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artificialqueens · 1 year

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🏳️‍🌈 The Miracle of Living Pt.2 - Lita

In this world we're just beginning To understand the miracle of living

Lmao I had you in the first half, this is not just a cutesy slice of life family AU and actually gets fucking awful and tragic from here on out, you have been warned. This was originally meant to be a single story but I decided to chunk it into two halves just so it's not unreadably long, which means ALL the suffering gets to be consigned into whatever this is. Anyway, see other part for author notes and shit, apologies in advance xo

Summary: Adore is an adult now, and life is simpler for Bianca. Until an unexpected tragedy shatters her world, and her relationship with her daughter.

TW: Major character deaths, parental loss, accidental overdose, suicidal thoughts

[1] NEW MESSAGE Ben Putnam ✨🏳️‍🌈 12/9/46 19:08 jinkx is about to call you freaking tf out - don’t listen to them, im basically fine. got into an accident driving home, i look kinda banged up and i think my shoulders dislocated but nothing serious. pls call adore and tell her - if she says shes gonna ditch her concert or anything like that dont let her, she doesnt need to worry. if ur not busy and feel like coming to see me id like that (and i think jinkx could use some moral support lol, theyre taking this harder than i am) but don’t let j convince u that im on my deathbed. love ya, bitch! b xoxo

*****

November 12th, 2046

“Bea…”

Jinkx stands up as Bianca enters the waiting room. Their voice is cloying - too sickly. Too sympathetic.

Of all of Ben’s various partners since the divorce, Jinkx was definitely Bianca’s favorite. Bianca had been Ben’s maid of honor (or ‘cunt of dishonor’ as he’d affectionately christened her) at their wedding last spring. Jinkx is kind, sensitive - their eccentricities line up perfectly with Ben’s, they’re a good step-parent to Adore, as resistant as she’d been to having a step-parent. However, Jinkx under pressure is prone to amateur dramatics - Ben’s text prediction regarding the nature of their impending phone call had been totally spot-on.

So Bianca is surprised to see that they look drained - not sad. Not scared. Just tired - their shock of red hair disheveled, eyes puffy and face moist with half-dried tears. Bianca grips the strap of her purse a little tighter. She hadn’t expected this. They had been all catastrophe and hysterics on the phone - sobbing like their life depended on it. Why are they so calm?

Per Ben’s instructions, Bianca hadn’t dropped everything to go to him. She’d been working late, supervising a bunch of bored, annoyed teenagers doing stocktake - she hadn’t exactly bided her time, heading straight for the hospital as soon as she’d clocked out, but she also hadn’t exactly rushed.

Two lanes of the freeway were closed because of a car wreck. She figured it wouldn’t be the same one - it couldn’t have been that bad if Ben was awake, coherent, and texting her. As the backed-up traffic crawled past the remains of the scene at five miles an hour, she’d tried not to look. She knew she shouldn’t have looked. But she looked anyway - she’d caught sight of the remnants of Ben’s car at the front of a pile-up, crushed from behind by a smoldering pickup truck, and felt the sting of vomit rising up at the back of her throat. The driver’s side door looked intact. That was something. Ben was fine. Ben had told her himself that he was fine. So Ben was fucking fine.

On the drive to the ER, Bianca called Adore - anxiety twisting below her ribcage, visions of shattering glass and crumpling metal scorching into her eyelids every time she blinked, desperate for a distraction. The phone had been picked up by her weirdo manager, Winona or Wilma or whatever her name was, who’d decided that a call from her mom, regardless of the matter at hand, wasn’t important enough to bother Adore with before a gig, and had hung up.

And now she’s been taken into a side room that feels like a fucking morgue, and Jinkx is acting so calm and kind that it’s nauseating. This feels weird. There’s a bible on the table in the middle of the room. What the fuck is happening?

Jinkx reaches out, and pulls Bianca into an oppressively tight hug. Bianca squirms, determined to extricate herself from the stifling embrace and start asking questions. She’s never known Jinkx to act anything but weird, but this was bizarre even by their standards. When they break away, Jinkx takes Bianca’s hand. It sets her teeth on edge.

