October, The Odd Ones

The words hit me square in the chest.

"My baby," I whispered, shaking my head. "He's just a kid."

"I know," Thomas said quietly, finally lifting his eyes to mine. "But it doesn't feel small to him."

I blinked against the sting in my eyes. God—how did we already get here? First heartbreaks? Wasn't he just building Lego castles on the living room rug?

Thomas looked down again, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jacket, his brow furrowed with quiet concern. "We'll help him through it," he said softly. "I've already started making a list of things that might help—books, routines, grounding techniques. I will call a few places. There's a family counselor I know of I think we should see. I want to take him. What do you think?"

I hesitated, arms crossed, the uncertainty heavy in my chest. "I don't know... maybe. I guess we should try talking to him first. Together. Or maybe one by one, see if he opens up that way."

Thomas nodded slowly, processing. "Yeah. Maybe one by one is better. He might feel less... cornered...Okay then... I guess I should get going."

"By the way," I said, "I found some little carnets—notebooks—you left in your office. Maybe you need them for your apartment." I went back inside the house, and came back carrying the small stack. Worn covers, corners bent, pages soft from being handled too much. I thought they were just old work notes, half-abandoned to clutter.

He glanced at them, then back at me, unreadable. "You can open them."

I froze, halfway handing them over. "No, they're yours. They're private."

His voice was steady, but something about it landed softer than usual. "It's okay. Open them."

I hesitated for a beat, then sat down and peeled one open, expecting grocery lists, meetings, receipts from the hardware store—but what I found was something else entirely.

Pages filled with neat, scribbled lists. Receipts folded into the covers. Dates. Tiny reminders:

January 18 – Find the magnesium glycinate supplement her doctor mentioned might help with her migraines. 

February 2 – Order the lemon verbena tea from that specialty shop online—the one she only drinks when she's sick and swears nothing else works.

March 12 – Ask the mechanic to recheck her brakes before her spring family road trip.

June 8 – Pick up the hand lotion she loved at the artisan market last month—the lavender and bergamot one. She's running low. It reminds her of her grandmother's house.

July 25 – Order more jojoba oil, sandalwood, and rose absolute. She is running out of those.

September 3 – Service her car and change the tires before the weather shifts. 

October 9 – Buy the blue scarf she kept glancing at from that boutique on Rue Bernard. She passed it three times in September and said it was "too expensive." It isn't.

December 4 – Restock her favorite lemon tea and magnesium supplements before the holidays—just in case the migraines return with the cold.

Just page after page of the ways he'd tried to make my life softer. Safer. Things I'd never noticed, or maybe thought were just life going smoothly by accident. Like comfort was just supposed to happen. Like groceries refilled themselves, tea showed up in the cupboard by magic, tires stayed firm, migraines eased with luck.

But it wasn't luck. It was him. Quiet, steady, unseen.

And now here it was, in black ink and bad handwriting, proving that someone had been behind it all along. That someone had been paying attention and I hadn't even known.

My throat tightened, words tangling on the way out. "What... I don't get it."

He frowned slightly, stepping forward like he was afraid to get too close. "They're just... lists of things..."

I shook the carnet at him, the pages fluttering slightly, the receipts rustling like old ghosts. "I know what they are, Thomas. I can read. They're lists. Notes. Things you... did. For me. For us."

I looked at him, really looked at him, "But I don't get why. I thought you stopped caring. Years ago."

His face crumpled like I'd just said something unforgivable. "What? You never told me you felt that way."

I almost laughed, sharp and bitter, like broken glass in my throat. " You never showed me stuff like this."

We stood there, staring at each other like two people on opposite shores, the tide going out between us.

Finally, I looked away. "I need to go to Jimmy. We'll talk tomorrow."

He nodded, jaw tight. "Okay."

I turned before he could see the tears starting to rise. Right now wasn't about me. Right now was about my son's broken heart.

Mine could break later.

I went back inside. Lola was awake and fussy, as expected—already red around the eyes from her interrupted nap—but my mom was there, walking with her back and forth in that slow rhythm only grandmothers seem to master. My dad was in the kitchen with Alice, the two of them setting the table with more noise than necessary. But none of it felt sharp enough to pull my mind away from Jimmy. Everything else blurred, like background noise in a movie where you already know the next scene's going to break you.

I moved down the hall on instinct, my feet already turning toward his room like I'd been walking that path my whole life. I didn't bother knocking. I just opened the door quietly and stepped inside.

He was curled sideways on his bed, arms crossed, knees drawn up—not full fetal position, but close. His face was blotchy, the kind of blotchy you get when you're old enough to know you shouldn't cry but too young to stop it from happening anyway. His eyelashes still wet. His jaw clenched like he was trying to hold himself together by sheer force of will.

