Maybe I hated myself a little more than anything else.
“You shouldn’t have made him do that,” Mom scolded later at the house as I wrapped my arms around the top of the staircase. She and Dad stood in the living room pacing back and forth. They’d been fighting about me for the past hour. Mom had come home and found me crying into my pillow, and she’d embraced me tightly, telling me everything would be okay.
“It’s a damn shame that he’s like this! His brother shot his first deer when he was much younger than Jax!”
“But he’s not Jax,” she swore. “Jax is different. He’s sensitive.”
“He’s a sissy.”
“Don’t talk about my son like that,” she ordered with a very stern voice.
“Oh, so now he’s your son?” Dad shot back.
“He is when you treat him like this.” Mom’s voice cracked and she crossed her arms, looking down at the carpet. “You know what I mean, Cole.”
“No, I don’t think I do.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s funny, Derek isn’t even my son by blood, but he feels more like mine than my own damn kid.”
“Don’t say things like that. Plus, it’s different. Derek is way older than Jax. That’s not a fair comparison.”
Dad grumbled something I couldn’t hear then pushed his hands through his hair. “Unless you want to make him more of a bitch than he already is, let me handle raising the boy to be a boy. He’s a pussy because you keep babying him, Elizabeth. This is your doing.”
“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to listen to you talk down about Jax because he doesn’t take up the same hobbies as you.”
“His head is always in a book! He cries over fucking fishing because he thinks the fish is being harmed! I mean, fuck, he cried during The Lion King last week because Mufasa fucking died! Boys don’t cry over The Lion King. He’s a weak little shit, and you’re lucky I’m here to man him up.”
“He doesn’t need to man up. He’s perfect the way he is.”
“No. He’s weak. You’re weakening him. Just watch—watch him never achieve anything because of your mothering. You’re ruining him.”
They kept fighting, and I felt awful about it. A knot settled in my stomach. I headed back to my bedroom and cried into my pillow some more.
“Stop crying, loser,” I sobbed to myself. “Just be a man.”
Mom and Dad fought more and more about me. They never fought about my older brother, maybe because he was more like Dad. Maybe it was because he was good at sports, maybe because he was strong.
Strong.
I wanted to be strong. I needed to be strong.
“You okay, sweetheart?” Mom asked, peering into my bedroom. It was already past my bedtime, but I couldn’t sleep. My head and heart hurt too much to sleep that night.
“He hates me,” I whispered.
Mom walked over to me and crawled into bed beside me. She wrapped her arms around my body and held me close to her. “Your father doesn’t hate you, Jax. He’s just…” She took a deep breath. “He was raised differently, that’s all. He thinks certain things make a person a man, but he’s wrong.”
“I’m not a man.”
“You’re right, you’re not.” She leaned forward and kissed my nose. “You’re a handsome boy who’s just learning about yourself, that’s all.”
“But I want to be strong like Dad and Derek. I want to be better than me.”
“Strong? Jax Kilter, you’re the strongest boy I know,” she promised, nuzzling her nose to mine. “You know what makes you strong?”
“What?”
“Your heartbeats. The way you love animals and don’t want anything bad to happen to them. The way you say please and thank you. The way you hold doors open for people. The way you laugh out loud when reading a funny book and reread the parts out loud so I can laugh, too. The way you share your favorite jokes with me. The way you love your mama.” She smiled. “You might be the strongest boy I’ve ever known, and one day you’re going to be the strongest man, too. Don’t let your father get to you. You’re not any less of a man just because you aren’t like him or your brother.”
I wanted to believe her, but it was hard.
“Do you know you’re my best friend, Jax?” she asked.
I knew. I figured she just said it because she had to, but she was my best friend, too.
Mom was my only friend, other than Kennedy. She was always looking out for me, even when I knew she wasn’t. No matter what, Mom was always there for me.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, Jax. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“What would you think if you, Derek, and me got our own place?”
My eyes widened. “Without Dad there?”
She frowned and nodded her head. I saw tears fill her eyes. “Yeah. I think it would be good for us. I’m getting my landscaping business up and running soon, and you can be my righthand man to help me out. We can start a new life without your father. Of course, he’d always be in your life, Jax, but we’d just have our own place to stay.”
“You’re leaving Cole?”
I looked up to see Derek standing in the doorway with panic in his eyes.
Mom stood from the bed and walked over to him. “Derek, nothing has been decided yet and—”
“You can’t leave him! You can’t do this. I already lost a dad, and you can’t make me do it again. I’m not going. I’m staying here with Cole.”
“Calm down, Derek. Nothing has been deci—”
“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” he asked, gesturing toward me. “It’s because he’s a freak. I know that’s why you and Cole fight all the time.”
“Derek!” Mom hissed. “Don’t you dare speak about your brother like that!”
“Why not? You know it’s true. You treat him like he’s not a weirdo when he is. Cole’s right—he is a little bitch.”
Mom gripped Derek by the arm, not tightly, but firmly. “Apologize to your brother right now.”
“Why? I’m just telling the truth.”
“Derek,” she scolded, but he didn’t let up. Mom dropped her hold on his arm and pointed out the door. “Go to your bedroom, and don’t for a second think about going to football practice for the rest of the week. You’re grounded.”
“What? No way! We have a game on Friday, and if I’m not at practices, I can’t play.” He groaned as his face reddened in anger.
“You should have thought about that before speaking about your brother that way.”
“This fucking sucks,” he muttered, stomping away in irritation.
“Make that two weeks!” Mom hollered. Shortly after that, Derek’s bedroom door slammed shut.
Mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“He’s right,” I said. “It’s all because of me.”
Mom walked over to me, bent down so we were eye to eye, and placed her hands on my cheeks. “Jaxson Eli Kilter, none of this—and I mean none—has anything to do with you. Your father and your brother are wrong. You are perfect the way you are. Now get some rest.” She kissed my forehead and tucked me in. She walked away and was about to shut off the light, but I called out.