She never was.
She was the kind of parent who did her duty. She made sure we had a place to live, food to eat, and clothes to wear. She made sure I did my homework and paid all the fees when I wanted to play football in high school.
I couldn’t say she was a bad mom, because she wasn’t. She did right by me. She raised me even, after my father walked away. She wasn’t mean, she didn’t beat me, and she didn’t bring a dozen men in and out of our lives. In fact, she didn’t date at all.
She was just distant. Absent.
She kept everyone at arm’s length, including her own child. Maybe she never bonded with me when I was born. Maybe she never tried.
Or maybe when my father left her because of me, it cut so deep whenever she looked at me, that’s all she saw.
I learned at an early age to be self-sufficient. Instead of acting out, I internalized it all. I learned how to tuck my deepest pain and my darkest loneliness so deep no one would ever see it. I was a friend to everyone. I listened when people talked, and I kept things laidback and easy.
Why? Because that’s what I always wanted for myself.
I joined the football team (and later the fraternity) for that sense of family. I was good at it, and people liked me. So I kept playing. I was the one everyone liked, and I never had to be alone.
But I was.
I grew more alone, and the place I hid my real feelings got overfull.
I met Romeo and Braeden freshman year when we all started playing for the Wolves. We were friends; I was friends with everyone. But no one ever really knew me. Sometimes I wondered if I really knew me.
It’s easy to lose yourself when you have no idea who you are to begin with.
I used to wonder why she didn’t love me. Why my father didn’t want us. The only person who ever really showed me love was Granny. She came to my games, and we played checkers on rainy days. She used to tell me my mother loved me in her own way, the best she could.
I supposed that was true.
But it wasn’t good enough.
As I got older and started Alpha U, I would sometimes wonder if I was like her. If my mother’s inability to love was somehow my affliction, too.
Then Drew sat beside me at Screamerz.
He was the best friend I ever had. Someone I felt more myself with than anyone. Our friendship healed something in me, or maybe it just gave me the confidence to be who I really was.
I felt like he was the first person who really looked deep enough to see past the mask I always wore.
And I fell in love with him.
I fell in love with the least likely person I ever could. But in a way, he was the most obvious choice.
I wasn’t unable to love; I just needed the right person to give it to.
Maybe it was okay to be relieved. It was okay to move on and let some of the old hurt go. I had a family now, the kind I always wanted.
The kind who wanted me.
They all knew who I really was now, and they loved me anyway.
I wouldn’t fool myself into thinking it would always be easy for me. I would probably always still have days when I was a little more pulled in close. Days it would be easier to tuck my feelings deep and not let anyone see. There might always be that whisper deep in my head saying I wasn’t good enough.
Everyone had their demons. These were mine.
But as Tennessee Williams once wrote: If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels, too.
“What’s going on in there?” Drew asked, leaning across the seats and tapping my head with his finger.
I grabbed his hand and pulled it down, pressing it against my chest. “Nothing going on up there. It’s all happening in here.”
“You doing okay, frat boy?” he asked softly, rubbing his palm against my chest.
He worried about me, and I loved him for it. He didn’t have to worry, though, because I was more at peace than I’d ever been.
“I really am.”
“I love you more than French fries.”
I laughed even as my heart swelled. I was so ready for this interview today, so ready to tell the entire world (or maybe just the subscribers of GearShark) he was mine. After today, everyone would know, and I’d never have to worry about the way I looked at him in public ever again.
I wouldn’t be ashamed, even though some people thought I should. I spent too much of my life without the touch of love to ever tarnish the love I had now with something as ugly as shame.
“Gate’s open.” I gestured to the opening that led into the airport.
Drew nudged the Fastback forward, and I looked around. It was kind of really epic that Arrow lived at an airport and he and Lorhaven kept their cars in hangars.
When Emily Metcalf said she wanted to come to us for the interview, I knew it had to be somewhere other than the Chesapeake Speedway. Been there, done that. We needed something new, somewhere as unique as the new racing division.