{"id":3911,"date":"2025-04-14T15:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T15:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intheskye.com\/?p=3911"},"modified":"2025-04-14T15:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T15:38:09","slug":"ive-got-an-angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intheskye.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/14\/ive-got-an-angel\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Got an Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Justin Young was the master of toasts. The picture of a good man as he waved his wine glass and tipped it toward where the fireworks had just been. He was all sleepy and sloppy, mumbling about Independence Day and his family, and how both of them were glorious things. Obviously, it didn\u2019t stop there. \u201cPasta. Sex. Wine\u2026 Truly, never met a finer thing in life. Right Honey?\u201d he said and grabbed his wife\u2019s hand. She was all blonde hair, swept up like clouds and dainty silk strands that fell around her face. \u201cAh, nope. Look at the face of the woman next to me. My <\/em>wife.\u201d Georgia Young smacked her husband on the lips, shutting the wonderful man up before he said something unrefined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy J\u2019s drunk, Kaia,\u201d Georgia said. \u201cDoesn\u2019t know when to call it an evening or shut that beautiful mouth of his.\u201d And then she shot me a look, laying on the apology thicker than necessary. I\u2019d survived far worse methods of parenting\u2014 hell, this was practically Disneyland for me. I was in for the ride as long as they\u2019d have me\u2014 or for as long as I could hold myself together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way the Young parents looked at each other\u2014 I couldn\u2019t describe it. It just sparkled all the merry same as that giant rock on her finger, and I couldn’t help but feel I wanted to be crushed by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA drunk poet set on loving you. And your cooking. The whole, every yard, my love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPa, that was the least poetic, damned trite thing a non-poet has ever said.\u201d My boyfriend laughed. \u201cAbrams, what was it that I said the other day? In the car.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose were song lyrics, hotshot. Not poetic or original, in fact,\u201d I supplied to my boyfriend who made for a terrible singer, but a one-of-a-kind lover. \u201cThe shit\u2019s creek one landed harder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause I taught him it,\u201d Justin said. \u201cI\u2019d sail up shit\u2019s creeks and give you both my paddles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSweet fuck all. Throw me under the bus, Pa,\u201d my boyfriend said in the middle of ducking a rogue rigatoni. \u201cNice one.\u201d He hit Justin with the finger, then his mother with a crooked smile that said, sorry mom. <\/em>Georgia let things fly, like her husband\u2019s rigatoni bullets. Cursing wasn\u2019t on the menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, and Justin also taught our boy the sailor\u2019s language,\u201d she said. \u201cThat man of mine met my mother, and called me a ride, all in the same breath. I mean sure, your father wasn\u2019t wrong. But sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph\u2014 I\u2019ve never seen a woman clutch her pearls so hard. Not since he nearly traumatized my Jesus loving mom and had me half-ready for confession before our first date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd that, Georgia, is why the window is there. Not for fun, but functionality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, I was smiling behind the rim of my beer, but whatever a person was supposed to feel when they grinned big and drank large, was something I never quite understood. Mine was all muscle, all force and fraudulent. Honestly? The only explanation was that I didn\u2019t have all the tools in my tool box. Going through the motions didn\u2019t come easily, didn\u2019t come in this depressed package, which blew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDisgusting,\u201d Tuck said and speared a potato. \u201cYou both are detriments to my relationship. No one here is a ride. Not you. Not me. Not you,\u201d Tuck said, pointing at me with that very large potato. \u201cWell, yes, you. But\u2014ah shit. Don\u2019t listen to me, baby. Don\u2019t listen to them<\/em> for fucksake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah shit, put it perfectly. Whether or not I paid attention to his parents\u2019 banter, all wrapped in love and dripping with affection, my chest still felt like it was being ripped apart; a different sort of pain when your heart cried, but your eyes didn\u2019t. It wasn\u2019t about their words\u2014 it was how they looked at each other, how they just were.<\/em> And yeah, it cracked something wide open in me, something ugly and raw, because my whole life I\u2019d spent wishing my parents could\u2019ve gotten it right like that. The Youngs, they were the unprescribed reason I hoped my last breath was a sigh of relief. Pills didn\u2019t do it quite like that. Therapy didn\u2019t glue your parents back together even if you paid in pounds for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And relief, sure as shit, was a lie when it came in the form of a blade across my skin, just one cut, deep enough to finally end it\u2014 hit a vein, carve into my composite of guilt and bleed it dry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned at an early age, to battle depression was to take the sharpest weapon you could find and protect yourself from the person that was you. My hands were capable of doing wrong\u2014 committing crimes even. If it were someone else I turned the blade on\u2026the world would call it violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I skated my