Closing the door behind me, I quickly turned and walked towards my house, heat rising in my cheeks.
I chanced one last glance behind me and saw the glimmer of his eyes as he was doing the same.
Then the truck drove off into the night.
* * *
“Where have you been?!?” My mother nearly screamed at me, tears streaming down her face.
“I was out with a friend,” I said, trying to sound reasonable.
But she was flying into one of her moods quick, and even though I was an adult, I held this fear of her rooted deep within me.
“A friend?! A friend?! This late at night?!” she shrieked.
“I’m a twenty-year-old man, mother!” I shouted back, trying desperately to reclaim any scrap of independence.
The words were lost on her, and she continued on her tirade. “I was so worried! What if you had died? What if someone kidnapped you? What if you were lost and alone and you had one of your anxiety attacks? What if… what if…”
Her eyes were glassy and frightened, and I watched as every terrible scenario involving me crossed through them. I pulled her into a hug.
“Mom, I’m sorry, I just went out for a bit, that’s all.”
“No note! No text!” She wailed.
“Next time I’ll text you. I’ll tell you.” I promised. And I meant it. I’d tell her I was out, that I was safe. But I’d never tell her that I went to go work at a bar.
“I had to—to call the police!” She cried.
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
Then it hit me. The Amber Alert that Adam saw on his phone. That was… that was for me. He must have seen it, saw my name on it, and knew that I was off-limits or something.
My face turned into a scowl. My mother’s meddling had taken away something that I wanted to explore, again.
But I could never let her know that. She thought she was doing the right thing; in her mind, it was all just worry. Then the logistics began to fall into place, and it raised some questions.
“Mom… how did you get the police to issue an Amber Alert?”
“W-well…” she said, pulling away and wiping the tears from her eyes.
I raced to the kitchen and retrieved a box of tissues.
She snatched some out of the box and then said, “I called the police, and they said they don’t do massive search alerts for people unless it’s been twenty-four hours. And it’s not high-priority unless the person is under eighteen…”
“Mom…” I warned, knowing where this was going.
“And I know a lot of the cops in the station, and I know about their funding — I just said who I was, and then they were happy to help me find my son!”
I sighed. “Mom you can’t just throw your name around like that to get what you want.”
That’s when she snapped and she became Scary Mom. “I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT!” she screamed, her eyes bulging, her nostrils flaring.
I was in shock; I hadn’t seen her like this since I left for college. I had twisted the memories of her doing this until they were so weakly bound to my recollection of things that I had thought there was a chance that I’d imagined them.
But here it was, the truth staring at me in the face.
My anxiety curled in my gut and my breathing quickened. I fell to my knees, hyperventilating.
“Oh, honey!” she said, kneeling down next to me.
Just as quickly as Scary Mom had come, she was gone. What was left was the doting, overprotective mother that I had known my whole life.
And I was back to being her son — her baby that she needed to take care of.
When the anxiety attack passed, me and my mother seemed to have come to an unspoken truce: Not tonight.
But when I crawled into my bed, I was unable to forget the image of her when she lost it. Episodes like that were getting more and more frequent as she got older.
I’d set Adam’s business card out on my bedside table, and stared at. It was shining in the moonlight, gleaming like a beacon of safety.
At least I had the option to call someone if I ever felt unsafe; if I ever felt like I was losing control.
I could only imagine what had gone through Adam’s head when he saw my name and description on that Amber Alert.
Had I gotten him into trouble?
Typical… I’d caused yet another inconvenience for someone. I was just a waste of space, infringing on everyone else’s life, living off the kindness of others. I was in my childhood bedroom right now, and even though my mother insisted that I come home and stayed with her until I felt better, until my anxiety got better, I knew I was leeching off of her.
And my anxiety seemed to only be getting worse.
As these thoughts spiraled in my head, I managed to drift off to sleep.
* * *
The next day, I woke up and scrambled to get my phone. I was hoping for a text from Adam, but then as my brain slowly woke up I realized that he didn’t have my number.
My eyes darted over to the business card on my bedside table.
When I went downstairs for breakfast, I found that my mother had cooked up a giant spread of various types of pancakes and bacon, all slathered in syrup. Greeting her with a sleepy morning yawn, I loaded some food onto my plate and sat down at the table.
The wide window next to me was letting the morning light pour in, washing me with its fresh, clean brilliance. I stared out the window to the immaculate yard and thought about Adam; how he’d looked in the truck last night. That distinct wall that went up between us once he’d glanced at his phone — had I caused that?
“Pancakes?” Echoed a voice from deep in the house a few seconds before my father appeared in the kitchen.
“Yes honey, I