Fourteen is such a strange age for comfort. Too young to shoulder heartbreak on your own, too old to collapse against your mom's side like when they were small. It's an age of pretending you're fine while breaking in places no one can see. And sitting there, watching him try so hard to keep it together—it made something twist hard in my chest.

I sat down on the edge of his bed, close but not too close. Close enough that if he wanted to lean into me, I'd be there. Far enough that he could pretend I wasn't.

For a few seconds, I just sat with him in the quiet, listening to his breath hitch and steady, hitch and steady, the way I used to when he was a newborn learning how to breathe on his own.

My baby. My first. And now his heart was breaking, and there wasn't a bandage in the house that could fix it. No medicine. No quick solution. Just time—and time is cruel when you're fourteen and your whole chest feels like it's collapsing in on itself.

I wanted to fix it. God, I wanted to fix it so badly. I would've done anything to take that pain and put it on my own shoulders, wear it like armor so it wouldn't have to touch him. That's the thing they don't tell you about motherhood—you don't just love them, you become them. Their cuts feel like your own. Their heartbreak feels like someone's reaching inside your ribs and tearing at the softest parts. And the worst part is knowing you can't stop it. Not really. You can soften it. Sit with them. Love them through it. But you can't stop it.

God, I hated how much this would shape him. I hated that pain always seemed to be the teacher no one wanted but no one could escape.

 As mothers, we build our whole lives around the idea of keeping our kids safe—teaching them to look both ways, not to talk to strangers, to eat their vegetables so they grow strong—but no one tells you how helpless you'll feel the first time someone breaks their heart. No one tells you that you can keep them from touching a hot stove, but you can't keep them from falling in love with someone careless.

And I sat there wishing for impossible things—that I could build him a life where no one ever made him feel like this again. Where every person who ever loved him would know exactly how to hold him and never let him drop.

But that's not how the world works.

All I could do was be here, sitting on the edge of his bed, close but not too close. Ready to hold the pieces when he was ready to hand them to me.

Then he opened his mouth, barely above a whisper, like the words hurt to say out loud. "She... didn't want me."

I held my breath.

"She rejected me. In front of everyone." His voice cracked at the edges, humiliation crawling all over it. "I thought she liked me. I was nice to her. I—I made her presents, like little stupid things, I don't know. I waited for her after class because she didn't want to go home alone. I thought I was doing it right."

His knuckles were white, fists clenched against his knees. His jaw trembled but he wouldn't cry again. 

"All that time," he kept going, "she... she wanted my best friend. All that time, Mom. And when I finally asked her—" He looked at me then, eyes shining with tears of betrayal and shame—"She laughed at me. She laughed at me, Mom."

That was it. That was the thing breaking him—not just rejection, but being made small. Being made into a joke in front of everyone when he was only ever trying to be good. I didn't even think. I moved in and wrapped my arms around him before I could second guess if he wanted it or not. Screw fourteen. Screw embarrassment.

"Hey, hey," I whispered fiercely, my hand in his hair like when he was little, "you're safe. I've got you. You're going to be okay, I promise."

He didn't move at first. But then he let his forehead drop against my shoulder, and that was all I needed.

"This doesn't mean anything about who you are, Jimmy. Nothing. Someone else's cruelty doesn't get to define you. She doesn't get to tell you who you are. You hear me?"

His shoulders shuddered once, but he nodded. I pressed my lips to his hair.

"You're going to love again. And one day, someone is going to beg for the kind of love you give. I know it feels huge right now," I said quietly, carefully, like I was trying to hold his heart without pressing too hard. "And honestly... it is huge. First heartbreak always is. It feels like everything's ending, because in your world—it kind of is. But you'll survive this, Jimmy. And one day, someone's going to love you the way you want to be loved. Not just what they think love is, but the way you understand it."

He let out this sharp, bitter laugh, wiping his sleeve across his face like he was angry at his own tears. "Yeah, right. Sounds fake. Maybe I should just not care next time. Or—or maybe I should just love her more. Like, too much. So she doesn't forget I'm there."

My heart twisted at that, the way only a mother's heart can twist when her kid says something so innocent but already carrying the weight of future mistakes. "No, baby," I said, shaking my head. "No. Loving someone harder won't stop them from hurting you if that's who they are. You don't have to prove you're worthy of love. That's not how it works."

He frowned, defensive, the way kids get when they're embarrassed but want to sound like they know better. "But if I love her more, then maybe... maybe she'll see me, I'm not trying to be stupid or like—whatever. I just—if I'm better, she won't reject me, right?"

