This Is a Wasteland

I just sort of stood there as her eyes locked on me, first confused, then completely unreadable. I opened my mouth to say something but I couldn’t find the words. She seemed to be at a loss as well, but I couldn’t see exactly why. I wanted to run off and get Vic to make everything better again, but I still had one now burning question:

Why the fuck was she living in an apartment?

“Hey, Kells, I forgot my wallet, can you grab it for me?” I heard Vic call from downstairs, causing both my mother and I to turn towards the direction of his voice.

“Um, yeah, hold on,” I choked out.

“Is that Victor?” My mom finally asked. I shot her a glare.

“I doesn’t matter,” I huffed, turning back to unlock the door again. I wasn’t about to listen to another one of her lectures. I was out of the house- I was done with her stupid rules.

“Kellin? Who are you talking to?” I heard Vic call again, sounding confused. I wondered if he recognized my mom’s voice when she spoke. I didn’t have to answer him, though, because seconds later I heard footsteps that told me he was climbing the stairs to come back up.

“What’s going on?” Vic asked, the level of concern in his voice rising when he saw her. I was nervous for a minute as I remembered how he’d greeted me when he first saw me after over a year. However, he seemed to remain surprisingly calm, and stepped closer to me instead. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, relax, I didn’t do anything,” she sighed, sounding annoyed.

“Well, I don’t know maybe you were trying to get him arrested,” Vic shot, icily. She just rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you worry about me, I’ll mind my own business,” My mom said, holding her hands up as if to say she was surrendering. That surprised both of us.

“Um, you will?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, you’re none of my concern anymore anyway, right?” she muttered, sounding sarcastic. I was surprised, but at that moment, I realized something. Besides the fact that she wasn’t wearing any make-up or the fact that she looked extremely overtired, I noticed that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.

“Where’s dad?” I blurted out, not that I really wanted to see him.

“If you must know, your father and I are separated,” she said, then continued when neither of us said anything, “It’ll take a while for the paperwork and everything to be settled, but we’re getting a divorce.”

“I thought that was a sin,” I chuckled, recalling one of her statements from one of our screaming matches a while back.

“Now, Kellin, I am not trying to get into an altercation with you here,” she said, in a stern voice.

“Well, then you shouldn’t have anything else to say,” Vic cut in, slipping and arm around my waist and turning me back towards the door so that we could go back inside and get his wallet.

Vic’s POV

“Are you okay?” I asked him as soon as we were inside. I stepped closer to him and caressed the sides of his face as I tried to search for any sign that he was upset.

“Are you okay?” he countered. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill her.”

“That was second on my to-do list,” I shrugged.

“Then what was first?” he asked.

“Making sure you were okay, and that I was there for you,” I admitted, placing a kiss on his forehead. It was true, though. The first thing I thought of when I saw her wasn’t that I wanted to punch her in the face (which I totally did), but it was that I wanted to help Kellin. He’d looked a little freaked out, and I decided that making sure he was alright was far more important.

“That’s sweet,” he said, blushing a little. I moved my lips from his forehead down to his lips and placed another kiss there. “What are we going to do?”

“About?” I questioned. He pulled away from me, worry painted all over his face.

“She lives across the hall from us, Vic!” he exclaimed.

“Well we . . . we can’t move out. We’ve already signed a year’s lease,” I breathed, contemplating our options. Then a thought crossed my mind. “Well think about it like this- It’s probably worse for her.”

“What?”

“She has to live alone, across the hall from two people she can’t stand- the son she disowned and his boyfriend that she had arrested. Yet, despite everything she did to tear us apart we still ended up back together and happy,” I explained. The more I thought about it the more my mind went to ‘ha ha, bitch’ than anything. “She can’t do anything to us. She can just sit back and watch from afar as we live a happy life without her, okay?”

“Yeah,” he choked, relaxing and coming back to me. I held him as he wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his face against my shoulder.

“You’ll be fine, baby,” I said softly. We stood there for a while in silence, until a grumbling from my stomach reminded me of the reason we had stepped outside in the first place.

“So are you still up for food or-?” I asked. “I’m super hungry.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” he said, quietly. I kissed him one more time before leaving the room to go and grab my wallet off of the kitchen counter.

“Are we actually ready to go this time?” he chuckled.

“Yeah- keys, wallet, phone,” I said, rattling off the list of everything we needed to go out to dinner.

“Just checking,” he said before we both left the apartment. This time, Kellin’s mother was nowhere to be seen. We hurried down the steps and into my car and ended up driving to this little sandwich shop that was down the street. It was a small, quiet place, but all we really needed was food.