The Personal Affair

T E N

"You have got to be fucking kidding me. I cannot believe that dude. No, that bitch! Ugh, I'm not even sure who I should be the most mad at in the both of them. Her for saying such things, or him for not saying anything at all." Megan ranted, the anger in her voice evident, but I was quiet, sitting on her English sofa with a flea blanket wrapped around me.

I was tired and drained of my energy. Numb to everything as the anger had long faded and been replaced with an empty feeling. I wasn't sure which was worse.

"This is too much. I'm so sorry, honey." Megan said as she pulled my stiff body into her side, rubbing up and down my arm comfortingly.

I could've slept off, but the sound of her heartbeat kept me awake instead of lulling me to sleep. My eyes felt dry and itchy from all the crying I'd been doing but now that my mind was clear enough to think about it, I wondered which hurt more.

The fact that Knox, the man that I loved and the man that I thought truly knew me and how affected I was by my past would break my trust and go blabbing to his mother about it all.

Or the mere mention of the woman who birthed me.

Aria was a sore topic for me, has been and always will be. Thoughts of her were often accompanied with memories of those dark, scary nights when she would bring strange looking men into our small, dingy apartment that was insect and rodent infested, and my six years old self would have to sit on the cold floor —because we had no sofa—as she used the only bedroom in our place to work for our money for meals and to keep funding her drug addiction.

Tears trailed down my cheeks as I remembered how painful it was watching the woman that I loved slowly but surely become a shell of herself because of drugs; heroin, cocaine, meth, oxytocin, pick a poison, my mother did them all. I often wondered what exactly she was running from that made her chase that high like her life depended on it. Why she couldn't just give it up to take care of me despite her constant words of love and affection.

"I love you, Nicbear, it's you and I together." Her blue eyes were soft and her pupils were not as dilated as I was used to seeing them as she stared down at me, and although her hair was a haggard looking mess on her head, the blonde hair that was so much like mine except more unkept and matted, she was the most beautiful woman to me.

"Forever, mommy?" I whispered in the small shelter that we'd had to move to after losing the apartment. Mom had said that we couldn't afford it anymore and had moved us to this place, I didn't like it at all. It was cold, dark, and creepy looking people were staying here with us. However, I didn't want to be anywhere else if she wasn't with me.

"Forever and ever." Her voice came out croaky as she hooked her pinky into mine, our thing. "I promise you, I'm going to make enough money to buy us a small studio apartment in Belmont. You'll go to a good school, make some new friends, and we'll be happy. Because all we need is each other, always." She whispered to me as she pulled me close into her, pressing her chapped lips on my hair. I believed every word she'd said. Even when everything seemed to be falling apart, I believed her.

Staying clean long enough to make good on her word was apparently too hard for Aria as time proved and before I knew it, her promises turned to apologies as she took me Downtown to my grandmother's house on one sunny Thursday. The tears I'd cried, the way I'd pleaded; nothing was enough to make her stay.

She'd said it was for my own good. But how good could it be to be away from my mother? The only parent I'd ever known seeing as my father, her first and only true love, had taken off the minute he knew that she was pregnant with me.

It had taken me a long time to adjust to living with my Nana and even longer to get over the feeling of abandonment that I had and the pain that accompanied it. Even till now, I wasn't entirely sure that the feeling had totally left. However, through it all, Megan had stuck with me. She played a vital role in making me the woman that I am today and it was something I would never take for granted.