Trusting You (Editing)

Chapter 1

"Aww, you're so sweet! Joey, I love you," I said with an honest smile. 

"I hope you know that I love you too, baby," Joey responded. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer, looking into my eyes with pure love. I tucked my head into the crook of his neck and he rested his on top of mine. I closed my eyes and soaked it all in.

This was what I'd been craving for my whole life-- a true, passionate love; someone who would never leave me. My name is Teresa Burrns; I'm seventeen years old. I grew up in a small corner of our town in New Jersey that hardly anyone knows about or acknowledges. You could consider it the ghetto, I guess. It was basically the bad part of town where no one wanted to go, including the people who lived there. Lots of awful things happened there; stabbings, shootings, random murders, drug deals.  No one really pays attention anymore, though. This was home to me, as much as I sometimes hated to admit it. I grew up here, I played in these worn down, graffiti-covered playgrounds as a child. I had my first kiss behind the old Albertson's that shut down before I was born. Our little town didn't have news crews, capturing every store that was looted, every drug dealer that whipped out his AK-47 when someone tried to steal from him, with a surprised look on the too-pretty news anchor's face. We didn't have that here.

My dad was cool when he was alive. He said he made an honest living, unlike most people even though we lived in the ghetto, but we somehow still didn't make enough to live elsewhere. I never understood that, but I tried to put it out of mind. Every once in a while though, he would buy drugs.  I never knew what kind or how much, but I was smart enough to know that they were drugs. I knew that glassy eyed look on his face all too well. I knew he used when he ran around the house, screaming to no one in particular and scratching constantly at every area of skin his ragged fingernails could reach. These were usually his days off. I dreaded those days. The rest of the time, he wasn't so bad. He would make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, using the least stale bread in the bag. We didn't get groceries often, but when we did he would cook pasta and we'd turn on the radio while we sat in the living room on our worn down couch. The seats were intact but the cloth had been sat on so many times that it had holes and was very thin in most places. The cotton had imprints of bodies sitting there, so I always fell into that place whether I wanted to or not. Our house was one of the nicest on the block though. It made me proud to bring friends over every once in a while. We only had one boarded up window and that was an accident, not on purpose like most people's houses. The house itself creaked and the ceilings sank in a little, but we'd both seen way worse.  

My dad really tried with me. He really wanted to be better, I think. But most of the time, his addiction drove him. When I was eight years old, a man knocked on our door. I opened it and he asked to meet with my father.  This wasn't unusual with the business that dad was in, so I let him in and pointed him in the direction of my fathers study/bedroom. He thanked me and walked away. About ten minutes later, he called a cheerful 'Goodbye' and left. I found my father lying in a pool of his own blood with four stab wounds in his chest. I cried that day, more than I ever had before. I grew up seeing people stabbed and shot  right in front of me, but I never cried. I was used to it. But this, this was my father. This was the man who made me PB&J, the man who found an old baseball outside of a local store and brought it home so we could toss it back and forth. My dad did everything he could for me. He was addicted, but he really tried to make sure it didn't affect me much. He wasn't perfect, no. But he was my dad and the only one I had. I loved him. 

That was the first time that I felt like my heart was so broken that it might not fix itself. I was strong enough to get over the trauma and go on with regular life, but I never fully recovered. I resented my friends' dads. I wished it was anyone but him because he was all I had. I tried to just hold it together, day to day.

That was definitely not the best way to grow up, but I sucked it up and held my head up high as best as I could. I moved in with my mom, since they were separated, and we became really close after that. I had no siblings so all we had was each other now. We hadn't known each other very well until I moved in, but we tried to cherish every moment together. She got promoted to manager at the grocery store she worked at and we were living well until I turned eleven. 

Four months after my eleventh birthday, my mom went off to work on a normal morning after escorting me to school. We were too poor to afford a car, so we walked together to my school and she walked to work afterwards. The grocery store was close to the school, so it worked out. It was really dangerous for a kid to be on the streets alone but I knew my mother had taken self-defense classes when she was younger so I wasn't that scared when we walked together. My mom grew up well off. Her parents gave her everything she wanted and everything she could ever need. They didn't struggle the way we did. I think she only ended up here because she felt like she wasn't good enough to be like her parents. She didn't think she could be successful, so she never was. However, the day came when she never came home. I didn't hear anything about it except for the rumors that she'd been mugged and shot. I never decided if I believed it or not. I struggled to accept the fact that I was now an orphan. My dad had been killed two rooms away from me and my mom had either run off or was murdered or something. I had no one. 

I grew up from then on, living in that same little trailer, thanking God that it was paid off. I had nothing to worry about really. I got a good enough job that I could pay the taxes on it once I started getting older. Pretty much everyone knew that I was living alone and wasn't old enough to find a job, so the nicer folks helped me day by day to eat and get cleaned up. I sometimes spent the nights at neighbors houses because I couldn't bear the silent noise in the trailer. I continued school until halfway through last year when I decided to drop out and get a full-time job. 

I met Joey at Perkins, where I was working as a waitress. He was a regular, since he had a good job and could afford to eat out twice a week. We hit it off and started dating at the beginning of this year, and I never expected to love someone and let them in so far. My past proved me to be damaged goods, but Joey didn't see me like that. He was super nice and said he had a job with some construction business. We live together now, since he moved out of his dad's house when he turned eighteen. I never thought I'd have a little apartment on the better side of town. I never expected to be able to eat three meals a day, to be taken care of the way Joey took care of me.

"What are you thinking about, Terry?" He asked, looking contentedly into my eyes.

"I was just remembering. You know how I told you about my mom?"

"Yeah..." Joey said, shifting uncomfortably. This was a touchy subject for both of us, since both of our moms were dead, even though his died of cancer. I guess that would be worse, watching her suffer and all. 

"I was just thinking about how my mom used to stare at me while I was doing my homework. She would put on a pot of water to make pasta and she'd sit backwards in a chair, staring at my face. It was almost like she was trying to memorize the details or something. I'd get so focused on watching her out of the corner of my eye that I'd burst out in a fit of giggles and she'd smile. I loved her smile, Joey." I scooted closer to him on the couch and leaned against his firm, stable frame. 

Joey smiled, probably remembering his own mother, and laid his chin on my head. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close and I focused on breathing in his pine and soap scent. I loved the smell of Joey.

"It's late, babe. I need to get some sleep before tomorrow. Big-wigs are coming to check out our progress. I love you. Come to bed." I slowly stood up, with the help of his strong hand, and followed him to bed. 

I laid there for a while, just remembering the good things about my parents. It made coping so much easier when I only remembered the good things. There were definitely bad things too, but I tried to forget most of them. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, next to Joey's warm frame.