“Jinkx, what’s going on?” Bianca’s voice comes out sterner than she would have liked.

“Did you call Adore?”

What kind of fucking response is that?

“I tried. Her manager picked up - she’s at a gig, I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“I really think you should try and talk to her now.”

Bianca really doesn’t like Jinkx’s tone. She also doesn’t know what to do with herself. She figured she was here as emotional support for Jinkx, who seems fine if a bit off-kilter and cryptic - or as a proxy for Adore, who was performing and/or wasted in Austin, enjoying the sudden and somewhat random success of her previously struggling music career.

“Jinkx, where’s Ben? What happened?”

Jinkx grimaces. They try to convince her to sit down - urging her towards a ugly upholstered chair with their lips pursed. Bianca doesn’t move.

“Jinkx.” Bianca repeats herself more insistently, folding her arms. Jinkx sits down, clenching their jaw and breathing shakily. “Where the fuck is Ben? I need to see him."

“…he died, Bea.”

Bianca’s blood turns to ice in her veins. She takes a sharp breath in.

“What do you mean he died?” Bianca’s voice is thin. Jinkx doesn’t say anything. “He texted me - he was fine like, an hour ago.” Jinkx stays silent. Bianca feels like she’s going to throw up. Why won’t they say anything? “He’s- Jinkx, what do you mean he fucking died?”

“They thought he was fine,” Jinkx sniffs. “There were other people from the wreck who were hurt worse than he was - he kept saying he was okay so the doctors would focus on them, and then he coded out of nowhere. I think they said he was bleeding in his abdomen or something - nobody realized until it was too late. He was sitting up and talking to me, then he…” Jinkx stops, swallowing hard. Their eyes have welled up.

“Why didn’t you call me? I would have tried to get here faster.” Bianca’s knees are shaking. She can’t move - can’t admit to the failure of her emotions. Frightening and all-consuming as they are. She’s still wearing her work lanyard, and it feels utterly stupid. Why hadn’t she just fucking left? Why had locking up a goddamn store she could burn to the ground without losing sleep been more important than this? Than Ben?

“I didn’t know how to.” Jinkx won't make eye contact with her. “I couldn’t tell you over the phone - it didn’t feel right.”

Bianca sits down before she collapses. Her hands are shaking. Her throat hurts like she needs to cry, but there are no tears. She isn’t crying, and she won’t - not until it’s essential.

“But you were- you shouldn’t have waited all this time on your own. I would have been here sooner.” Bianca is barely able to talk. “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t even know what she’s talking for - trying to fill the awful, empty air with some sort of noise, even if it is wilted platitudes. She’s horribly aware of her own breathing; how hard it is, how much effort it’s taking, how it feels like she’s choking. It’s like she’s drowning in the air and the silence - like a goldfish dropped out of the bowl.

Jinkx puts an arm around her shoulders. There are tears rolling down their cheeks.

“I really think you should call Adore again.”

Adore. Adore didn’t get to say goodbye - Adore didn’t fucking know. That was her fucking dad, and she loved him, and she’d never-

Bianca stops. Something in her brain ticks. A somber conversation at the kitchen table.

“His, uh- his advanced directive. San Juni-whatever - Cookie heaven-“ Bianca blurts out, ejecting the words as soon as they appear in her head. The comfort feels cold, but it’s comfort nevertheless.

She looks at Jinkx. Their face has crumpled. They’re shaking their head. No.

“They tried - it all happened too quickly, it didn’t work. He was gone before they could…” Jinkx bites their lip. “I’m sorry - I know how much it means- meant to him, I know he wanted…”

Bianca shakes her head, trying to get Jinkx to stop talking. It isn’t fair - they’ve just lost their husband, and yet it’s them trying to comfort her?

“It’s okay.”

It’s not. But Jinkx rests their head on Bianca’s shoulder anyway, and Bianca takes their hand, even though she feels like she’s only making everything worse. What warmth is she capable of? Her presence isn’t doing anything besides forcing Jinkx to stir up their own raw emotions, and reminding them both of the cavernous space between them that Ben’s daughter should be filling.

