Wham Episode (M,C)

Authors note: This is a heavier chapter. If you're not up to it or if you're looking for something smuttier like what's typical of CHYOA, I'd encourage you to come back to this when you're in the mood or bundle it with next week's more fun chapter

At the same time that everyone else was beginning their swimsuit competition on the beach and discovering the unintended consequences of Luna’s help, Aubrey and Maeve were at Murphy’s. The older woman had just sat down on the edge of the billiards table to take a break from the lessons that Aubrey had wanted to give her.

“You’re getting a lot better at everything!” Aubrey complimented.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm,” Maeve deflected, “but I’m aware of my faults. You don’t need to spare my feelings.”

“I’m not trying to spare your feelings. Your darts have been making it onto the board pretty reliably for a while now.”

“And I believe you may be wearing a hole in that bullseye.”

Aubrey shrugged. “You’ve put in a lot of effort still, both at that and the other games I’ve wanted to show you. I might be better, but I’ve been practicing all this stuff for years. Most people don’t have the patience to spend anywhere near as much time with me on this stuff. Even Tiffany and Lauren usually tap out and try to distract me with something else after an hour or so. Richard would when he was around back when we were dating, but he got busier with his new friends, and… yeah, you know what happened after that. Sorry.”

Maeve gently nodded. “I want to support you, however I can.” Her hand reached out on its own, finding the small of Aubrey’s back.

“Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you, Mom. I mean Maeve.” Aubrey tittered nervously. “Sorry, that was a weird slip. I don’t know how that happened.”

Maeve hid.

Dr.Petrov stayed at the bar.

The therapist could see the glass smile that she’d seen before from Aubrey, threatening to crack or shatter if pressure was applied in the wrong place. But she can’t stay on the edge forever.

“Aubrey,” Dr.Petrov started, “Can you tell me what happened to your mother?”

“A-are you sure, M-Maeve?”

“If you’re able to.”

Nineteen years ago, Aubrey was creeping down the hall of her family’s apartment. She wasn’t supposed to be up this late, she had school in the morning. But the air conditioner had been making a weird noise, so when her father had come home from work at five-thirty in the morning she’d been awake to hear him come in. It wasn’t rare for this sort of thing to happen, but she’d been hearing more noise when he came home lately and had decided to investigate.
“-but I’m frustrated. Doug, you know this isn’t the life either of us wanted.”
“I know, but it’s what we have.” Her father’s voice replied from inside her parents’ bedroom.”
“I’m being serious. Listen to me.”
There was a pause. “I’m trying to listen.”
“You’re always at work, saying that you need to recover from work, or busy getting ready for work.”
“I know, don’t you think I know that?” He shot back. “I come back from the factory every day sore. My back usually still feels the night before when I need to leave again.
“You could get another job. One that doesn’t leave you like this, or one that lets you work normal hours.”
“It’s hard to find another job. I’ve tried, and you know that. Most places that’ll hire dropouts don’t pay more than Burger Queen.”
“I found something. And besides, why the night shift? Why so much overtime? If you’d just ask your boss to put you back on the morning shift, we’d be able to see each other again without one of us being this fucking tired.
“I…” He sounded hurt. She hurt him. “I’ve been doing this for us. The night shift pays double and… we’d talked about a house together. The backyard for Aubrey to play in, the neighborhood that she could run around with kids her own age? That’s what I’d been doing the night shift for.”
Aubrey was trying to decide if she should go back to bed and pretend she’d been asleep. But something told her to stay, and in hindsight she wished she hadn’t listened to it.
“What if that’s not what I want anymore?” Her dad’s wife said quietly.
There was silence for a moment. “Mandy, what do you mean?”
“I haven’t been happy for a long time. We’re both working all the time, we barely talk. When I see any of my old friends from school I have to lie about us doing better so they don’t know how worthless my life is.”
“What about Aubrey and I? Aren’t we worth something to you?” Apparently there’d been a noise inside that Aubrey hadn’t been able to hear. “What was that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, what are we supposed to do about Aubrey? She’s-”

“I’m sorry, I know you wanted to hear the story but I’m kind of running up against words I try not to say.”

