Even the Moon Has Scars (10 page)

“Mom, this is my friend Lena,” I say. “We just came by to drop this off.”

Gabe’s mom hustles down the stairs in her mile-high heels like a boss.

“Lena, pleasure to meet you,” she says. She looks me up and down, probably wondering why the heck I’m wearing her clothes before extending her hand to me.

She smells like expensive perfume.

I wonder if I smell like anything other than fear.

“You as well, Mrs. Martinez,” I say. I intend for my voice to sound confident, but it comes out like a mouse's squeak instead.

“
Ms
. please, honey,” she says. Even though she throws in the word honey, there’s no mistaking that she’s correcting me. “I dropped the
Mrs.,
thank god, and frankly, I’d like to stay as far away from it as possible.”

I wonder if she has any idea how insulting that must feel to Gabe to hear her say that, to have her talk the way that she does about his father right in front of him.

Gabe’s mom turns back to him and asks, “This one doesn’t run with a bunch of criminals does she?”

“No, ma’am,” I shake my head rapidly.
Criminals?
Is this a joke?

“Honestly, Gabriel, I never thought I’d raise a son and have to vet his dates’ families—”

“You don’t,”  he deadpans.

“Clearly I do.” Her heels click across the shiny, white granite. She slides a pair of earrings in and says. “That Jemma girl has come by no less than eight times since you’ve been gone looking for you.”

I stare at Gabe, but he won’t look over in my direction. “I’m telling you, the next step will be me obtaining a TRO if she doesn’t stay away.”

Gabe squares his shoulders, and clenches his jaw.  “Listen, Ma, we just came by to drop this off—”

“What is that?” she asks, peering into the box with a look of disgust. “Where’d this come from? Some poor old man’s garage?”

“I bought it. With my own money.” Gabe sets the dirty box down on one of the gorgeous upholstered chairs. “It’s just a part for Gramps’s car.”

Ms
. Martinez throws up her hands and scoffs, “You’re wasting your time out there, and money on another one of your father’s unfinished projects?”

“It was Grandpa’s,” Gabe says.

“Well, if he couldn’t get it done—”

“Mom, he was ninety-three-years-old.”

“That family is full of excuses.”

I gasp. I can’t help it. I throw my hand to my mouth and hope Gabe and his mother didn’t hear it.

I don’t want to be here anymore. At all.

“They used to be
your
family, too, Mom. And they’re still mine.”

The tension is visible in his neck, In the way his jaw is clenched, the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows over and over.

She waves him off. “Anyway, what are you doing here? You know you aren’t supposed to leave Essex County without my permission, I thought I made that perfectly clear.”

Whatever Gabe did to get sent out to his grandmother’s must have been pretty bad if his mom has banned him from stepping foot in the city.

“Right, well, I’m not one of your prisoners, Ma.”

“Thanks to me,” she says. 

I wish I could become part of the shiny, black lacquered door that I’m leaning against. I wish I could slink under the tiny gap between the door and floor, down the hall, and all the way back home.

This feels like voyeurism in its worst form. I don’t want the venom spraying around the room to end up on me.

The relationship that Gabe has with his mom is not something I can relate to at all. I struggle with my parents hovering.

This
...this is different. This isn’t the smothering love I’m used to. This type of control doesn’t feel like love at all. I mean, I’m sure Gabe’s mother loves him—maybe—I hope.

“I just needed to pick up this part. I’m going to drop it here, and I’ll come back for it tomorrow.”

“Fine,” his mother says. She glances at the gold watch on her thin wrist. “My car will be here in a minute. Fundraiser at the club.”

“Kind of late for that, huh?” Gabe asks.

His mother doesn’t acknowledge the question.

“Okay then, have fun,” Gabe says. He doesn’t even try to fake sincerity.

“Gabriel,” she says, pressing her long fingers to her temples. “I want to be clear, our agreement still stands. We made a deal.”

She looks back at me and frowns. “I’m sorry you had to see this unpleasantness, Lisa.”

I don’t correct her. Of course I don’t.

“
You
made a deal,” Gabe says under his breath.

“I made a deal on your behalf. You could try being a little more thankful. Ungrateful, just like your father.” She shakes her head. “I did it to protect you.”

“Eh, Ma,” Gabe tilts his head and does a little
tisk-tisk
sound with his tongue that I fear might send his mother’s head into orbit. “You did it to protect yourself, too.”

“In any case, you know what was agreed upon,” she says. “I don’t want you hanging around here. Put up your things and get back to your grandmother’s house. I’ll have whatever you need shipped to you. You don’t need to make another trip into the city for it. Is that understood?”

Ms. Martinez grabs a small clutch from a drawer and adjusts her fur bolero.

I take a step out of the way as she walks toward the front door.

She just sent her son away. She told him not to bother coming back.

I don’t know how to make sense of what I’m seeing. All my parents have done my entire life is work to keep me safe, to protect me from everything. Is this the Martinez brand of protection? If so, no wonder Gabe wants to escape it.

“It was good to see you too, Ma,” Gabe says.

She spins back to him. “Don’t be a smartass, Gabriel. It wasn’t charming from your father, and it certainly isn’t from you, either.” Ms. Martinez turns the door handle and says, “Good-night, dear.”

I give her a quick nod and a small smile, though it must reek of pity.

