Would You Rather

22 - WYR: get over what's in your head or what's in your bed?

FIDAN

Worse sticks with me for an hour. Past the one bend in the road. Until my Mom calls me and then it's sort of off the mind.

"Merhaba kultaseni!" Her high voice hits my ears the second I hit answer. The worst thing about being in a half-Turkish, half-Finnish household is that my Mom, who really is only good at Turkish, will speak a constant combination of three languages to make it easier on my father, who really is only strong in Finnish and English. It's nice in public, because her and I are completely indecipherable to most listeners, but it creates quite the mental puzzle when I've spent some time away from her.

"Merhaba, Anne." I shift lanes to let the guy in the eighteen-wheeler zip past me. She had told me when we moved to Finland to start calling her the Finnish Äiti instead of the Turkish Anne for Mom but it didn't even begin to stick, not even when my friends in elementary school picked on me for it. She'll always be Anne to me.

"How have you been? Your father and I watched your game yesterday, he says that you played alright but I think you played amazing. How is your eye? How about your nose from last year? Have you been-" Her fast speaking and wild mixture of languages leaves me with a bit of a lag time.

"Anne." I slow her down. "I'm alright, my eye is healed up now, nose is okay."

"Oh, good, good," she breathes out. "Not too big of a scar? I know your father says that you should stay but I really believe you should come home and stop getting tossed around out there so much."

I set my knee on the wheel to keep it straight in the wind and rub my hands over my face. "I'm doing just fine. I'm big enough to hold my own."

"I'm sorry about my little genes. I totally stunted your father's tallness. Kasper is so much more protected out there than you are." Her voice wanders off for a second before returning, jumping into telling me all about how her week as been. I return it, telling her a little about the end of the road trip, about dodgeball, and a little bit about the team.

I break through city limits, finally looking at something other than road and ditch and field, and narrowly avoid the topic of Kasper's season again. Somewhere, in the back of her head, she doesn't accept that Kasper and I don't get along. I know why she doesn't accept that, she raised Kasper as best she could, but... I can't blame him. I'd feel the same way if I were him.

"Oh, wait, I must discuss plans with you," she says, right as I pull into my little underground parking garage.

"Which plans?" My neighbor, a nice little old lady named Sheryl, gives me a weird look at the almost-english Turkish that comes out of my mouth. I give her a little wave, keys in one hand, phone held up by my shoulder as I reach for the keypad into the building.

"The parents and mentors trip."

I blink, "the Wolves do one of those?"

"Oh, shoot," she stops for a moment. "They wanted it to be a surprise. Oh. I've bumbled it up. Ignore that you heard that."

"Anne," I laugh, letting myself into my apartment, looking around the bare interior. Worse. Dated him. "I know now, so might as well ask what you needed to."

"Would it be okay if I stayed with you for the beginning of the trip? I don't know your city very well."

I smile, "yeah, that's a good idea."

"And I can cook for you!"

"Oh, you think I said yes for a different reason?"

She gasps in mock offense, "Fidan!" She's really the only person that says my name the way it was supposed to be said. Feh-dahn instead of Fy-den. I don't mind it either way, and honestly, at this point in my life, if anyone else pronounced it Feh-dahn, I'd think they were my Mom.