fork over my plate. Watched a flicker of candle light stretch over the china\u2019s white edges and then snap back to my heap of uneaten pasta. I was at a point where anything was better than looking at his family; even when all they did was look after me<\/em>. My eyes refused to even face their manor, the spanish style, sprawling house that was notched on a knoll about fifty years up. All those lights, pocketing the place with shafts of gold, between that shaped ivy rich people used to appear richer. Even with all the Young members, sitting around this wooden table, it still managed to look so full\u2014their house. Brimming with memories and love and the meaning of a home that I never really understood, despite having a grand total of two of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t realize it, but as my boyfriend’s hand anchored itself to my thigh, squeezing, he unconsciously worked to tug my thoughts back to the table and him, the boy I loved too much for my own good. \u201cYou\u2019re leaving me hanging, Abrams. What happened to \u2018I can drink seven. Watch me, Tuck<\/em>,\u201d he mimicked and was unfortunately, absolutely right about my sorry ass\u2014 my beer was empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My chest felt pretty fucking hollow too. But before I could respond, my stud was swinging his leg over the wooden bench, knocking over the sheepskin fur and clambering out from the table in three not so swift moves. A rower, capable of taking on any tide, yet beer was a whole different type of current; making Tuck lovely to admire in all his wiry limbs and 6 ‘3 frame that looked so boy-ish now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my rower left the table, leaving me alone with his parents, I decided that curling inside my own skin sounded pleasant. It wasn\u2019t a great, uplifting feeling, to sit around people who loved each other without limit. Not when it made me feel envious and tug down on my sleeves, fiddle with the hem as though it was an anxious habit of mine\u2014 not this shitty way to swallow a shameful urge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something terribly intimate about being understood, seen in ways that weren’t sexual or in front of this grand facade I had built to appear always delightful. A ray of sunshine, sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time Tuck brought me over for dinner, it was the first time in my life that I had been surrounded by three smiling people at once\u2014 warmth radiating through them like the sun breaking through a damn storm. Something inside me had shifted with the sight. An ache and a wonder, both which I had sunk into my core and been shoved at my chest, heavy and bittersweet, crushing the air from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt that warmth now, settling over my head where Tuck\u2019s chin rested. \u201cNone of that. You hear?\u201d Yup. Heard him, loved him, hated myself no less than twenty times that. \u201cFourth of July and the worst company possible, but I\u2019m grand. You\u2019re grand. You\u2019re here<\/em>. None of that bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy head\u2019s with ya, baby. Right with my heart. You got me.\u201d Every word was weighted in truth. Still, they felt like a winter gust coming out of me, cold and empty. Felt similar to when the authorities rang my phone three weeks ago, bringing on this snow storm of unforgiving wind, spearing through my clothes and my heart. Wasn\u2019t a pleasant call\u2014 the fucking most horrifying one ever honestly. My father was dead and I was expected to shore up the strength and see a life without him.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a dad to my brother first; before he was a soldier in Vietnam\u2014 drafted just weeks before his wedding, before he ever got the chance to be a husband. When he came back, my pop slipped his wedding ring on the same hand that pulled a trigger, and it was the soldier in him that raised me. Our home in Maine became a battlefield, where we both fought our battles. Waged our own wars. His in the jungle of Drang Valley; mine in the trenches of my own mind, because apparently lacking the happy cells meant you were constantly wrestling for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eyes returning to the table, it was just Tuck and Justin. Both of them staring towards Georgia\u2019s who was walking up their hill, phone pinned between her shoulder and ear. That, being how I\u2014we\u2014 saw her most days, I knew on the other line was Carter, Tuck\u2019s younger brother who was fighting harder battles than us all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leukemia wasn\u2019t just the infestation of cancer beneath the boy\u2019s skin, it was a sadness that infected all of the Young\u2019s hearts. Somehow weaved itself into mine while I was shaving Tuck\u2019s floppy brown hair last week. It all but fell with tears neither of us were brave enough to address. I supposed crying ruined that whole image of strength we tried to keep up, and if that wasn\u2019t some fucked up psychological bullshit, all the money my father once spent on therapy had been a bad fucking bet.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a moment of silence. One where I couldn\u2019t help but see it as a telephone pole, teetering on this thin bottom, wires live and cracking with energy\u2014 Georgia Young carried the weight of her son\u2019s pain on her back. She wore it as though it were a damned badge of honor and she was the champion, weathering out the storm, come high or hellwater. Something about that woman\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My phone went off. And the sound was a hellish siren that tore through my thoughts and cleared the road for my mother. Justin didn\u2019t seem to notice. Tuck\u2019s eyes latched onto mine and words were in there\u2014 he could see the way it cracked me open and how my hand automatically moved to answer it, even as my mind screamed at me to stop. It\u2019s all good, Abrams. It\u2019s grand. You\u2019re grand. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piss down my back and tell me it\u2019s raining because that was a load of shit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could do nothing, but nod it off. Act as though my mother hadn\u2019t spent my whole life breaking me down. See, this call wasn\u2019t from a mom asking me to be home at a reasonable hour. And to be utterly transparent, it never was, never would be. My mother liked to say depression was a stain. And every time I sat on that woman\u2019s couch, I wondered if it wasn\u2019t my depression that darkened her and her fiance\u2019s estate across town, but if it was me. Of course it was, who was I kidding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The daughter her pedestal didn\u2019t have room for. That spot was for my brother in the larger bedroom with his golden child trophy and his head over a computer where he inhaled JavaScript like it was cocaine. He got high off the thought of riches while I got high off taking too many antidepressants or hurting myself. Yale made my brother a genius to my mother; depression made me not worth a mere sliver of her love or her sympathy. She had taught me to ride a bike and how to hate myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I was a big girl with shaking hands and a bloody organ that tried to rip out of my chest or break a rib getting there. I pressed the phone to my ear. Gathered several plates and scraped my strength from where it remained in tatters,  finding a barrel of pain where my courage should have been. Great. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi, mother.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKaia.\u201dshe said, my name was a dead weight in her mouth. \u201cHow are the Youngs?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A question to ease me in\u2014 soft, harmless\u2014 just warm enough before she swung at me with that guilt hammer and left everything in me cold and far fucking away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFine. Grand. All is good and well,\u201d I said, marching up the small hill, so lost, and headed towards the only place that felt like home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been eight days,\u201d she mused. \u201cEight. Since you\u2019ve been home or even called. And I guess I just imagined you\u2019d want to spend the summer with your family. In your home.\u201d That funny word for what one would use to describe her house, that cold, modern estate, that balanced on her fiance\u2019s wallet and bordered the eastern shore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve survived without me,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve survived without you for a long while, dear. Whatever girl I raised in that old house with your father\u2014 she\u2019s left. Wandered far, far away from whatever love or care she had for her mom. Doesn\u2019t want to come back because she\u2019s too far gone. Isn\u2019t that right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A part of me wanted<\/em> to turn back. That was the part which longed for my stud\u2019s arms and the safety net he offered as he wrapped them around me. In that life, his friends, Nashy and Chuck, helped fight my battles. My frontlines, my sidelines or cheerleaders; whatever you call them. And I was this big dope for not realizing it until my father\u2019s funeral because it wasn\u2019t my mother\u2019s embrace holding the pieces of me together. It was a wave of love and support, smelling of boy-ish energy and loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other part of me used my hip to  nudge open the side door, closed it on that possibility, and used my right hand to stop Jonesy, their rescued mutt from throwing me on my ass, while I coaxed her to the island. It was cluttered with more chrysanthemums than I could count on my damn fingers. Everything had their damn charm here. Even this stain who even Jonesy licked up with love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still\u2026 didn\u2019t know what to say to my mother. Oftentimes her words felt like bullets. Machine gun in her hands, puncturing me with guilt, just waiting until everything that held me together for the last seventeen years splintered, and spliced, and fell in front of her like puzzle pieces. She wanted to be right; and right was admitting that something inside me was wrong, that only she could fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell? What are you doing, Kaia?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe dishes,\u201d I said and hunched over the sink to turn it on. To do anything with my hands but strangle the woman through the phone. \u201cI\u2019m doing well, in fact. No plastic forks or knives in sight and I\u2019ve had a handle on it all for three weeks now. I\u2019m not a monster, mom.\u201d And not fucking stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood for them. They\u2019ve got a step daughter doing their dishes because she sure as shit doesn\u2019t do mine. What would your father think of you today? Who would he see if he looked at you, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My blood went cold. Someone had tossed a damn ice bucket over my head. Down to my very toes, every single one of my muscles froze; my vertebrates turned into blocks of ice that felt so close to crumbling. I would have preferred that. Instead, it was the plate in my hand which slipped\u2014 slipped and cracked into the porcelain basin, shattered into all these shards in the exact way I pictured myself right now.  Only this time, I had broken what was not mine to break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA couple weeks back I emailed the Relief Recovery Center because I can\u2019t keep doing this with you. I refuse to lose myself helping you because you\u2019ve clearly lost yourself. Lost who you are.