Bianca fumbles her phone out of her purse with her shaking hands as Jinkx cries a wet patch into her collar. She needs to call Adore.

*****

November 24th, 2046

The silence in the kitchen is uncomfortable. Neither Adore nor Bianca knows how to fill it. Ben’s funeral was yesterday morning. Bianca doesn’t know if Adore is okay, but she doesn’t know what to say to her either. She hasn’t seen her cry yet.

She’s exhausted. The last couple of weeks have been a terrible, sleepless headfuck. All of the funeral planning and formality had fallen into Bianca’s lap - Jinkx had been too distraught to try and think about it, and she couldn’t ask Adore. It was the only real help she’d been able to offer; if there’s one thing that Bianca knows for a fucking fact, it’s that she’s awful at providing comfort. But as usual, she’d taken too much on, and she hadn’t had time to process what had happened - time to grieve, or even just to fucking take a breath and figure out where her own head was at.

Bianca feels hollow. And Adore won’t speak to her. She’s sitting at the dinner table, with her bright blue hair piled on top of her head in a sloppy ponytail, wearing some tattered band shirt that doesn’t really fit her, and she seems…fine. She’s been home since Ben died, but they’ve been floating around the empty house on two completely different planets; barely making eye contact with each other, let alone talking. There’s a mug of coffee turning cold in Bianca’s hand, and her daughter won’t meet her gaze.

Adore fidgets with the hair-tie around her wrist. She looks nervous.

“Listen, Mom-”

“Are you okay?” Bianca blurts out, and then cringes - Adore looks at her with frustration in her glazed-over eyes.

“I need to tell you something.”

“What’s up?” Bianca tries to inject some warmth into her voice.

“I know I said I’d stay for a little longer, but I’m…”

Oh god. Bianca already doesn’t like where this is going. She clenches her teeth, trying to contain the stupid, defeated little whimper she can feel rising into the back of her throat.

“I got a call from my manager this morning. My new single drops in a week, and there’s- this big-deal band wants me to open for them on their tour. It’s two months on the road, and I know that I shouldn’t- I mean, it’s a huge opportunity, and the money is really fucking good, and I’m…” Adore’s words are stilted and awkward.

Bianca takes a second to compose herself.

“When would you be leaving?” Bianca eventually says. It’s the most neutral question she can think of, and her words come out flat and unbothered. She can’t say what she really wants to - can’t beg her to stay, can’t argue back. Can’t take this from her.

“Day after tomorrow,” Adore says to the floor, still wringing her hands awkwardly.

“And why do you sound like you’re asking for permission to go?"

“Because- I don’t know.” Adore says, equally lacking in emotion. It’s felt for the last couple of weeks like she and Bianca have just been going through the motions of their relationship without any feeling. “I mean- fuck, you’re my mom. And everything is just- I can’t leave you right now. If you said no, then I can’t...”

“Why do I have to say no?” Bianca tilts her head. Her neck is stiff from the sleepless nights.

“Because I don’t want to.”

That answer frustrates Bianca, and she can tell from Adore’s body language that she knows it. Adore picks at a loose thread on her shirt - she’s never been able to sit still. Bianca pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not gonna be the bad guy, Dorey - even if you want me to. We’re talking about your career here - not doing it would be fucking stupid,” Bianca says, toneless and insincere again. She pauses. “Do they know that your dad just died?”

“…No,” Adore grimaces. The first small twinge of emotion flashes across her face for a second, and then it’s gone. “They might give it to someone else. They’ll think I’m gonna be unstable or unreliable or something.”

“Are you?”

“Maybe,” Adore purses her lips. “It’s kinda still not real. Maybe it’ll stay like that if I’m distracted.”

“And maybe it’ll get real when you’re on the road - you need to think about yourself.”

Adore murmurs something unintelligible by way of response, shakily trying to affirm that she can do it. Bianca stares into her coffee cup. They seem to have reached some level of nonverbal understanding that they’re not gonna talk about this any more. Adore is leaving tomorrow, and Bianca better make peace with that.

“You’re not mad about me leaving you by yourself, are you?” Adore’s meek voice cuts through the icy reticence.

