The following three days are a limbo, I feel like I've slipped between the couch cushions like a lost penny, everything felt foreign, nothing felt familiar and yet I pushed through it like wading through glue that was starting to set. I was a little lost and felt completely unclaimed.
Once upon a time I woke up knowing myself completely, a spring in my step and a confidence my family had instilled in me, it was obvious to anyone who met me. I wasn't the type of person who got lost. My parents were my true north, my compass it led me home to them, they were the core and heartbeat of our family and I had always felt extremely blessed to be born into it. My siblings and I, we had the privilege of being brought up with comfort, with love and with community, we were lucky, we had each other and we had two families who adored us, both sides. It never bothered me, DNA, because if you went by DNA then Josie and I would be closer sisters than Olympia was to me, and Bash too, he wouldn't be classed as my full genetic sibling. My mom wouldn't be my mom either, but she couldn't be more my mom and Olympia couldn't be more my pain in the ass sister. Now though, if I looked just at the DNA and only took that into consideration, I would be no relation to Olympia at all, nor Bash... and even Josie would be classed a half sibling... my ties by DNA would be watered down to both nothing and half of something else. I was more related to Mckenzie than I was Olympia, a thought so absurd it made me angry.
If you went by genetic markers in my blood and placed my profile on my moms, I wasn't a bit Nomikos, not one crazy part, and yet sometimes I felt much more like my mom than my mama. My earliest memory is with my mom, her carrying me around the basketball court to a roar of happy fans after a big win, and the way she looked at me, full of joy and love, I've never forgotten that look, and the feeling of being so loved and adored.
No, DNA was nothing, love though, it made a family, and it took all those watered down genetic factors and it tossed them aside with no fear. My mom was my mom, just as my mama was, and Olympia, Bash and Josie are just as much mine as I am theirs, we are the Nomikos siblings, and the fact Olympia has brown eyes and I have blue, the fact I came from my mama and she came from mom, it wasn't anything that separated us. She was still the thorn in my side that turned up one Halloween night and made me hate her, then love her, and with one kick to my head at a time, one pull of my hair after another, and one cheeky raspy laugh when nobody else found me funny, she became mine and we became us, sisters. I think that moment solidified our family, once Olympia arrived and our moms had us both there, it wasn't long after they married and thinking about it now, as an adult, I can see how the past got left behind, if it was something bad, it's easy to see how all the good pushed it out, like a foreign egg that got rolled out of the nest for fear of contamination.
***
I skipped my psychology classes Monday and Wednesday, mentally still blocking out Millie. I wanted to give her everything, to sit in front of her and talk with an open mind and heart, but I couldn't do that whilst i was still walking around in the fog. I pushed thoughts of her aside if they came, but I did text her, Wednesday, I text her when I finally broke free of the fog long enough to form a thought.
W-
I'm sorry I didn't show, I wanted too. Please forgive me x
"Warm up" Our coach called into the locker room. I look away from the phone and back again hesitantly lowering it into my bag, my eyes fixed on the message to see if any text will appear, but not even a flicker of a text bubble to show she is replying... and it didn't deliver either.
"Hey you okay" Ava asks.
I look up to find her waiting and I push the phone fully into my bag and stand "yes I'm okay"
We walk side by side out to the pitch "I don't know what happened Sunday but I just want you to know I'm here for you... and I'm sorry you are going through something. I'm even more sorry if any of it is my fault. Is Millie okay?" She asks and it is honest concern I see in her eyes.
YOU ARE READING
Wren
Romance(Book 5) *Complete* Wren grew up on the west coast, in a wealthy neighbourhood of Portland Oregon, she was not shy of attention, growing up with the famous Teddy Nomikos as one of her moms. She is fresh out of high school, leaving home for the first...
