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***Ella***
“He was face down in someone else’s vagina, Mom! He had to pull himself out to look at me!” I paced in front of the window in my cheap motel room. Outside I could see a few guys loitering in the parking lot and I watched what definitely looked like a drug deal go down. Hurrying back to the other side of the room, I shook my head and tried not to think about how I wasn’t sure the flimsy lock on my door would hold if anyone even pushed the door too hard.
“I just hate when men slip and fall into other women’s vaginas. You know, that’s never happened to me. Not even once. Not a single man has ever tripped and landed in my vagina. And it’s not like I’ve been keeping my legs closed tight. Not during these dry and trying times.”
I stopped pacing and grimaced. “Mom.”
She laughed her belly deep laugh that usually made everyone around her laugh along. I just wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Sorry!”
A text came through on my phone and I had her hold while I read it and replied. “I got a hit for a potential room. Talk to me while I go out to the car? I’m less likely to get murdered if I’m on the phone, I think. Or something like that.”
“Ella! You can’t say things like that to me! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” She groaned. “Honey, just come back home. This is all too much. You can take off a semester and transfer back to Penn in the spring.”
I ground my teeth together. “I’m not letting Billy cost me an entire semester of school.”
“Then maybe I should come there. I could rent a place and we could live together again. You know how much I miss you when you’re gone. I could even enroll and take a few classes. It could be just like that movie we watched together about the mom going back to college with her daughter. They had so much fun together, Ella! We could go dancing!”
“Mom! I already had to see my boyfriend eating out another woman today. I can’t handle any other trauma.” I grabbed my purse and keys and held my breath before opening the door and rushing out to my car. No one looked up from what they were doing. I might as well have been invisible.
“I heard a door. Are you in your car? Are you okay? Ella?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Apparently no one is all that interested in me, even the guys doing drug deals in the parking lot.” I started my car and locked it, just in case anyone decided I was worth a look. I put Mom on speaker and loaded the GPS with the address I’d been given.
“Oh, Ella, people want you. I want you.” She laughed. “Just in the clingy mother way, though.”
“You’re going to give me nightmares.”
“Sorry. Anyway, tell me again about how Billy was going down on this other woman.”
I pulled out of the lot, careful not to disturb the guys arguing about their dealings. “You’re kidding me.”
“No. I want to hear it all again so I can come up with an appropriate punishment for the asshole.”
“Fine. I got here a day early to surprise him before classes started. I went to his house and one of his frat brothers let me in. I should’ve known something was up when the guy just giggled and ushered me in. Billy was in his room with the door wide open, eating some pretty blonde woman out. It took him a while to notice me, Mom. I was just standing there in shock. Then, he tried to chase me out to talk to me but he had vag breath and some of his frat brothers were standing around watching. So I throat punched him and got out of there.”
“What?! You didn’t tell me you throat punched him! Way to go, Ella! I-” She grunted. “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I would never throat punch anyone, even if I wanted to.” And I’d really, really wanted to throat punch Billy. “I’m so embarrassed, Mom. I came all the way here to be with him. I left my dream school for this. I took a chance on him and he’s been cheating on me for who knows how long. I hate him. I hate him so much.”
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” She snorted. “Do you know how many times I’ve been cheated on? I don’t want to give you any negative views on men, but men cheat and men kind of suck, baby.”
I turned onto a service road next to the interstate and continued following the directions. “Mom, I don’t want to be mean, but you had me with a man who disappeared as soon as the responsibility showed up and you’ve dated a long line of losers since. What negative views are you worried about giving me that you haven’t already?”
“Hey! That’s not nice. They weren’t all losers.” By her silence I could tell she was about to say something I wouldn’t like. “Speaking of the one who wasn’t a loser… You know Vaughn goes to school there. You could always call him for help. I’d feel a lot better about you going to Vaughn than I do about your little motel spot.”
I laughed. “Vaughn? You want me to go to Vaughn? Are you crazy?”
“You don’t have a lot of room to be choosy, Ella. Your step-brother might be your only option.”
“He’s not my step-brother, Mom. You and Paul got divorced so long ago.” I shuddered. There was no way I was going to call Vaughn. Not a chance in hell. “I’d rather go crawling back to Billy.”
“Shut your mouth. You better not!” Mom’s raised voice was a clear indicator that I’d struck a nerve. “We don’t do that in this family. No Daughton woman has ever taken back a cheating loser. If that starts with you, I’ll disown you.”
I turned away from campus and looked up at the houses as I slowly drove. The farther I got away from campus the worse the houses looked. “That should show you how much I want to call Vaughn. Also, don’t threaten to disown me. I’m too old to become a parentless kid. I wouldn’t handle it well.”
I pulled to the curb so I could say goodbye to Mom before pulling into the driveway of the house I would hopefully be moving into. I flipped up my visor and glanced around, always conscious of my surroundings. Too bad that didn’t translate into relationships.
