Page 10 of True Honey (The Hornets Nest #4)

COURTNEY

A fter Silas left I finally took a breath of air.

I replayed the conversation in my head, over and over for the rest of the day until it was time to pick up August from school. What Silas was offering would solve so many problems but the situation would cause just as many in return.

He was asking for weeks, maybe months. Time I’d be contractually required to stay put…

No running. That was the scariest part of it all.

The proposal had been a shock but in the hours after I realized that it was easily handled and if it meant giving August a place to sleep that wasn’t the passenger seat of our car…

I could play a doting fiancé. But the worry that crept in afterward wasn’t about the plan, it was about whether I could actually pull it off.

It was the look in his eyes. They had gotten so dark when he’d said please.

I could tell that it was his last resort.

He’d run through every option, played them all out, and landed on me.

I knew the process of trying to logic myself out of an anxiety attack caused by stress.

I’d done it everyday for nearly thirteen years.

I had to come up with a way to let him down easy. Silas had narrowed in on me by accident, bad timing whatever you want to chalk it up to. It wasn’t fate. I’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time when his brain cooked up whatever impossible plan this was.

I’d done the same more than once over the years.

He had no idea that he was getting the worst end of the deal. It wouldn’t take him very long to figure out that the pretty, sassy red head he’d stumbled upon thinking she was his saving grace was in fact a depressed, anxious mess and nothing more than a failed study in single parenting.

Shit. I looked at the clock, then up at the green light I’d been sitting at for…

who knew how long. The people of Harbor might have been a little touchy but at least it was quiet here.

I appreciated that. I’d never been much one for the city, smaller towns soothed my aching heart in a way I couldn’t quite describe to anyone that didn’t just understand.

I rubbed at my chest, trying to quiet the crushing weight left behind from the conversation.. Silas wanted soft, pretty, charming. All things I could be on a regular basis, all I needed to do was keep him at arms length so he didn’t see the pain, the coldness, the sadness.

“I can do this,” I thought out loud, tears welling. “For Auggie.”

The school was busy when I finally cleared my head and made my way down there. It was nice to be around the sound of laughter and conversation, it muted the little voices in the back of my head that wanted me to believe I was doing something wrong.

August noticed me right away. He pushed off the step and made his way across the lawn, avoiding contact with all the talking and joking kids around him.

He kept his head down and I knew at that moment that something had gone terribly wrong.

He’d always had a hard time fitting in, his interests and activities didn’t necessarily line up with the interests of what the world viewed as a typical teenage boy. And it made it hard to make friends.

I knew that part of the reason why it was difficult was because he very rarely was afforded the time to even try to make friends, or to acclimate to the groups before we were moving again. He climbed into the passenger side and slammed the door shut behind him.

“How was your day?” I asked him even though his headphones were still safely positioned over his ears.

He turned to look at me, his father’s dark stare glaring at me and my heart thudded uncomfortably in my chest. I’m sorry , I wanted to say.

I didn’t know what I was apologizing for, everything or maybe nothing at all but every time he looked at me like that the guilt seeped through every logical thought and the urge to apologize became incessant.

“Fine,” he said with a tight, annoyed tone.

“Did you get to your classes alright? Was there someone there to show you around?” I asked him. I had to push the conversation, or else that was all I was going to get from him.

“Yeah,” he said, surprisingly quickly. “Some girl has been dragging me around.”

“Some girl?” I asked with a soft smile, “was she in your grade?”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“Was the rest of the day good?” I pushed, the car still in park and my full attention on his lack of interest in the conversation.

“It’s the first week Mom, no one talked to me except the teachers to introduce me to a whole bunch of kids that I’ll never actually get the chance to know.

” August rolled his eyes and I knew that he hadn’t meant to hurt my feelings but the darkness crept through the cracks in my armor and reminded me that I had created the situation unfolding before me.

“Mom,” August groaned after a minute of silence. “You’re holding up the pick up line.”

The car behind me honked as if it was aware of August’s discomfort of being in the way.

I pulled from the line, begrudgingly dropping the conversation.

Something had happened at school today that he didn’t want to talk about.

I could tell by the way he anxiously scratched his pencil across his notebook page doodling aimlessly.

His mind was spinning but he didn’t want to talk to me, and I understood why.

What teenage boy wants to talk to their mother about school…

but we were all each other had. I wanted to be that person that he turned to when he was sad or scared.

If I could read his nervous thoughts there was no doubt in my mind that he could read mine too.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t talk to me because he was afraid I didn’t have any more space for him.

It wasn’t true but I could understand where his hesitation would be stemming from in terms of emotional capacity.

Words that my very short lived therapist used to say.

“You have to make room for feelings outside of worthlessness and despair, Drew. You need to create space for love and happiness.”

Those words were nothing but a foreign language to me.

Love and happiness. Sure I felt them, every time I looked at August I knew that love existed, and I knew I was capable of giving it out but…

to be loved was different. Making space for someone to love me, really love me, without conditions, was exhausting.

