Trapped in Forever

64 ~ Cupcakes Instead of Roses

I sat there, silently, for a moment or two, just long enough for my mother to dap the corners of her lips with her stained and crumpled napkin, her eyes avoiding mine, and then tossed the golden napkin into one of the salad bowls stacked on top of the small mountain of dirtied plates acting as a makeshift center piece, and I blinked at her. Her face seemed somewhat contorted with repentance, and as she brushed her fingers across the countertop, it almost felt as if she were contemplating ways to comfort me—perhaps buying me an ice cream sundae with extra chocolate sauce and nuts or ordering me a pair of new shoes from Ugg or something—but as soon as I felt the emotions emitting from her, I realized that I didn’t care if she felt guilty about telling me that I had been fired in the corner of a bustling restaurant or that I had been fired at all. She had finally gotten what she had always wanted, for me to stop modeling, and now, when it finally happened, she bore the air of the encouragement. It infuriated me that she had won, that she had finally proven that I was the same Amanda I was the year before, but only with the chip of a dead best friend digging into my shoulder, and that the imperfect fractions of her family were slowly healing like surgical wounds, and creating a whole—a whole perfect family for her to gaze admirably at in the family photographs attached on the walls in the stairwell and hallways.

I wanted to shatter those perfect members of that family photo, tear apart the image until it became so distorted you couldn’t tell who’s fake smile was who’s, and until nothing was left but a pile of torn paper and shards of broken glass collecting on the floor. So, I blurted out, “I’m dating Orion Maters.” Out of the corner of my eye, as I focused on Mom, I noticed Mikayla’s lips parting and heard an exhale whooshing past her lips. “If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s Roxanne’s old boyfriend. The one you told me to forgive, remember, Mom? Well, I guess did a little more than that!”

I was observing my mother as she listened to me, took in my words, and registered their meaning, her forehead furrowing into multiples of rippling creases of confusion, and her lower lip had detached from her other lip and parted, revealing just a gap of her teeth, pristine and white from the whitening strips she applied periodically so her smile could amount to an even higher level of fakeness, when I saw my father turning his seat to face me, his mouth open and his halfheartedly dropped, as if he couldn’t quire catch his breath. His eyes were narrowed in not only in bewilderment but also in astonishment, and as I averted my gaze from Mom to Dad and beheld his features as he tried to gather the words to address me, I wondered if his confusion could be credited to the fact that my father couldn’t remember a time when I had a boyfriend in general, let alone one that used to go out with my best friend. “You’re dating Orion Mathers?” Unlike Mom, Dad seemed to be very aware of him, the name cataloguing almost immediately while my mother was still blinking, stunned, and glancing to the left in the direction of my sister, as if she could clarify whether or not I was being serious, if Orion Mathers was really my boyfriend, if Orion Mathers had even mentioned her little sister to her as someone who he kissed, someone who he touched, someone who he might have loved in a way he shouldn’t have. “Honey . . . why would you do that? Out of all the boys you could be going out with right now, you picked him?”

“I didn’t pick him,” I justified harshly, the words blurting from my lips almost as easily as admitting that he was boyfriend, that we had kissed, that our phone numbers were programed into each other’s phones, that our relationship had surpassed the length of his with Roxanne’s, so maybe she was just an obstacle in our way all along, a blip in the radar that flashed and caught his attention before I could, and then we had to wait for our turn, for her to go, but perhaps the story might have really been about us, after her, instead of us with her. Maybe that day in the beginning of the summer months and bumping into the bumper of the boy frantic to get to class was really destiny bringing us together instead of them, but she could in the way and asserted herself before he could see me. “It just happened,” I informed him, haughtily, and I heard him scoffing, tilting back his head, and glancing in my mother’s direction, as if to telepathically ask her if she believed this, but she remained still and her only movement was the occasional blinking eyes as she stared at me, and slowly her gaze morphed into something more, something more than confusion or shock, but sadness. It took me a moment to realize, and then accept, that her gaze actually held pity for me, that I was the equivalent of those abused puppies in those minute long commercials that always suckered my dad into memorizing the phone number and then reaching for Mom’s purse when she left to go to the bathroom or make herself a cup of tea.