“What? No - I’m a big girl, I’ll survive,” Bianca shrugs her shoulders. Why does Adore default to the assumption that she’s always mad? Why does she have to be the villain all the goddamn time? Can’t she just be upset?

“But like…do you have friends?"

“Yes, I have fucking friends, Adore.”

And then she thinks about it. Her family doesn’t give a shit, and Raja had broken things off with her a couple of weeks before Ben dropped dead out of fucking nowhere - and yeah, maybe she’s close enough with a couple of people from work that she’d be able to talk to them, but the thought makes her squirm.

She’d not so much asked Adore to stick around for a couple of weeks after the funeral as she had begged her to. The loneliness is choking her, and her daughter is the only person she can face - because they never really talked about their feelings, and even this wasn’t enough to make them start. She just needed someone to be quietly sad alongside. The more that she thinks about it, the more she realizes that the only person she wants to talk to about the pain inflicted by Ben’s death is Ben himself.

Which she should be able to do. She’s grown more attached to the San Junipero concept than she ever wanted to be. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she’d gotten comfortable with the two of them never having to live without each other. Except that didn't work, and now he’s gone. Forever.

Bianca had friends. A friend. She’d never needed anyone else, and so she’d never bothered trying to find them. She hadn’t planned for an eventuality in which he’d be dead by forty-six.

Bianca is crying. Horrible, huge, ugly floods of tears. Adore looks nervous - like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. This isn’t fair. She can’t make Adore deal with her like this. But she can’t stop. Twelve days of awful emotional blockage are clearing themselves all at once, and Bianca’s face is soaking wet and there’s snot running down her chin, and she feels about as disgusting as she probably looks. Adore’s chair scrapes the tiled floor, and she’s standing behind Bianca - wrapping her arms around her, resting her sharp chin on Bianca’s shoulder.

Adore’s body is starting to heave against hers, and as Bianca tries to blink through some of the blur to her vision and catch her trembling breath, she realizes Adore is crying too. Is this progress?

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, baby.” Bianca takes one of Adore’s hands in hers, running a thumb across her tattooed knuckles. “It’s okay - it’s okay to be sad.”

“I’m not sad.” Adore’s voice is thin. “And I have to go. I don’t want to be here. I can’t be here without him.”

Adore mutters the admission like it’s blasphemy, and Bianca doesn’t like it, but she knows. Ben’s ghost lingers in every brick and board and fiber of this house. It hurts - that she isn’t capable of being what Adore needs right now. But she understands.

*****

June 7th, 2047

“Don’t fucking put that on me - don’t screw up my childhood and then keep making me miserable as a fucking adult, it’s not fair-"

“Ob, cry me a fucking river - you had a great childhood!”

“Did I? Getting dragged up by some fucking idiot who didn’t know what she was doing-"

“I was a fucking kid, Adore - I was trying my fucking best-”

It’s dark outside. Bianca feels like shit. She wishes Adore hadn’t left.

She hasn’t been able to sleep without sedatives since Ben died, and she hates it. She also doesn’t know why - she wasn’t there. It didn’t happen to her. It’s not her tragedy. She fishes the blister pack of xanax out of her purse and swallows one with the tail end of her glass of wine. Sleep. She needs sleep. She needs this shitty, awful, horrible day to be over. Maybe when she wakes up, Adore will be over her tantrum.

She drops the pills on the kitchen counter. The last dregs of the wine are eyeing her up through the bottle. Bianca hesitates for a moment, refills her glass, and swiftly empties it down her throat.

She walks through the empty living room, put off by the silence. It’s too quiet in this house. She wishes she hadn’t kept it. Ben deserved it more - he had a partner, and a good life, and hope for the future. Not the pathetic remains of half a dozen short-lived, shitty relationships, and a dead-end job. Adore loved him - she clearly can’t fucking stand Bianca. There would still be life in these walls if he’d taken it, and Bianca had hiked all her stupid clothes and coffee table books and vanity and venom to a crappy bachelor apartment.