I spent too much of my time fighting the demons that occupied my head and heart to be loved.

How could anyone love me in a state of disrepair?

“How about a real bed tonight?” I asked him, turning the opposite direction from where we had been parking the car overnight the last few days. August looked at me like I had just offered him a pot of gold and he nodded.

The tips I’d collected were meant for a damage deposit but a hotel would have to do it for now.

Both of us needed a better night's sleep and I was actively trying to make August’s time here easier.

I pulled into the hotel parking lot and told him to wait in the car while I got us a room, hoping that they wouldn’t ask me for a credit card and much to my surprise they didn’t.

The sweet old lady behind the counter did tell me that the walls were thin so my business was also room thirteen’s and room fifteen’s business but aside from that she was kind.

She gave me a few extra towels and told me that the pool out back had just been cleaned and was ready for fun.

The room was small but it was bigger than the front seat of our car at that point and there wasn’t a single complaint out of August’s mouth as he disappeared into the bathroom, returning only when he was in shorts.

He asked politely if he could go swimming and I told him yes.

It was the first time I had seen him smile in weeks.

I, on the other hand, needed a warm shower and an entire bottle of bad hotel shampoo.

I ran the water hot and climbed in, closing my eyes as the rough, old shower head massaged my neck and shoulders with its intense water pressure.

The sound of the running water was like white noise, defending against the worst of my dark thoughts but even a shower couldn’t stop the immense feeling of guilt that I was doing something wrong from leaking out into my conscious thought.

August was turning fourteen soon and his entire life had been the front seat of a car, shitty hotels and bug filled apartments.

I cried for the third time that day, it came before I could stop it.

In unstoppable tidal waves it racked through my body as I leaned against the grimy tile wall and just let it roll through me.

Every day the conscious thought of returning August to his father plays out in my head, it might not have been the best but anything was better than the life I was giving him.

His father could never provide emotional safety but at least there would be a permanent roof over his head and he could make friends that he could be sure of graduating alongside.

I eventually stopped crying as the water went cold, forcing me from the shower to dry off and get dressed. August wandered through the door twenty minutes later soaking wet but he looked happy.

“How was the pool?” I asked him, digging through my bag for my phone. Against my better judgement and ignoring the cries of my empty wallet I was going to order a pizza for us.

“Cold,” August said with a smile. “You were crying again.”

His observation caught me off guard.

“No, my skin is just irritated from the hotel water…” I said continuing to search. “Have you seen my phone?” I asked him and it took him less than a second to find it sitting on the desk behind me.

“Mom, are we leaving?” He asked me, his fingers still hanging on to the phone so that I would look at him. I didn’t know how to tell him that I was considering bringing him back to his father. It felt like a conversation we shouldn’t have while he was dripping water on a shabby carpet.

“Auggie,” I whispered.

“We are aren’t we? This is a new record…” He scoffed and let go, turning to dig through his bag for dry clothes. I chewed on the inside of my lip and cursed myself for not being able to be more for him without the help of others. Shit.

“What if I said that you could live somewhere permanent?” I asked him, sitting on the bed as he turned his back to me.

“You want to send me back to him, don’t you?” His head whipped around, his dark hair still damp and casting droplets around the room.

“He can provide a stable house for you to grow up in Auggie, you could finish school in one place,” I said, knowing that the conversation would be an argument.

“He hates me,” August protested, tugging a clean shirt over his skinny frame.

“He just doesn’t know you,” I argued gently, trying to get him to understand the circumstances.

“If this is because I yelled at you in the car, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean it, it was just a weird day,” he said and I shook my head just trying not to cry. The sound of him trying to take the blame for all my bad decisions broke my heart.

“It has nothing to do with that, Auggie, I just…” I swallowed the urge to cry. “You would be safe with your father, cared for… you’d have a room and friends.”

“You’re giving up on me,” he said, his words like ice down my spine. “Just like you do everything else, you’re running away from me because it’s too hard.”

“No.” I stood up and moved toward him, grabbing his damp cheeks in my hand and forcing him to listen to me. “You aren't a crappy job or a bad situation. You’re the only thing that is easy in my life, do you hear me?”

He nodded.

“But, your father can give you the life every teenager is supposed to have, the one I can’t give you…” I said to him, “I just want you to be happy, Auggie.”

August stared up at me and for the first time in weeks I saw myself in him. Beneath all the anger and frustration, the resentment, there was a hidden compartment of sadness, grief and a desperate need for love.

“I wouldn’t be happy there, Mom. Please don’t send me back, don’t…” He said and his words were strangled with his unchecked emotions.

I let out my own shaky breath, brushing his wet hair back from his face and pulled him in tight for a hug. I stared at the wall, my heart in my throat, trying to find a solution that didn't involve selling my soul. "Okay, okay," I rasped, squeezing him a tad tighter, "I won't."