Chapter 116

It’s the next day now and I’ve just gotten back from school. I’ve thought about what I want to say to Mum and I think I’ve just decided to talk to her about why I’m so angry at her and why I feel like it’s her fault that she split Conor and I up. I’ll bite my tongue when I think of something sassy or offensive but I’m scared I won’t be able to hold it in. I mean, that’s all I’ve been doing for the past month with both my parents.

As soon as I get home, I go straight up to my room, avoiding my parents at all cost. I mean, they’ve kept me up in my room for a month so that’s where I’ll stay. Just because I said I’d talk to them, doesn’t mean that I’m going to make effort.

“Lucy?” Dad calls from downstairs as soon as I get to my bedroom. I moan, putting down my bag, taking off my shoes and throwing my blazer onto my bed. “Lucy!?” he calls again.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Calm down” I call back, forgetting my plan to bite my tongue. I run downstairs and enter the kitchen way too quickly, halting to a stop. Mum’s sat down at the breakfast bar sipping her glass of orange juice and my Dad’s leaning on the kitchen surface with a drink behind him. “What?” I switch glances between the two of them.

“Do you have anything to say?” he frowns, expecting me to come up with a speech to give to Mum. Wrong.

“No” I frown in confusion. “If you expected me to make a speech for her then you can think again”

“Don’t push it, Lucy. We can always re-ground you” Mum snaps.

“Aw, you’d love that wouldn’t you” I scoff, turning to walk out of the room. I can’t be bothered. I’ve been grounded for a month so I can take whatever now. Fucking ground me, don’t threaten me about it.

“I thought you were going to talk to your Mum about everything” Dad frowns again. I turn around and sigh.

“I’ll talk to her about it but don’t expect me to do all the talking and for me to be all nice. You did ground me for a month” I shrug, sitting down opposite my Mum.

Dad sighs, “Shall I leave you two to it?”

“Yeah, you might as well” Mum shrugs and he nods before taking him and his drink elsewhere. I sit in silence, waiting for Mum to talk. Like I said, I’m not doing all the talking. She’s the one that wants me here. I’d more than happily sit upstairs in my room doing nothing. I’m used it now after doing it for the past month. “What are you thinking about?” she breaks the comfortable silence.

“About how much I don’t want to be here” I tell her truthfully.

She sighs, “Lucy, I don’t want to argue with you”

“You grounded me for a month. You can’t expect me to be all sweet and innocent with you” I scoff.

“Yeah, I know” she mumbles and I look at her in shock. She’s actually agreeing with my behaviour. “I didn’t want to ground you for a month-“

“But you did” I shrug. The whole ‘biting my tongue’ plan has gone straight out of the window. I don’t even care about being ‘respectful’ anymore.

“Because I was so disappointed in the way you spoke to your Dad and I. I thought that grounding you for a month would make you apologise for what you said, and would make you talk to me about your problems but you being the stubborn teenager you are, my plan backfired completely” she huffs. Rather than being offended, I’m actually proud of being that stubborn teenager and standing my ground with my Mum. “I didn’t want it to ruin our relationship”

“You could’ve ungrounded me at any time” I shrug, completely unaffected at how she’s portraying her feelings to me.

“I was just waiting for you to come and speak to me”

“You thought wrong” I frown, looking out of the window and sitting back in my seat. At this point, she’d usually tell me to stop being rude, and that she’s making too much effort with me and I’m just ‘throwing it back in her face’. I’m surprised she’s not to be honest.

“But Lucy, you need to understand that I can’t keep coming to you and keep offering you advice. You told me that I caused you and Conor to split up and I made you and Jack argue or something, and just left it as that. I didn’t know what the hell was going on so you can’t expect me to just come up to your room and try and sort everything out if you just put the blame on me when I don’t even know what I did wrong” she breathes. “If you’d have spoken to me and told me what I did, then I would’ve gave you advice and tried to sort things out like we usually do”

“I was mad at you and you made it worse by grounding me for a month. Why would I want to talk to you?” I ask as if it’s obvious. I can see where she’s coming from but my side of the story makes more sense than hers, let’s be serious. “And whenever you tried speaking to me, you were being a bitch about it. I mean, you snapped at me for eating pizza yesterday!” I say it how it is. If we want this to get solved (which I secretly do) then I need to be honest with her and she needs to be honest with me.