It was Ben’s fucking house - it was his career that had paid for it. Bianca felt sick enough with guilt and frustration that he’d insisted she stayed and he left, and then kept ‘forgetting’ to cancel the mortgage auto-payments when he was still alive - just like he kept ‘forgetting’ to stop making her car payments, or kept sending her cheques from some ‘investment account’ they’d apparently set up years ago that she had no memory of. She’d stolen a better quality of life than she was owed from a guy that she was tethered to based on one night of bad decisions when they were in their twenties. It would have been easier on her conscience if Ben had resented her for it. But he didn’t. He’d looked out for her and loved her right up until the ugly end and she didn’t deserve any of it.

If Ben had stayed here, he would have had to drive a different route to work. That’s why they bought the house - it was close to his job. Maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe it would have been her that died after a rush hour car wreck, of an internal hemorrhage that every medical professional in the vicinity was too busy and too stupid to notice. Maybe things would be better that way.

The house is too quiet, and there’s too much space - Bianca traipses up the stairs, her fingers brushing over the lingering texture of Adore’s childhood crayon-on-wall scribbles, long since painted over.

The wine is making her feel worse. She’s angry - hurt, frustrated, upset. But not with Adore. With herself for making her this way.

Ben was warm, Ben was supportive. Ben could never see a single fault in her - not like Bianca. Bianca was the Bad Cop; the enforcer, the prison warden. Bianca nagged Adore about her homework and her curfew and her room being a mess - Bianca questioned her judgment, Bianca shat on her fashion choices. Bianca tried her best to make sure the kid didn’t turn out like she had. And she’d done it - Adore was successful, she was living a life she could look back on and be proud of. So, no fucking wonder Adore’s ideal future was one that didn’t have Bianca in it.

“Bull-fucking-shit. You weren’t a kid, you were in your twenties-“

“I was two years younger than you are, you think you’d be great at raising a child now? Forget about finding out you’re pregnant when you were twenty-one and having to give up everything you’ve ever wanted in life for-“

“Nobody asked you to do that.”

“No, they didn’t - but I had to do what was fucking best for you. Fuck my dreams, fuck what I wanted. You think anybody is working in a goddamn Urban Outfitters age forty-fucking-seven because they want to be?”

“I’ve been out of your house for five years, you’ve had time. Go live your dreams, since I’m not a fucking burden on you any more-“

“You’re not fucking getting it - the ‘living my dreams’ ship has sailed, since I had to drop out of fucking college for you. I had to put my life on hold indefinitely for you, and so did your father, so stop being such an ungrateful little shit-“

Bianca keeps replaying the fight in her head. Tonight had started well. Adore was back in town between tour dates and album sessions - not for Bianca. To see friends, and to meet with some record execs that Bianca was too uncool to know the names of. But when Bianca had asked if she had a free night, Adore had humored her. They’d ordered pizza, bought a couple bottles of wine, and for a moment, things felt the way they used to. Bianca was happy, for a fleeting second.

Adore had been her best friend until she was thirteen. Then some awful melting pot of Adore’s pubescent bitch tendencies and Bianca’s stubbornness and short fuse had kicked off a bizarre ongoing war between the two of them that only seemed to mellow out once Adore left home and they weren’t constantly in each other’s way. It was normal teenager shit - Bianca remembered things being the same way between herself and her mother when she was in junior high. Her mother that she doesn’t fucking speak to any more.

Bianca loves Adore so much that it’s physically painful, and she felt like a monster the entire time they were at odds. But she didn’t know how to stop it - she didn’t know how to be whatever Adore seemed to need from her.

Not that there hadn’t been good moments. Adore’s first concert. The family vacation to Cancun. The weekend shopping sprees. Every so often, Bianca caught a glimpse of the fully-formed human being that Adore was starting to become, and she…well, adored her. But sooner or later, the shit would start again; Bianca could feel herself failing her daughter in real time.

Just like when Adore was a teenager, things had fallen apart tonight just as Bianca was starting to enjoy the good.

It was her fault. Like usual. Bianca had too much to drink too quickly, and she got emotional. She’d phrased some stuff poorly. She’d upset Adore. It was always her fault - it was always her that made the first wrong step. Adore just reacted to her shitty parenting.

