Even The Playing Field | BOOK #1 IN THE PSU SERIES

thirty-seven

"They're probably never going to stop talking about you now." I say as he nods. "You're welcome." He sends me a grin. I roll my eyes. "Do you think your parents will like me?" I asked as he set his ice cream to the side—watching me.

"Want my honest opinion?" He asks as I nod. He sucks in a breath, "My dad will hate you no matter what. My mom will love you." He says as I groan. "I don't know why you're worried though, best friends don't really freak out while meeting each other's parents." He says smugly as I sigh.

"Matti." I say sharply as he lets out a loud laugh.

"What I'm just saying," He points back as I shake my head. "I want them to like me." I speak as he nods. "My dad likes you if you have a price tag. My mom will love anyone that's important to me." He speaks as I smile.

"I'm important to you?" I mock as he grins. "Only the most important person ever." He teases. We both laugh and then we get quiet.

"Do you think your parents would like me?" He asks with a look of curiosity. I blew out the air, "Oh yeah. They would love you." I state but I don't even know the answer to that.

I didn't even have a parent to turn to—to be able to answer that.

"What's your favorite memory of your mom?" He asks me what I think.

"This one time—when I was younger, it was my birthday, my last birthday before she passed away to be exact, she took me to see a performance. It was pretty cool and I knew no other kid had a memory like it." I spoke as I poked my spoon at the strawberry cream.

It was true she had taken me to a performance no other kid had seen before—I was a six year old girl sitting in the dancer's locker room at a strip club called Headliners. I had a very eventful birthday that night.

The term cake didn't mean birthday cake at all. The name Frosting, was a stripper's name. And loads of the crowd were getting presents that night from Candy.

The smell of the club, the noise, the trauma, but at least my mom did what she had to do for us to survive.

"My mom rented out the entire movie theatre for my eleventh birthday. It was so cool—we all watched the new Transformers movies." I nodded my head at his story. It wasn't that I wasn't interested because I was, but I was jealous.

We came from two completely different lives, would this even work if I fessed up right now?

If he knew about me? If he knew that I wasn't the poster child of a successful appropriate dancer and a successful businessman?

"My childhood wasn't always perfect though," I started to speak as he nodded in agreement.

Here goes nothing.

"You know what! Same! My childhood sucked—I couldn't hang out with friends because I was always at practice. If I wasn't doing good enough that day, I couldn't have fun for the rest of the night." He spoke while cutting me off. He laughed while putting a spoonful in his mouth—twisting the spoon around and then pulling it out.

I took in a breath before nodding, "Woah. Yeah, that totally sucked." I spoke.

Guess I'm going to be holding back my confession for another day.

When in all reality, I would've killed to have a childhood where I could've focused on something other than my moms prostitution efforts and counting the amount of pills surrounding her body every morning.

Or being underweight and so tiny that at school they would call the protective services everyday.

That's why I loved the idea of school, education, and being a nurse. Kids shouldn't have to go through what I went through. School was my haven, school gave me a chance at life.