\u201d She might as well have smacked me.\u201cThrowing your sad self at this boy and his family as if they\u2019re God. He\u2019ll break that heart. Just know that, dear. And when he\u2019s gone, it’s my doorstep you\u2019ll be at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numb. Fucking gone, staring at those glass pieces. Eyeing up their edges. Standing there, so packed with anger and betrayal, wanting\u2014 needing to just\u2014my knees buckled with this weight I was so tired of carrying. She shoved me down and down again, a straight kick of her foot into my ribs. It fucking chipped away at my sanity and my stability in recovery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, I was an addict. Would always be one and the thought of fighting those urges for the rest of my life was a depressing thought, but I was three weeks clean. Some days it felt like I was starving myself. Others, that I was itching for a way to make my depression just fuck off. But I was doing it damnit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balancing on this cliff that had me seeing nothing but relief at the very bottom of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy boy has no plans of hurting anyone\u2019s heart, Jane.\u201d Before I could so much as turn around, my phone had went off and vanished. \u201cI think we\u2019ve all had perhaps a long day and it would be best to cool our heels until tomorrow.\u201d Someone patted me on the shoulder and while I looked at those broken pieces of china, I didn\u2019t know if it was Georgia\u2019s hand or the devil\u2019s who loved to get close when I was at my breaking point. \u201cRight, Jane? Tomorrow, should we say?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And just like that, the heel of my mother\u2019s foot was off of my damn chest and I could breathe. I came to the conclusion that some things were miracles and others were just Georgia, the angel that she was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI, uh,\u201d Fuck me. She<\/em> deserved a pat on the back, not me. \u201cI\u2019m sorry for breaking that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re Justin\u2019s mothers.\u201d She shrugged. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to get rid of them for some time anyways and if they all had somehow landed in that sink, I wouldn\u2019t shed a tear, love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unable to muster up the courage and say a simple thank you, I opted for swallowing the emotional steel blocking my throat. I didn\u2019t expect her to walk over and start drying the plates after she\u2019d handed my phone back, but the good woman seemed hell-bent on playing the saint and not stopping anytime soon. \u201cShe\u2019s just\u2014 I mean, she means well, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know what she is. I\u2019ve known<\/em> what she is.\u201d Georgia took another plate from my wet hands and it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if the woman wiped my drool in the process. \u201cDid my Tuck ever tell you about my brother, Henry?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShit\u2014ah.\u201d Mentally cracked myself on the head. \u201cSorry. Cursing. No, he never said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe used to be a football player. A good one when I was in the eleventh grade and my job became watching him walk on that field and walk off it. I cheered in the stands in place of our father. I watched after my dear brother the way he would have. And God, it hurt me, but Henry was hurting himself. So, every night once he emptied his pockets, showed me the absence of pills or baggies or just proof that he hadn\u2019t fallen off the wagon again, he could come sit at the table and eat with me. I thought it made me terrible, like he owed it to me to be clean but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell. That day, it was his team\u2019s last game and my brother told me he was going out with some friends\u2014 a party on the beach, he said. Just once, I went home with a speck of hope. But I was still in that empty house, lying awake in bed for a call that eventually did come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henry and you saw the same finish line. Just different roads to the same impending end.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/em>\u201cLosing a brother the year after losing our father, was one thing. But seeing his body, understanding that pain could manifest in ways that went unseen\u2014 that was worse. I was young and always looking at his eyes and never these,\u201d she said while careful not to touch my wet long sleeves, but gesture towards them. \u201cI\u2019m not here to tell you to lay your pain on my boy. But, I\u2019m here to tell you that he\u2019ll love you no less. He\u2019d come with lanterns looking for you even in death, my dear, and that\u2019s why I can wholeheartedly tell your mother my boy is good for it. It\u2019s your damn hellish succubine of a mother who\u2019s going to suck that sweetness out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you\u2014\u201d Nearly fell off that cliff just from disbelief. The good woman cursed and I smiled. \u201cOh, my husband\u2019s taught me many<\/em> things. And when the sailor\u2019s language is necessary, I\u2019m not one to shy away from it,\u201d she said with a sad smile. \u201cYou\u2019ve hung the stars in my boy\u2019s sky. Let him see you in that true light of yours, Kaia dear,\u201d the only woman who ever listened to my truth and hugged me for it, said. She wasn\u2019t my mother, but every bone in my body was telling me to crawl to her just so she could reshape them, reshape me, make me less broken and better. Here I was, folding like a deck chair, having grown a bloody conscience, all sentimental and pathetic, but what else could I do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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