Unconventional Desires

I closed my eyes, hearing the crash that got worse and worse with each step the large brown box hit on the way down. Trying not to curse aloud as I mentally added grabbing plasticware to my to-do list for the evening. Instead, attempting deep, even breaths.

I sighed sadly, shaking my head, and making my way down to clean up the mess. Trying to remind myself that this would not be my entire existence—and that I wasn’t just as fragile as what had been broken. Moving would still be a fresh start, nothing like the tragic mess I had come from.

“Did you drop a box?” My cousin Mila asked, her large doe eyes peeking around the corner of the front door. I snapped from my darker thoughts immediately, smiling warmly at her.

Mila had been my saving grace to get me out of a bad situation. Now that I had moved far from the situation, my thoughts were only on how to return the favor. My first and foremost thoughts to return it was to help her once the baby came.

Mila had found her true love; a man that was as hairy as he was large; but a beast in the bed from what I understood. Considering her tastes and all the additional work he tended to put into their marriage—he was just her type. Something that had been a surprising development. I hadn’t thought for a second she would have married the man she met in a bar. Let alone one that was against my advice. When she crossed states to become barefoot and pregnant, I expected it to end tragically. Yet here we were, and she was happy as a clam.

I had been giving Mila love advice for years, but the moment she laid eyes on Allan? It was as if the cosmic force that pulls two people together was too great to ignore. I really didn’t like Allan when we had first met. He was, in my opinion, unkempt, lazy, and a little entitled to his opinions. However, the way he had shown his colors in order to make Mila happy, it was hard not to like him.

Allan had been the one to not only put up the cash but suggest the idea of a change of scenery to my overbearing mother. Something that helped her ease into the transition instead of sabotaging the process any further once Mila got involved. I wouldn’t have gotten my job in the newsroom without Allan’s reference despite my stellar job history.

He was one of the many reasons when writing love columns I was always sure to note, that you can’t guarantee who will fall in love with whom. One of the many articles I had written on love. Love advice had kept me busy in Arizona, but it was also love that had driven me away to the here and now.

“Yeah, it’s ok. I have more dishes in another one,” I replied, trying to keep the disappointment from shining through as I lied through my teeth. “Are you and Allan taking off soon?”

“Almost, he’s just finishing your air mattress so you have somewhere to sleep. Do you need me to drive you anywhere?”

I gave her a weary smile, looking at her overripe stomach. Even though I didn’t really want to walk, I knew a convenience store wasn’t that far. Plus, I wasn’t comfortable with Mila’s belly that big behind the wheel any more than it needed to be, any more than Allan was.

“I’ll be alright until Allan picks me up for work. Don’t worry about it. Like I said, other dishes. Go take a load off, you’ve been working too hard.”

Mila scoffed, rolling her eyes as she opened the door wider to place her hands on her hips. “I’m not even fully in my third trimester, Dee, stop treating me like I’m fragile or something.”

“Not fragile, just protective. Can’t have my niece or nephew coming out half-baked.” I grinned at her as I shook up the box a bit to settle the sharper pieces to the bottom, bits of the remains of my dishes clicking on the pavement as I slid it to the trash to sift through.

“Did you call your mom back yet? She’s been calling my phone.”

My smile died as I turned larger pieces on the ground over; planning to take a broom to the sidewalk after I grabbed it out of the moving truck. “She does that. I warned you. Moving me up here is going to be a plague on you now.”

“She just cares. She loves you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, glancing up to give Mila a false smile. Even though I knew she loved me; that wasn’t the issue. Unlike Aunt Tarla, my mom had my best interests at heart to the extreme. At twenty-five, even when I had lived alone, it hadn’t felt like I lived alone.

My mom had had a key to my place, inserting herself at every corner just as she had with my sisters until they had gotten married. Something that I knew wasn’t normal and had only intensified as they all got married. So it made trying to form a healthy functional relationship with a man nearly out of the question. Especially once Eric and I had split ways.

Part of me was still angry at myself for how I had handled and continued to handle my mother since moving had been an act of desperation. Just as changing jobs had been a move to appease the viper. Wondering how even at this age and this far away I was still letting her influence my choices in life.

My false smile grew brighter as I looked straight at her, nothing about my smile quite meeting my eyes. “I know, I’ll call her in a minute.”

Satisfied with my reply, Mila smiled, shutting the door as she headed back inside.

My smile died immediately as I looked down at the ground once more. Eyes searching for shards that were no longer there as memories flooded back once more. How much my mother’s love had cost me, and continued to cost me my joy.

Trying to remember that I was here now, and that with distance, things had to get better.

They had to.