Fake My Smile

I sat up, gasping for air as water splashed over the sides of the bathtub. I closed my eyes and ran my hands over my face, pushing away my hair as best I could. I sighed as I climbed out of the bath, immediately reaching for a towel. As I wrapped my body, my gaze caught my reflection in the full-length mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door. I bit my lip and slowly let go of the towel, letting it pool around my feet as my eyes took in every little thing about my appearance.

My dark red chin length bob lay wet against my head, my natural waves already beginning to show as my hair started to dry slightly. My grey gaze travelled down my body, following the few moles that ran alongside my collar bone before taking in the fullness of my chest and then the curve of my waist and hips before dropping down the length of my legs. I looked down as I wiggled my black painted toes before crouching down and picking up my towel.

I wrapped it around me, averting my gaze from the mirror as my hand came up to fiddle with the gingerbread man charm that hung round my neck at all times. I closed my eyes once the question that had haunted me since I was eighteen flooded my mind.

Why doesn’t he want me?

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There are moments in everyone’s lives that shape what is to come. Moments that you may cherish. Sometimes moments that you regret. Sometimes these moments are out of your control. Instead they are due to the actions of those around you. Sometimes even due to the actions of someone you don’t even know.

Among these moments is often ‘the moment’. That point in your life where you can say “if that hadn’t have happened than neither would have any of the following events”. For me that moment was my parents’ divorce. It didn’t really affect me emotionally. Sure I was somewhat sad when they sat me and my twin sister down and explained what was happening but, at the age of thirteen, I could see that my parents weren’t happy.

I never viewed myself as being from a broken home.

My sister took it harder than me. From that point on becoming clingy to those who gave her attention. I guess I just took it in my stride, knowing that I could do anything to change the situation and not seeing the point in letting it change who I was. It was my parent’s life that had completely changed. Not mine. My life just had to adjust slightly.

My parents had joint custody of us and so my sister and I split our time between their two homes. I much preferred being at my dad’s house, having never really been close with my mum at all. I suppose that this factor helped the next big moment of my life. A moment that I can categorically say was down to me.

A couple of weeks before my sixteenth birthday, I made my dad’s house in Hatfield my permanent residence. I moved in with him and his girlfriend of two years, Mandy. My sister chose to stay with my mum. Four months after I moved in with my dad I found myself relocating once more. But this time overseas. My dad and Mandy decided that they wanted to move to America, more specifically California. Even more specifically to the place where Mandy had grown up in. So I moved away from my mum. I moved away from my sister. I moved away from my friends. I moved away from England and I moved to Huntingdon Beach without looking back once.

And so that was ‘the moment’ in my life. Without my parents’ divorce, I wouldn’t have moved to America. It changed the rest of my life and without it I wouldn’t have met the boy who would become my best friend, the love of my life and, ultimately, my own personal heartbreak. Without my parents’ divorce, I would never have met Zachary James Baker.