I don’t know that any progress was made today, but I’m one determined motherfucker. After giving up on my relationship with Tinley, I haven’t given up on much of anything else, and my son will never be one of them.
But as I drive back to my own shitty house, I can’t figure out a way to convince him to be better when he won’t even talk to me. Fuck, do I have my work cut out for me.
Chapter 10
Tinley
Grateful isn’t a word I’d normally associate with Ignacio Torres, but today I am. He didn’t have to text me and let me know that he was with Alex, assuring me in a second text that he’d never let anything bad happen to the boy. But he did. Within thirty minutes of Ignacio leaving my house, that text came through, and it is the only thing that keeps me sane until Alex walks back in the door several long hours later.
My kid doesn’t rush past me to his room the second he steps inside which is what I was expecting. He lingers in the kitchen, making himself something to eat before bringing a bowl of leftover spaghetti into the living room. In an effort to show he’s still pissed, he sits on the opposite end of the couch from me rather than his normal position in the middle.
“I want to know the truth,” he says before shoveling spaghetti into his mouth. “All of it.”
“I—” I focus on my hands, twisting my fingers around each other. “I don’t know where to start.”
“From the beginning,” he mumbles around a mouth full of food.
“The beginning,” I whisper, a small smile playing on my lips, because no matter how much I ended up hating Ignacio in the end, everything up to that point was incredible. “Ignacio Torres was a troubled teen. Before we moved here with my nanny, he did all sorts of bad things. He ran with the wrong crowd.”
“He dealt drugs,” Alex adds.
“Yes. He associated with the wrong people, but I never saw much of that. I mean, I knew people respected him. I knew people would walk away and keep their distance when he walked into a room, but I didn’t know the extent of his troubles for a very long time. Even when I heard things from people, girls whispering in the locker room or kids at school saying things about how he was, he wouldn’t confirm if they were spreading rumors or speaking the truth.
“He tried to get me to notice him for weeks, but those whispers were always swirling around me, and it was like the atmosphere changed whenever he was near. It took me a while before I gave him a chance, and once I did, I knew I was in love. I gave him—” I clear my throat, uneasy with having this conversation with my son, even though I know he’s grown up way too fast not to know about sex. “Everything. Two days before graduation, Pop told us that he got a new job in Dallas. It had the ability to change everything for our family. We wouldn’t have to live in this neighborhood. He would have insurance for the entire family. It was the break he’d been waiting for, for over two years, but I didn’t want to go. If I did go, I wanted Ignacio to go with us, but I knew asking was out of the question. Pop hated that man.”
“He didn’t.” I look at Alex. “He didn’t. I asked him once how he felt about my dad, and he told me that he was grateful for a man that gave him such a wonderful grandson.”
Tears well in my eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He chews another bite of spaghetti. “I was like five or six. We were at the park kicking the soccer ball around. I noticed another family there, a dad with three sons. I came home later that day and asked you about my father. I wanted to know if he was the type of man who would play at the park with me if he were still alive.”
His voice cracks on the last word and it multiplies my pain and regret.
“Keep going,” he urges.
“I didn’t want to tell Ignacio about us leaving. By that point, I figured I could convince Pop to let me stay behind and help take care of Nanny. I was graduating soon, and I didn’t think he could really stop me, but the idea of leaving south Houston for something better was nagging at me. When I told Igna—your dad—about the new job, he didn’t take it the way I thought he would. He didn’t feel for me that same way I felt for him. He said some mean things, and even though I knew about you that night, I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t.”
“So, because he didn’t love you, you didn’t want him to love me?”
Pain spears me once again. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Uncomplicate it for me.” He places the fork in the empty bowl and situates it on the table in front of us. With one hundred percent of his focus on me, I can’t help but look away again.
How do I explain bitterness and years of anger to my son? How can I make him understand that I thought I was making the right decision back then?
“I was so angry with the things that he said to me that night. I didn’t feel like he deserved you and was certain that you deserved better than a foolish man who played games with a teenage girl’s heart.”
“So, you lied.”
“Over and over, and the lies just got bigger and bigger, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed if you knew who he really was, the way he was when I walked away from him that last night. I wanted to save you any pain that he’d cause.”
“Growing up thinking my dad wasn’t only dead but a gangbanging drug dealer was painful, Mom. You should’ve picked better lies.”
“I hated him too much to make you think he was some kind of hero, Alex. I can admit that was a mistake. I should’ve been mature enough to tell him about you that night, but that’s not how things worked out.”
“He deserved to know.”
He sounds exactly like my damn mother right now.
“I knew we were leaving. He may not have thought he could ever escape south Houston, but Pop assured our way out, and I didn’t ever want to look back.”
“You didn’t expect to get caught in a lie,” he corrects.
“That, too,” I agree. “But please know that I wanted to give you more than Ignacio Torres could’ve offered you by staying. I imagined a better life for both of us, and we had that for a while.”
“Until Pop died.” I nod my head in agreement, but the pain of losing my father stems from more than just his death. We lost everything—the house, financial security, our biggest cheerleader. We weren’t rich by any means, but we also weren’t living on ramen three days before every payday either.
“You made a mistake,” he says, anger being his go-to instead of showing pain and vulnerability.
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do, Mom. He went into the Army for eight years. The man speaks over thirty different languages. He works for some security firm in St. Louis. He isn’t a drug dealer. He isn’t a gangbanger. Did you see his truck? His clothes?”
“He told you all of this today?”
I did notice his clothes and his truck. I noticed how handsome he still is and how other than thin laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, he doesn’t look much different than he did in high school. His face isn’t worn and tired, betraying hard years of struggling the way mine does. Although I should probably be grateful the man who showed up to demand access to my son isn’t a strung-out criminal, I’m also bitter that he’s done so much better for himself than I ever could’ve imagined.