“Yes, because I already made you tea! If you’d have told me that you were eating at Jack’s then fair enough”

“I always eat at Jack’s!” I frown in confusion.

“Well I’ll keep that noted for next time then” she raises her hands in defence so I just roll my eyes. “Can you tell me what I’ve done wrong then?”

“You spoke to Conor about our relationship and since then, he’s been off with me and now he’s broken up with me” I shrug, trying to keep calm about the situation by biting my nails.

“I doubt that’s made Conor split up with you, Lucy” she frowns so I snap my head completely towards her.

“It did! You don’t know how he’s been acting with me. I think I know” I scoff.

“Lucy, stop overreacting about everything” she rolls her eyes and it literally takes everything in me not to storm out of the room. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dad’s stood outside the room waiting for me to storm out, just so he can grab me and drag me back inside, forcing me to have this pointless conversation.

“You’d understand if you were in my situation” I say as calmly as possible. “Mum, you don’t know how shit I feel-“

“Lucy” she begins to warn me but I just carry on speaking.

“I nearly lost my best friend, I don’t have a boyfriend anymore and for the past month, I’ve been locked up in my room not being able to make myself feel better” I sigh, leaning on the table.

“I get it but you’ve only got yourself to blame. If you didn’t speak to your Dad and I the way you did then you wouldn’t have been grounded for that long”

“I shouldn’t have been grounded at all! I was clearly in a bad mood and you should’ve understood that. Locking me up in my room isn’t going to do anything but make me hate you more!” I raise my voice and she looks slightly taken aback.

“You were free to go in the back garden and around the house, Lucy” she frowns and I can tell it’s taking everything in her to keep calm.

“I didn’t want to risk bumping into you” I shrug, looking down at my nails.

“Well that’s your stupid fault then isn’t it” she snaps. I almost roll my eyes but I secretly don’t want to push her too much and get myself grounded again. Silence is my best option right now. “Do you want to sort this out with me?”

I think about saying no but my Mum used to be like my best friend before this. She was always there for me, giving me the best relationship advice and understanding everything I did. That’s everything I need right now. I do want mine and my Mum’s relationship back. I’m sick of her being strict with me when she used to be ‘cool’ with me, I guess. She always knew how to make me happy and that’s literally all I need right now. I need to be happy and I need my Mum.

“Yeah” I nod.

“Well can you stop being so stubborn with me then?” she raises her eyebrow and I sigh.

“I guess”

“Whatever you say about me causing all these problems in your life, you know I didn’t want it to happen. You know that I absolutely love Conor and Jack and would never want them to leave you, so your theory about me trying to split you up is bullshit” she says it how it is making me smile slightly.

It’s always weird hearing my Mum swear in front of me as if it’s normal. I think she’s given up teaching me not to swear. Let’s be serious, I’m a fifteen year old girl. Stopping me from swearing isn’t going to happen.

“I guess I’ve taken things too far and I shouldn’t have blamed what Conor did on you two” I refer to her and my Dad.

“You think?” she scoffs, teasingly. I smirk slightly, rolling my eyes. “I know it’s a bit of a coincidence that as soon as I spoke to you about yours and Conor’s sex life, your relationship suddenly went downhill but I’d highly doubt he broke up with you because of that”

“Well, he has been hanging around with Zac recently” I frown. I’ve learnt that Zac really is as bad as people say he is so I guess he’s capable of anything.

“It was probably his fault” Mum shrugs.

“Mum, do you even know who Zac is?” I frown. I don’t remember talking to her about him.

“Nope but as long as the blames off me, I don’t care who else you blame it on” she rubs her hands together making me genuinely laugh.

I moan, “He’s a dickhead”

“I’ve given up scolding you for swearing now” she huffs, saying what I was literally just thinking about a minute ago. I start laughing, making her smile. “Can we just put all this behind us and start a fresh? I can help you through whatever you’re going through if you like”

“Yeah” I nod slightly.

“You get rid of your attitude and I’ll give up the ‘being strict’ act” she uses air quotes. “Deal?” she holds out her hand and I smile, shaking it. “Now come here” she opens her arms which I practically run into.