Because that’s what I feel. Pity for her.

Pity that she can’t recognize how amazing her own son is. Pity that she’d turn her back on him. I don’t know the story, true, but I can’t imagine my mom and dad ever shunning me the way that Ms. Martinez just shunned Gabe. The way I bet she has his entire life. Where’s the drive to do better supposed to come from, when all you’ve ever known is how to be torn down?

“Hey, you could always kick me to the curb like you did to him.
Oh, wait
…” Gabe says.

Ms. Martinez whips back around to him and stomps his direction. She’s in his face with just five quick clicks of her heels.

Oh. My. God.

“Gabriel Martinez,” she says it so calmly that it scares even me. Gabe keeps his posture perfectly still and his expression relaxed. “If you’d like, I can call Ted right now and you can spend the rest of your senior year in juvenile detention, and that’s if you’re lucky—”

Gabe opens his mouth to reply, and I close my eyes. I know it’s stupid and it won’t help anything, but I don’t want to see or hear this moment between mother and son.

Instead, there’s silence. I crack my eyes open and both Ms. Martinez and Gabe are staring at me. I feel like I’m in a dream. A really awful, embarrassing dream.

For a woman so consumed with impressions, she must have reigned herself in so that I wouldn’t see—or hear—anything else.

Ms. Martinez smooths her dress down and gives her long, dark hair a good fluff then turns and leaves.

I don’t know why, but when the door finally clicks shut, I half-expect that Gabe will rush to me. Maybe because if I were in his shoes, I’d want someone to hold me.

Instead, he just stands there with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped. Like he’s dangling on the end of a thin limb and he has no one to count on—no one to reach out and help pull him in.

Everything about his life is confusing to me.

He has all of this money and freedom, but it’s like it only gets in his way. It’s like having all of those things prevents him from being the person he really is. Like maybe he doesn’t even know who that person is at all.

And maybe he thinks no one cares if he’s a whole person or not.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says. Even if he just tried to stand up to his mom, his voice now that she’s gone sounds full of defeat.

“It’s okay,” I say. It’s not. I’ve never been more uncomfortable in my life. I’ve never longed for the overprotective comfort of my mom’s arms. I’ve never missed my room, my bed, all of it more than right at this moment.

“You should put that away.” I motion to the part that was the purpose of this entire day that has turned from something so full of hope to something I sort of want to forget now. “We need to get home.”

“Right,” he nods, barely looking at me.

As he walks away, I wish there was a way I could turn this all around. That this night didn’t go to hell. But there isn’t. Because I’m just Lena Pettitt, the girl who was green enough to think that the world outside of my little house was somehow full of beauty and magic and instead of all of those fluffy things, what wound up at my feet turned out to be a dirty, flirty mechanic and an ice queen of a politician.

Suddenly, my tiny world feels the way my parents always meant for it to feel: protective. And I long for it.

“Gabe!” a female voice yells on the other side of the door, accompanied by a slap more than a knock.

Gabe is back at the top of the staircase in an instant.

“Don’t answer that,” he says. He showed zero reaction to his mother in his face, to her hurtful barbs being thrown his direction, but now, his jaw is slack and he’s blinking over and over like he doesn’t believe it. “Is the door locked?”

“What?” I ask, jerking my head backwards. “Are you being serious?”

“Gabe, I know you’re in there. I saw you come in with a girl!” the voice calls.

“Who is that?” I whisper.

Gabe carves a hand through his jet black hair. “Jemma. My ex.”

“Oh,” I say. Annoyed, sure. But an ex is better than the axe murderer I was imagining on the other side of the door based on his reaction.

“Why didn’t Bruce call up?” Gabe wonders out loud. “He must have been too busy talking to my mom. Perfect, two psychos. This night is just...let the bad times roll, huh?”

Speaking of crazy people: Gabe currently looks like one. He tugs on my arm, pulling me toward him. I crush into his chest just as she pounds on the door again.

It’s the way I expected him to react when his Mom left, but, instead, it’s a girl he used to love who sparks the most fear I’ve seen in his eyes.

“What are we supposed to do?” I nervously half whisper-half laugh.

“This isn’t funny, Lena.” His breath is warm on my face and I don’t know if I should be terrified of this girl behind the door or not, but I can’t focus on anything other than the fact that Gabe is this close.

“It’s a
little
funny.” I’m either delirious or it’s nerves, but I can’t help but chuckle. “You know you’re going to have to answer the door at some point,  right? It doesn’t sound like she’s giving up any time soon.”

“Fuck,” he mutters. Gabe has one woman in his life who couldn’t give a damn about him, and another who is maybe stalking him.

“I don’t exactly know what the protocol is here,” I laugh again. One minute ago I wanted to be back in the safety of my bedroom, and now I’m finding this particular situation mildly amusing. “Should I hide?”

“Just give me a minute,” he says, walking toward the door. “Let me see what she needs.”

I think we both know what she needs.

Gabe walks over to the door and opens it just a crack.  Jemma is mid-knock.

When I catch sight of her, I have to hold back another laugh. This isn’t someone you need to hide under the table from like an earthquake. You don’t need to cower in the corner from her with an arsenal of weapons. She’s beautiful: long black hair, olive skin and a face that probably gets her exactly what she wants.