugh out, because the whole eyebrow thing is seriously amusing. “I use it like we’re using food tonight, because nothing is better than a good food coma,” I mimic her. “Nothing.”
She sits back as she dabs the napkin on her lips, pretending to wipe a crumb when she’s actually trying to hide a laugh.
“I’m still me, even though I self-medicated twice in the past several months.”
Now her eyebrow does go up as she drops the napkin on her lap. “Just twice?”
“Fine, and the one time I did coke to—”
“You what?” She gasps
“Well, I guess Dad doesn’t tell you everything then, huh?”
“Apparently not,” she huffs. “Explain.”
“The pills make me tired and sick to my stomach. I drank too many energy drinks before a show to fight it, and it made me sick. So, I thought I could use a bump.”
“A bump?”
“It’s what they call—”
“I’m aware of what they call things. You, bella regazza, are not they. You are Steel, and you are mine. You are not they. So, continue and remember who I am to you. You tell me the truth, always. There is no judgment, but there may be a solution.”