“I’m sorry” I finally say which I bet she’s dying to hear.

“I’m sorry too” she finally says what I’ve been dying to hear. I pull away from the hug and smile. “Now do you want to talk about this Conor situation?” she asks and I nod, knowing that her advice is better than anyone else’s.

After talking to her about literally everything I’ve been keeping from her for the past month, I’m left in tears again. I can’t talk about this whole thing without balling out into tears every time. She’s given me some pretty good advice about it though which will stick with me and I think my life’s a good 6 and a half out of 10 at the moment. We’re slowly but surely getting there.

“I have an idea” her eyes light up when trying to get me to stop crying. I look up at her in hope.

My tears are full of mixed emotions. I’m sad about the situation with Conor, I’m thankful that my Mum’s my friend now and has given me such great advice, I’m sad about life in general, but I’m also happy that Mum’s sat here trying to make me laugh. That’s why I’m crying.

“Why don’t we go shopping on Saturday?” she offers. Meh, depends where and who’s paying.

“Where?” I sniffle, lifting my head up off the table I’ve been crying on, and smoothing out my messy hair.

“I guess we could go to London again” she shrugs. “I’ll pay”

“Yeah, I’d like that” I cry, nodding slightly and wiping away my tears.

“Bet you would” she tuts. I stop crying completely and sit up in my seat. “You still have to talk to your Dad”

“Are you trying to make me cry?” I moan, slouching in my seat.

She laughs, “Come on, you’re practically best buds already. All you have to do is confirm it”

“We are not best buds” I frown.

“Let’s go into the living room and sort things out. I’ll help you, okay?” she offers and I sigh before nodding. I do want to sort things out with him but doing this twice in one day is painful. I follow her into the living room after sorting out my messed up hair and having some water to try and cool myself down. It didn’t work much.

“Have you sorted things then?” he looks at us in hope.

I shrug, “Yeah”

“But Lucy wants to talk to you” Mum nods at me, pushing me into talking to him.

“Well, I don’t want to but-“

“Lucy” she snaps.

“Okay, I really want to do this” I say monotonously.

“Just explain to him why you said what you did” she says, sitting me down on the sofa next to her.

“I might cry” I whisper so only she can hear it.

“If you don’t cry, we’ll order Chinese tonight” she tries to bribe me.

Chinese is mine and Jack’s absolute favourite. We argue a lot with Conor when it comes to choosing a takeaway. His excuse is always ‘I’m the oldest, I get to decide’ but me and Jack sometimes find a way of persuading him out of his choice of pizza. Well, we used to anyway.

“Deal” I nod, shaking her hand.

I explain the whole situation to my Dad but I don’t go into detail like I did with my Mum. I tell him what happened but I didn’t tell him what Conor said to me, or that Zac and Jack got into a fight. I only tell him what he needs to know basically.

“I didn’t speak to Conor so that he’d split up with you, Lucy” Dad frowns.

“Mum said the same” I shrug, hearing a scoff from Mum.

“Well we didn’t” he laughs dryly. “Why do you think a forty one year old man would be trying to split two fifteen year olds up?”

“I don’t know. You might not like Conor” I shrug again, realising how ridiculous I sound.

“Is that why I invited him on holiday with us?” he raises an eyebrow. “No, Lucy. I do have better things to be doing than planning to split my daughter up with her boyfriend. Besides, if I did want to, I would’ve come up with a better plan than that”

“Like what?” I smirk slightly.

“Hmm, I don’t know. I’d say that I saw you and Jack kissing” he shrugs and I gasp dramatically, making him burst out laughing. “Calm down, I won’t actually do it”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, we’re not together” I shrug, causing the good vibes in the room to leave instantly.

“So... Are we friends?” he smiles, breaking the silence and trying to lift the mood slightly.

“Well, you haven’t really apologised for grounding me for a month” I tease.

“You haven’t apologised for accusing me of stuff I haven’t done, not talking to me for a month no matter how much effort I put in, and for speaking to me the way you did that night, but I was just going to let that slip” he raises his hands in defence.

“Okay, okay, we can be friends” I roll my eyes playfully.