37 ~°~Chapter Thirty-seven~°~

So first h-he took me to a pet shop." I start softly, swirling the meatballs in my glass bowl around.

I feel my mom staring at me. "Suzy's place?" She asks with a frown in her voice.

"You know her?" I whip my head up.

She just gives me a look. "I've lived here for nearly eighteen years, why won't I?"

I avert my face. "But I didn't."

"Because you don't really get around, you should you know." She says seriously, intensely struggling to get spaghetti and meatballs on the poor chopsticks at the same time. "You spend a lot of time inside, that's while you're the color of pasty bread."

I just give her a look. "This is payback for calling your eyes big, isn't it?" 

She actually manages to look shocked. "What? No, it couldn't be. You literally told me to diet to reduce my big eyes, my comeback is going to be more savage than that, trust me. Besides your eyes are bigger." She states then sniggers. "It was even worse when you were a toddler, at first glance the only thing to see was your eyes." She teases, laughing hard at the memory.

"Mom?" I whine. "Stop picking on me." I reach forward and yank a lock of her hair.

She just laughs harder. "You'd do that too when I was too caught up wondering just where your saucer like eyes came from and you needed my attention."

I just cover my face with both hands, scared that my next words will be fuel for whatever path she's raging on.

"Wait, that's true, it has been a while." She says getting up abruptly.

I frown. "What has been a while?" But she has already stopped listening to me.

"I can't believe I haven't even showed Dale yet, I need to get that picture out of the attic too." She mumbles to herself, darting out of the kitchen.

I just stare at the spot she disappeared from, is she about to do what I think she is?

"Come baby!" I hear her excited voice from the living room and my anxiety mounts. "Come see your baby pictures, oh! You're so adorable! How did you manage to get me to hide all this…"

I tune her out, groaning in frustration. My life is on the brink of ending again - I know how long it took me to persuade her to hide all those embarrassing pictures, especially the one that shows me getting married to Virgil.

I groan again and get up to clear the table, my mom isn't coming back that's for sure and the thought of those pictures seeing the light of day again is enough to make me lose my appetite.

"Mom, please don't." I half beg, when I come in to see my mom struggling to find the perfect spot for the wedding picture.

"Don't what?" She asks absently, struggling with the huge frame.

I just slowly collapse on the ground and roll around a bit in frustration. "Hide those pictures, they're devasting." I wail, sprawled on my back on the rug.

She moves towards me just so that I can see her creepy smirk. "Devastatingly awesome right." She nods slowly, that disturbing smile still on her face.

I just give her a blank look before throwing my legs and arms around again, my mom didn't comprehend the word embarrassment in relation to me but I might be able to use Virgil to get her to hide at least this one.

"Virgil is probably going to get embarrassed by that picture, mom." I say with as much seriousness I can inflect in my voice, sitting up.

My mom pauses her acrobatics with the picture frame to look at me and a shard of hope passes through me. "You really think so?" She worries, a furrow in her brow and I wonder just what it was with Virgil that made every female specie like him unnecessarily.

I stand up, braver now that I had a good card to play. "Yes Mom, he's already eighteen now, of course he's be embarrassed." I layer it on thick, just in case she manages to convince herself otherwise.

"Oh dear." She murmurs softly. "You could be right." She continues in that same soft voice. "Then I should just put this picture awa… sike!" She snickers at me, continuing the task of finding the perfect place to drop the picture so that it would catch the most light and attract the most attention.

"Virgil asked about the picture." She tells me proudly with an irritatingly smug look on her face. "He wanted to know why I hid it."

"Oh no." I whisper, sliding to the ground again.

Two things, Virgil remembers the picture??

He asked about it??!

He wants it back out??!!

Okay, that's three but right now I'm having a mini mental breakdown as I watch my mom duitifully go around the living room to spread the way too many picture frames of me in life ending scenes.

Like the one where I running in diapers and my mom is chasing after me to put clothes on me, Aunt Candy had taken that one and it was her screensaver for a long while.

Or the one Shana and Virgil were pulling both my arms with mutinous expression on their baby faces, I think they had both been six and I five but I look like I was at least three years younger and my mom wasn't exaggerating about my eyes.

"Mom our house is going to look like an art gallery." I say in a blank voice, already giving up, she wasn't listening to me anymore so anything I say to her to convince her to pack up the embarrassing pictures would just bounce off her serious expression.

She paused again at this, she had been trying to balance a picture on a hanging piece. "It would?" She says in a doubtful voice.

"Of course!" I throw my hands up.

"Oh." She says contritely, stepping down from the side table she had got on. "I'll make a photo gallery tomorrow." She says with sudden inspiration.

I sigh forlornly, I might have gotten her to stop painting the living room with embarrassing memories of me but I haven't been able to dissuade her fully.

"Now let's go through the photo albums." She says seriously, bustling towards the pile of albums arranged in a box.

"Don't you want to hear how my date went?" I throw out, needing to distract her from going through the endless pages of similar pictures and run the risk of her finding another dangerous one to go enlarge and frame.

She takes the bait and back away from the boxes. "That's true, I almost forgot." She says, settling on an empty couch that's not infested with polaroids. "Come sit on mommy's lap." She invites and I go over determined to keep her away from the photo albums.

I sit on her legs facing her, my knees on either side of the couch and she wraps her arms around me - it helps that I'm small enough for this position to be comfortable for the both of us. I sigh into the warmth and comfort of her arms, resting my head on her chest.

"I'm listening." She says gently, carding her fingers through my tied up hair, her hands get tangled so she loosens the scrunchie to better tangle up my hair.

I sigh again and close my eyes, starting the story from the very beginning with my mom humming at the right times, she laughs at my reactions to the puppies then get worried about the panic attack.

Her hands are still in my hair and the repetitive movements start to lull me into a doze.

I tell her about the drive and how Dale carried me through all of it, then the park but and I pause after the scene where we ate…

"He kissed you? She prompts and my eyes fly open.

"How did you know?" I gasp a little, did Dale tell her or Shana or Virgil? No. Did Dale even tell Virgil or Shana? I shake my head, none were looking like possible options.

"Nope." She closes her eyes and rests her cheek on the top of my curls. "I just knew."

I close my eyes too, did I ever mention that I love my mom?

"So how was it?" She asks in a mischievous voice.

"Mom?" I complain.

"What? My first kiss was horrible." She shudders lightly. "Matt might have been the cutest boy in the ninth grade but the moron didn't know what to do with his mouth…"

"Mom!" I cut her off before she goes into the gruesome details of her first kiss.

"So." She prompts.

I shrug. "I don't know, I mean I don't have anything else to compare with it but if that's how kisses feel then novels aren't able to capture how it feels." I say quietly.

My mom makes a small sound and hugs me tighter. "I love you baby."

I smile softly, closing my eyes again. "Love you too Mom."