God, how early they learn that. How early they learn to think it's about being enough. I wanted to scoop him up like I used to when he was five and tell him it wasn't true. But he was fourteen now, and he needed more than just my arms—he needed truth.

"Jimmy," I said softly, steady. "The right person won't need convincing. You don't have to out-love anyone else. You don't have to overperform, or twist yourself into knots to get picked. The right one will see you, as you are, and they'll want to learn you. They'll want to love you in the way you need. Not because you begged them to, but because they want to. They'll learn your love language, and they'll meet you there."

He stayed silent, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve, lips pressed together. For a second I thought he might be about to cry again—but then he spoke, soft but sharp, like an accidental wound: "Have you learnt Dad's or has he learnt yours?"

The words hit harder than I expected. I actually forgot how to breathe for a second. That one question peeled everything back—memories I hadn't invited rushing in, uninvited but relentless.

That comment Thomas made about the colors of my eyes—said like a plain fact, not a compliment, just truth. Like gravity, like weather, like something so obvious it didn't need to be dressed up. And then the plaque under our tree. Learning French because I offhandedly told him I loved how it sounded soft in the mouth. Putting lemon in anything—cakes, tea, salads—even though I knew he didn't like it. He did it anyway.

And now these lists. Page after page of proof that he'd been building tiny worlds of comfort around me without making a sound about it.

Had he been loving me quietly all along, in reserve, like a secret language I never learned to translate?

It felt like missing a whole conversation that had been happening right in front of me. Like being handed a key to a house I didn't know I'd been living in.

And then the confusion came creeping in, hot and sharp. I've always been loud with love—bright colors, grand gestures, too much, too soon. The kind of love that arrives like a thunderstorm, unannounced and impossible to ignore. I've never been good at holding back, always desperate to make sure no one ever doubted how I felt. I shouted my love like fireworks at midnight—dazzling, fleeting, burning hot and fast across the sky. I left trails of affection behind me like confetti: notes in lunchboxes, spontaneous gifts, words that spilled out too early, too often. Maybe he was the opposite. Maybe he loved in the quiet ways. Steady. Unshowy. Hidden in the folds of the ordinary. 

But I never told him I needed loud. Not really. I'd been upset, yes. I'd withdrawn, sulked, snapped over stupid things. But I never sat him down and said it. I never risked rocking the boat by saying: "I need more. I need to hear it. I need you to be loud."

I squeezed Jimmy's hand one last time, then leaned in and pressed a kiss to his forehead—the same spot I used to kiss when he was small, sweaty from sleep, dreaming about dinosaurs and soccer. I didn't move, and neither did he. His forehead still pressed against my shoulder, his breath shaky but starting to slow, bit by bit.

"I know it doesn't feel like it right now," I whispered into his hair, "but this isn't going to be the 온라인카지노게임 of your life, Jimmy. This is just the start of it. One day, you'll laugh about people like her. One day, you'll be so loved, you'll forget this even happened."

He sniffed but didn't answer.

"And you don't ever have to make yourself smaller for someone else to want you, okay? Someone who deserves you will meet you where you are—and love all of it. The loud parts, the soft parts. All of it."

His fingers tugged slightly at the edge of my sleeve, barely noticeable, like he didn't know whether to hold on or let go.

"Do you believe me?" I asked softly.

He hesitated. "I don't know."

God, that hurt. But it was honest. And that was enough for now. I kissed his hair again, then slowly eased back. "That's okay. You don't have to yet."

I stood up, giving him his space again, smoothing my hand over his blanket just to do something with my hands.

"I'm here, whenever you want me."

He didn't answer, but as I left the room, I saw him pull the blanket up to his chin the way he used to when he was little, and that alone told me he wasn't as far gone as he thought.

Once the door was closed behind me, I exhaled hard, pressing my back to the wall, fighting tears of my own.

By the time I reached the kitchen, my chest felt too full. Without thinking too hard—because if I did, I might talk myself out of it—I grabbed my phone and scrolled to August's name. My thumb hovered over the call button for half a beat before pressing it. The line rang once, twice, and then a third time before her voice answered, familiar and grounding.

"Hey," I said, my voice thinner than I expected. My breath caught on the way out, like it was trying to keep the words in. I stared at the kitchen tile, at the faint crack near the fridge I always meant to fix, and became suddenly aware of how loud the silence was around me—and how fast my heart was thudding in my chest.

"I need to ask you something, and maybe it's stupid—maybe it's pathetic," I said, pausing as my throat tightened. "But... do you think I'd be weak if I suggested couples therapy to Thomas?"