Just Another Lovesick Boy

I never thought about lying much. I thought it was rather pointless to lie. It only landed me in more trouble than telling the truth would. And one thing I could never lie about was my love for my mother. She had raised me alone for eleven years and contributed into making me who I was. No matter how I acted, my mother was always there for me, just continuously giving away her love to me. Jocelyn Henrietta Dawson was my own personal Giving Tree. Everything that I was could be given thanks to my angel, my mother.

My mom was that classy kind of lady. We did not live in the best house and we did not have the best things, but my mom tried her hardest to make sure we kept up some sort of elegance inside the house. My mom was raised in a high class family and had the nicest things, so I could never understand why she settled with Jack. But even after what he did to us, my mom proved that she could keep class in her nature. Our rooms always looked straight out of a magazine, with the exception of my bedroom. Though our rooms sometimes looked stiff and fake, it was home. It was what I was used to and I found comfort in my mom’s spur-of-the-moment interior designing phases.

I walked in through the front door to find my mother sitting on the gray couch as she worked on a crossword puzzle. I smiled at her as I sat down next her after tossing my folder on the coffee table in front of us. I leaned my head on her shoulder before she wrinkled her nose and shuffled away from me.

“You’re hot, go away,” she mumbled as she filled in the squares.

“Rude,” I scoffed.

“Honest,” she smiled.

“Whatever. I’m going to make dinner,” I said as I pushed myself off the couch.

“Folder off my table,” she called out before I walked out of the room.

I sighed before dramatically turning around to grab my folder off the table. I turned the corner to walk up the stairs and to my room. I threw my folder on the floor next to my desk before kicking off my shoes and sliding them next to my dresser. I take off my green friendship bracelet from my wrist and put it on the shelf above my bed, looking out the window as I did so. I looked across the way to stare into Eddy’s room to see him just entering it. He froze as he saw me staring before smirking and grabbing a paper and a marker. When he was done writing, he turned the paper to show me the words, Creepy fucker. I shook my head at him before flipping him off and turning away to leave my room.

I walked into the kitchen and began taking out the things I needed to make spaghetti. The way my mother raised me was to make food based on moods or situations. When I was younger, I often had a hard time trying to get my point across so my mom told me that if I was sad, I should make soup and if I was angry, I should make hamburgers. The list went on and on and became more complex as I grew older. But it really helped me connect with my mother in a way that I doubt would have happened without it. Spaghetti was my way of telling my mother that I had something to tell her really important.

I began with boiling the noodles in a pot before buttering another pan and filling it with the spices and tomato paste. That was the one thing Free could never get over. She was completely accustomed to her dad’s recipe of using sauce for spaghetti but my grandma always used tomato paste. It was a family recipe and I loved it. After the spaghetti sauce was finished and the noodles were boiled, I poured the noodles in and stirred. I placed the spaghetti into two bowls after toasting some bread. I walked into the living room and placed a bowl in front of her as I sat down with my own bowl in hand. She paused from her puzzle to look down at the bowl before tilting her head towards me.

“So what do you have to tell me?” she asked as she leaned forward to pick up her bowl.

I chewed the noodles in my mouth slowly as I looked at the television. I licked my lips quickly before saying, “I talked to Nara Lee Evans today.”

She raised an eyebrow at me before smiling. “About damn time. How’d it go?”

“Horrible. Her bitch of a best friend ruined it by calling me and Eddy freaks. Then Eddy went all profound again and told her not to say sorry for somebody else because it makes it less real. But I managed not to trip over my words, so yay me, I guess,” I shrugged.

“Eddy? Profound?” she scoffed.

“He has his moments.”

“If you say so. Honey, it seems to me that you should tell this girl how you feel. How do you plan on wooing the girl over?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Adrian, you can’t expect her to just fall in love with you. She knows next to nothing about you. You’re going to have to work very hard to get her to pay attention to you,” my mom explained patiently before taking a sip of water.

I licked my lips as I stared at a corner in the room. I fixed my position on the couch before rolling my head to the side to look at my mother. She was chewing silently on her food as she stared at the empty television screen.

“Mom? Can I ask a personal question?”

“You’ve never asked permission for that before, so what’s stopping you?”

“How did Jack win you over?”

She stared over at me for a moment before lowering her fork and placing her bowl on the coffee table. She sighed lightly before turning in her seat to stare directly at me.

“I was very young when I married Jack, Adrian. I got married to him only weeks after my eighteenth birthday. I was with Jack for at least three years before that. It didn’t take much for him to win me over and keep me down. But I think what kept me with him was how much he balanced me out. I was always a rather sarcastic and silly person and Jack was the opposite. He was always so serious. But he had his moments where he would join me in a sarcastic or humorous moment. And the fact that he understood me kept me with him for so long.”

She let out a shaky sigh before placing a palm to her face while her other hand fanned her face. I searched her face, looking for the tears I knew she would never let me see.

“And I think that’s what also made me leave him. I loved your father so much but we were so different. He could never understand me or my child in the way that I wanted to. He wasn’t for me. He wasn’t for us.”

I looked down for a moment before placing my bowl on the coffee table. I leaned over and lay across the couch and on her lap before wrapping my arms around her waist. I placed my cheek on her shoulder as I breathed in her scent – the scent that made her smell just like a mother should.

“We’re better off, Mama.”

“I know, baby. I know,” she whispered as she patted my arm.

All I could think about was how I never wanted to be like Jack. All I could think about was how I needed to find a way to understand Nara Lee in the way Jack understood my mother. I needed to understand Nara Lee for a lifetime instead of a brief moment in time.