The two of them had moved over to one of the booths during the story. Aubrey was sitting in the therapist’s lap, which Dr.Petrov wouldn’t remember initiating if the blonde pointed it out to her. But what the gesture meant to Aubrey, combined with the mental encouragement from Squishable, made her willing to share a story that even Richard didn’t know in its entirety.

Dr.Petrov had a sickening feeling about just what her patient had been trying so hard to avoid saying. “That’s alright. If you feel that you have the ability to continue, I would appreciate that. If it’s too much, then I understand.” One of her hands came to pull the blonde in even closer.

“If it’d help you.”

“That’s our daughter you’re talking about.” Her father pointed out.
“Trust me, I know. She- there’s so many things wrong with her. She can barely hold eye contact. The other kids at school, it’s like there’s some disconnect between her and them and her teachers and I can’t tell if she notices-”
Aubrey grew cross at that, folding her arms as she eavesdropped on the conversation in the bedroom. She definitely noticed. It was obvious.
The woman inside continued on, unaware of the false section of her list. “-She barely eats, and I keep getting calls from the school about how hard it is to redirect her.”
“But she’s a genius.” Her father pointed out. “You know how well and how fast she’s able to read. We take her to the library on Saturday and she’s asking to go again on Tuesday. I talk to her about what she’s reading and I know that she’s going to be smarter than us. Smarter than me at least, that’s for certain.”
“Genius? Hun, she’s still trying to use her fingers to count, and she can’t even do that. They’re supposed to be learning multiplication, and she either can’t or won’t keep up. We need to stop making excuses for her!”
“That’s enough.” He cut off the conversation. “She’s still our daughter. She’s different, not broken. Even if she makes things hard sometimes… it’s not right to talk about her like that. I’m sorry that I let everything else get as bad as it seems to be, I honestly didn’t know. I promise, we can revisit the night shift and making our schedules work better in a couple days this weekend. I need to take a shower before I wake up Aubrey and get her ready for school. Once you’re done at the diner, can you pick her up after school?”
“Of course.”

“But she didn’t.” The Aubrey of the present day said.

“She didn’t? What happened instead?”

“I waited and waited. It was starting to get dark, and all the other kids at the school were gone. Even the clubs for the older kids that meet after school had started to go home.

“Eventually, someone noticed that I was still there. I hadn’t met her before because her classes were only available for sixth graders and up. Ms.Gentille took me to the principal’s office and at first I thought I was in trouble, but it turns out her husband was the principal and they called my mother. She didn’t pick up. After that failed a few times they called my Dad, and he was pretty confused.

"But Ms.Gentille took me up to her French classroom while we waited for him to come get me. They talked to him for a while before I could go home, and then the following week Ms.Gentille started asking me to come to her room after school until Dad could pick me up. We played these word games every day, and after I started asking questions about what she taught she expanded to our language lessons. We kept doing that, and in the summers she and her husband would pick me up and tutor me. He used to be a math teacher before he went into administration and so despite how dumb I was he helped me avoid getting held back. I… I owe them everything. How much I admire both of them was what made me want to be a teacher.”

Dr.Petrov swallowed a breath, piecing together what she’d just heard with what Aubrey and Richard had already told her. “Aubrey,” the therapist carefully started, “You’ve told me before that your fear of people leaving came from something before your boyfriends that you can’t tell me about. This was the beginning?”

Aubrey nodded.

Do you think of me like your mother? Dr.Petrov stopped herself from asking the question when she realized that she didn’t want to know the answer. Instead she was silent. Her hands took the lead, squeezing Aubrey close.

“Can you promise we’ll always be together? That you won’t leave?” The young woman before her asked.

The words caught in Maeve’s throat.

“I promise." Dr.Petrov said. “I’ll always be with you.”