She’d made an off-handed comment about Adore ‘abandoning’ her. Which, in her crappier moments, she often felt but resolved never to say to her. Adore was an adult with her own life and her own burgeoning fame to deal with, and she’d lost her dad less than a year ago. Bianca’s feelings didn’t matter; she should be seeking her emotional support from someone her own age. So fucking what if Adore had better things to deal with than her mom’s grief and loneliness?

But she’d said it anyway, and then she’d doubled down. Just like she always did. Adore started crying. Bianca got frustrated. God, she misses Ben. He wouldn’t have let this happen.

“Leave Daddy the fuck out of this, he’s the only person I never doubted cared about me and I-"

“Yeah, he did. He really, really fucking cared about you - enough to spend nearly his entire adult life closeted because he wanted to give you some semblance of a normal childhood, enough that the night he fucking died he didn’t want me to call you because he didn’t want to worry you-“

“That’s not a good thing! I wish I’d been there! I wish I knew, instead of coming offstage to find out that my dad had fucking died and my stupid, selfish, uptight bitch of a mother didn’t think it was worth her time to tell me that he was in that accident-“

“I told Willam - she said it wasn’t important enough to get you on the goddamn phone! Blame her!”

“You should have tried harder!”

“I didn’t think I had to. Your dad didn’t know how bad it was, he didn’t know what was going to happen - none of us knew, obviously if we did I would have put you on a flight as soon as I-“

Bianca has been trying to write that stupid fucking San Junipero bullshit out of her will for months now. If Ben wanted it and didn’t get it, she’s sure as shit not doing it now. However, the process is a fucking nightmare - eight hundred stupid phone calls to eight hundred useless morons who need to refer her to the next person, to try and sell her on an upgrade or ask her if this is because she wants the payout for the unused credit on her plan. It’s demoralizing and exhausting - the evil spiritual stepsister of canceling fucking cable, but a hundred times harder and with constant reminders of her fucking dead ex-husband and the last request he never got.

Everything is depressing and shit, and she’s tired. She wants it to end - she wants to return to a normal that she can never get back.

Bianca lingers at the open door of Adore’s teenage bedroom. It’s a shitshow. She hadn’t tidied up after herself when she left after Ben’s funeral - if anything she’d made more mess, rummaging around in her things and packing and unpacking for that fucking tour she had to go on. Which had done good things for her. In the last six months, her opening spots had turned into festival headliners and talk show appearances; she had an album in the works, and was watching her teenage dream blossom in real time to heights she’d never imagined it would reach. Bianca is glad that she went. Even if she hates her for it a little bit.

Bianca doesn’t want to touch anything. She treads carefully across the messy floor, trying not to disrupt anything; trying to preserve her daughter’s chaos, learn to live in it and love it as she did. Adore’s bed is unmade. The sheets smell like her.

There’s a framed picture by her bed - a print of a blurry selfie taken at Ben’s niece’s bat mitzvah. She remembers that night. Adore had just turned twenty-one and her hair was purple. They’d gotten irresponsibly drunk on kosher wine, and Adore had climbed into Bianca’s lap to take the picture, pressing her gloss-sticky lips to Bianca’s cheek and telling her she loved her. They’re both smiling like maniacs.

Adore had just turned twenty-one. That picture hadn’t been there when Adore last occupied that room - she’d moved into her college dorm a few days before her nineteenth birthday. She’d brought that here. And left it here. Bianca feels queasy. She picks it up gently, like it’s a precious artifact. The frame is bright red hard plastic, shaped like a heart - painted on one side, in Adore’s endearingly shitty handwriting: LOVE YOU MOMMY XO

Bianca’s eyes well up. It was a fucking gift that Adore never gave to her. Probably because she’d ruined Adore’s last visit home. Just like she ruined tonight. Just like she ruined her. Bianca drops the frame like it burns to touch, and she hears the glass shatter against the hardwood floor.

She closes the door as she leaves, hearing it slam and her own breath becoming frantic. She feels that familiar ache, a sob building up in the depths of her chest.

