Getting Over Cameron Grey

2 | Mother Dearest

People react to unfortunate situations in all kinds of ways. In high school, I was a crier. But nobody knew that. I was sensitive. My mom would yell at me in the morning and I'd carry her words throughout the day. I'd let them sit in my stomach, sort of, and let them be heavy. The smallest thing during class would set me off and I'd have to excuse myself to the bathroom so that I could bawl alone in a stall. I would cry until I ran out of tears and afterwards, I'd rinse my face off and try to scrub off any evidence of what had happened two minutes before. I'd force a smile for the rest of the day until it felt genuine. My mom always apologized in the afternoon and we would hug it out and feel fine. 

But that was high school. Cameron had encouraged me to not be quiet about my feelings and instead told me to find outlets for emotion. He was a gym rat, so his solution to my emotional episodes was to drag me to a treadmill and have me run it off. It worked. But it was a Cameron sort of method that wouldn't have ever occurred to me without him. So after I read the letter, I did what I did best and I cried for the longest time. 

Every tear hollowed me bit by bit, and then I found myself just laying on the bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. The paint surrounding the light was chipping badly. Cameron had been putting off the repainting for months. This hiatus was indefinite. Cameron. I tried to stop another onslaught of tears by finding something to stuff myself with in the kitchen. He left behind his protein shakes, fruit, beer and low-calorie health freak snacks everywhere. I took out the whole six pack from the fridge, cracked open a beer and flopped down on the couch. I drank and watched mind-numbing reality television because there was really nothing else to do aside from thinking about him.

"Zoey! Zoey, I know you're in there!"

I jerked. I tried to open my eyes but the sun was really beaming into my living room. Winston Beach's motto is all about being the sunniest place in California, but it's not always a good thing when you're hung over and sensitive. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and felt around. There were three empty beer cans on the carpet. The TV was playing an early morning infomercial.

"Mom?" I yelled back.

"Zoey, you need to open this door immediately!"

"Just give me a second!" I held my forehead. 

"Zoey!"

"I have to clean up a little bit, just hold on."

"I don't care. We need to talk right now. I've been out here screaming like a lunatic for ten minutes. Do you know how many times I called you? I thought you died in here or something. You could've."

"No, no, I'm fine, mom." I tried to buy some time while I ran around. I tossed the cans into recycling bin and shoved the rest of the six-pack (now a three-pack) into the fridge. I glanced around to check if there was anything else that needed to be cleaned. It looked fine enough, I figured. If she knew what happened with Cameron and Hannah, then she'd know that cleaning wasn't my priority. "Hold on."

She waited silently but I could still feel her anger and impatience radiating from the door. I unlocked it, smoothed out my hair and sucked in another breath. This is only your mother. I opened the door. "Mom."

"Thank you." She said sourly as she walked right in. She tossed her bag onto an armchair and perched herself on the arm. I closed the door and waited for inevitable criticism of my home. "This place is a mess."

"Why'd you come here?"

"What do you mean? To ask you about Hannah, of course." Mom turned around to rustle through her bag and whipped out an unused enevelope with big dark green words written on the front of it. "Look at this, she told me to talk to you."