What Brings Me to You Read Free

since I was eight. Mostly to absolve herself of guilt, though she thought she was doing her motherly duties. "Maybe if you had a friend in this world it wouldn't be so..." she never once finished that sentence because she didn't have to. Instead she played matchmaker. Charley this is Dani, you both have names like boys and neither of you like pink. Go play. Age twelve:  Charley this is Jada, she has bad skin and daddy issues too! Go talk. Age fourteen: Charley, this is Tanya. She's depressed and has a weight problem too! Go eat something. Not like she ever actually said that, but it's clear that's what she meant by introducing me to those girls. She's trying it again. With Teddy. Teddy of all people! Now I know she’s getting senile or something.
                  "Mother, I am the last person he wants to talk to. Believe me."
                  "That's not the impression I got from him."
                  "I’m sure it wasn't",  because you're clueless, "but I'm not calling him. I'm not going over there. I'm not texting, emailing. I'm not writing a goddamned  letter . Not today. Not for a while. Probably never. And that's okay for both of us. If he gets desperate to speak with me, which is unlikely, that's a different story entirely. He knows the number. He knows where I live. If he doesn't, he can find out. But mother, you cannot push us together because we have some shared history. If I'm ever going to move on I need not to dwell on the past. Teddy and I haven't spoken because we're trying to move on. Can you respect that?" Damn! That's good! Aren't you proud? It's good. So good, I've rendered  her semi-speechless. I mean, technically she hasn't said anything else, but I know she wants to.
                  Any win counts. That's what you always said.
     
    *****
     
                  I'm out of food. I mean, you'd be disgusted with what's been missing from my diet. I finished the last of the bouillon cubes. All there is in the fridge is some soy sauce. The pantry is completely bare- except for your cereal. I kept it all for you. Multi-colored boxes of varying shape and size, each with their unique fibrous, crunchiness. I miss the sound of your munching. The way the spoon would clatter against the bowl. I'm sorry I gave you such grief about it at the time. Who knew when you were gone I'd actually miss it? But that's how everything works, eh? We're never satisfied and never appreciate what we have until it's gone. That's kind of how it was with Teddy. I know I told you that you were my first -which is undeniably true, but I did get close.
     
    *****
     
                  I was eighteen. Just graduated from the torture-chamber-hell-hole-rage-inducing institution known as high school. Mother had forced me in with some girls in the neighborhood my age that I didn’t know because they went to a private school. She thought they were, "wholesome, sweet girls that stayed out of trouble." I don't know why, after everything that happened with her, I thought she'd be a decent judge of character. Those "wholesome" girls were nothing but sluts who stole whiskey from their dad while he was at work, kept clothes they "bought", which really meant stole, themselves in the trunk of their rusty old Beetle, and snuck off to the beach to go to third base with older boys every single day. Obviously, these were not the type of girls who wanted to take me under their wing, but they were being forced by their parents and I was looking for a way to get out of the house. Besides, I knew what they were up to. If they didn't want me to tell we'd all have to play nice-nice. The only good thing was that, at the beach, I didn't have to be around them.
                  I'd hide the book I was reading in my bag, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina , things like that. I still hadn't come to terms with my closet romanticism. I was pretty much in denial about the fact I’d been dreaming