She’s pressed against Adore’s wall and staring directly into Ben’s old room. She’d transformed it into a pitiful sewing workspace that she’d barely used when he moved out - a weird attempt to kick some sense of purpose back into her life when Adore had flown the nest and Ben was out living his own life, picking up an old hobby that had dominated her teens and fuelled her plans for the future. Plans that had died a death in the bathroom of her old apartment downtown. The mannequin torso sits gathering dust, half-finished sketches litter the table. A waste - like everything else.

She can’t do this. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants Adore back. Wants to hold her in her arms, breathe in her scent and her warmth, and tell her she forgives her for every horrible thing that had come out of her mouth tonight.

No, she wants to tell her that she’s sorry. For everything.

Sleep. She needs to sleep.

“You just don’t want to admit that you screwed me out of a chance to say goodbye! You feel like I’ve abandoned you? Fuck you! You didn’t love him!”

“I did-"

“He was your friend - he was my fucking dad. Don’t try and pretend that what you’re feeling right now is anything like what I’m feeling, because it’s not.”

“It doesn’t have to be - Dorey, we can deal with this together. I want to be there for you. I want to help you. And I miss you, is that such a fucking crime?”

“You miss being a bitch to me - you miss telling me that I’ve wasted my life. You miss having someone else to boss around, because that’s all you wanna do.”

“Adore, I tried my fucking best for you. I didn’t have it in me to be a perfect mother - I didn’t have one, I wasn’t set up to be good at this. I tried my best, and if you feel like I’ve failed then I’m really fucking sorry. But I love you, and-“

Why the fuck are her pills on the kitchen counter? Bianca pops one out and swallows it dry, desperate for her mind to shut the fuck up. She’s drunk and confused and alone and fucking sad, and she wants to sleep.

Should she call Adore? No, that feels desperate. She needs to leave her alone; let her get over this at her own pace, let her come back on her own. If she wants to come back. She’ll come back.

Bianca didn’t come back. Bianca didn’t forgive her mom for the sin of setting her expectations too high, so why the hell would Adore do the same? Maybe her mom feels the same way about her - maybe she feels deprived of a presence in the life she created, and maybe she loses sleep and paces around the house at night like a madwoman and cries over her too. That feels vindicating - so why does it hurt so much that Adore is probably gonna commit her to the same fate?

Bianca collapses into the couch. Her body feels heavy. The clock on the wall says it’s just after midnight. There’s an empty pizza box on the coffee table. Adore’s lipstick is stained onto the rim of her glass.

“God, can you not go five minutes without trying to make me feel like shit? I know. I know you tried, I’m sorry I didn’t turn out the way you wanted me to-“

“Do you think this is what your dad would have fucking wanted?”

“Don’t talk about what he would have wanted - what he would have wanted doesn’t matter. He’s dead, mom. He’s fucking gone. He’s gone, and I’m never gonna get him back, and now I’m stuck with you.”

“The fuck do you mean ‘stuck with’ me?”

“You know exactly what I fucking mean.”

“What, you wish it was me? You wish I was the one that had fucking died? If that’s what you mean, say it.”

“If I have to choose one of you then yeah. Yeah, I wish it was him that was still here.”

The couch is soft and warm and Bianca is falling asleep. She’s comfortable - but she feels wrong. Her head is swimming.

It’s getting dark outside. Bianca watches for headlights in the driveway. Maybe Adore will come home and forgive her. Bianca is tired, and her head is heavy, and she wants to go to sleep. Sleep and forget. Maybe Adore will love her again when she wakes up.

*****

[1] MISSED CALL Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:21

[3] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:23 mom im rlly sorry. i love you. can we talk <33 mom are you okay? talk to me

[3] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:29

[4] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 00:34 mom PLEASE answer ur phone im sorry talk to me please im coming over

[5] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 00:58

[3] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:01 im outside answer the door mommy i know ur mad at me but i want to talk to u, im rlly sorry i love u so much pls answer the door mom MOM

[8] MISSED CALLS Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:07

[2] NEW MESSAGES Adore DR 💕😻👩‍👧 01:11 mommy please im sorry. i love you.

****

Pride Challenge Points: 6662

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