Page 40 of If We Were Young

The music pumped through the door and I almost turned around and went downstairs to rummage in the fridge looking for something liquid and cool to take the edge off.

Then I pulled up those big girl panties no one else could wear apart from me in my role as mother and knocked. And again. And again.

Eventually, I just pushed open the door. There was only so much standing on the landing knowing my own mother was downstairs listening that I could tolerate.

“I come in peace.” I waved the chocolate bar I’d swiped out of my bedside cabinet on the way out of my room. Don’t judge me. I had needs.

“Are you going to ground me again?” She laid sprawled on her bed staring at the ceiling.

“Is it possible to ground you for any longer than I have?” I sat on the edge of her mattress, shuffling myself backward so there was enough space I didn’t fall off and land on my arse.

“No.”

“A nose piercing? Hannah, come on.” I stared at her little button nose. “You knew the school wouldn’t like it.”

She shrugs. “So?”

“Well sometimes you have to abide by the rules, even if you don’t agree.”

The withering glance she shot in my direction made me cringe. “We can’t all be law-abiding perfect citizens like you, Mum.”

Ouch.

I was bleeding out here.

“I’m not perfect, and nor am I law-abiding.”

She huffed a breath. “No? Tell me one thing you’ve done that was wrong.”

I studied my nails while I ran through some things to say. I mean there wasn’t much, not because I was a goody two-shoes, but just because I’d never done anything wrong.

Matthew’s face in the car popped into my head. I needed to get a handle on this.

I’d do anything to sit in that car again though.

Without over thinking I forced words out through my lips. “Once, I really liked a boy.”

She groaned. “Oh please.”

“No… truth. I liked a boy, but I knew he had a girlfriend.”

Her scowl melted, like an icy puddle just turning to water at the edges. “What did you do?”

“I knew he wouldn’t be mine, but I hated the thought of him being hers, and because I’m me and I can’t tell people how I feel, I made myself into his best friend, so he’d be half mine and half hers.”

“Eww, Mum. No one shares boyfriends.”

I cringed. What did they talk about at school?

“I don’t mean like that. But what I did was wrong. I should have let him go. I guess he was happy with her before he met me, but then he didn’t like me enough to break it off.”

My chest hollowed out like the inside of a pumpkin on Halloween.

“Did you? In the end?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Why do you struggle to say things? Angie says it’s because you have a switch that turns on your mute mode.”