chapter one;
self-help

I was led down a path in life that resulted in my hands constantly smelling like pastrami, and there were torrents of grease that permanently lingered in the valleys of the friction ridges of my fingerprints. Working at a grimy Italian delicatessen was in no way glamorous or fulfilling, but it was something, even if it meant taking on the essence of cold cuts for below minimum wage. When you have a record and don't have a diploma, and you made the horrible mistake of neck and face tattoos during bouts of teenaged angst and rebellion, there are very few respectable job opportunities. I was on the straight and narrow because part of my probation was to maintain a job and submit to regular drug and alcohol tests, otherwise I'd make a living through petty thievery and squatting. My probation officer liked to come into the deli for surprise visits so I always had to be on my best behavior. Jail is no place for a handsome man like me. Luckily, my probation was almost up.

I earned myself two years of probation when I drunkenly punched some pompous pretty boy at a night club after he kept accusing me of staring at his girlfriend's ass. To be truthful, I was staring at her ass. She was a cute little thing, like a porcelain doll. Short and slender, with champagne colored hair that was begging to be played with. Her tits were nothing to write home about, but her tight blue skirt accentuated her hips and backside that more than made up for it. Subtlety wasn't my game, so it was only a matter of time that her boyfriend caught me. Like most testosterone-fueled beefcakes out to prove a point, he charged at me from across the dance floor ready to kill.

He got his face really close to mine (as close as it could be, considering I had a good five inches on him) to the point where his acrid breath felt like bathwater on my jawline. "Admit it, fucker," he spat at me through barred teeth. "Admit you were staring at her ass."

"What ass?" I smirked, cocking my hip to the side for maximum drunken arrogance. Alcohol makes you feel invincible. I knew this guy probably had more muscle tone in one ass-cheek than I had in my entire body and that if he really wanted, he could easily snap my bones like twigs, but my brain and my mouth were no longer in cahoots. "I have no idea what you're talking about, champ. Now run along before you get yourself hurt."

"I'm gonna kill you,"he said, shoving his index finger into my sternum, "If you don't apologize right now for being a rude shit." And his girlfriend was grabbing on to his forearm begging him to let it go and go back to dancing. For a second, she looked at me with her big pleading eyes.

"How about this." I grabbed the wrist of his hand that was touching me with as much force as I could muster, which isn't a lot when you're on your sixth rum and Coke. "You fuck off, or I'll rip off your mandible and then make sweet love to your girl while you're bleeding out."

I had said the right thing. He was seething, the veins in his neck and forehead jumping and twisting, while his girlfriend tried as hard as she could to pull him back. He tore his arm from my grip and reeled back for a punch, but before he could comprehend what was happening, I slammed my fist against his jaw out of panic.

Which is the absolute worst thing you can do, as it basically gives the other person a pass to completely fuck you up in the name of self-defense, especially if there's witnesses that saw you hit first.

And he pummeled me quite a bit before security got ahold of us. I think they took their time because they enjoyed watching me get my face bashed in. The rest was a blur, both from the alcohol and the concussion, and the next thing I remember is sitting in a jail cell with the other guy while we waited for processing. He had a bruise and a busted lip, and he sat on the opposite wall glaring at me. Me, with my surely-broken nose and dried blood decorating my face like war-paint.

An officer came over and unlocked the cell. "Riku Cox, you're free to go," he said, and for a second, I thought I misheard him, or that the guy had given the cops an obviously fake name.

"Cox?" I repeated, holding in a snicker. "Your name is Cox? Seriously?"

Riku turned his bludgeoned face to me and sneered, "Think my name is funny, huh?"

"A bit. I mean, c'mon," I admitted. "Your name is Cox. Cox!" I was expecting a round two to our tussle, which would have made me feel better because that meant he wouldn't be going home tonight, but to my surprise, he burst into laughter and I couldn't hold mine in any longer. We laughed until tears squeezed from our eye sockets and our chests hurt.

"No one knows suffering unless they've shared a name with the plural of cock," he said, trying to catch his breath, "But I've accepted it. Years of grade school teasing will do that."

The officer, not even slightly bemused by our exchange, looked at Riku and said, "Let's go or you can wait until tomorrow morning."

Looking hopeful, I asked, "Hey, what about me? Can I go?"

"Nope. You're being detained for third degree assault."

"W-wait, what? Do you see my face? Why does he get to walk?"

The cop rolled his eyes. "You instigated and this is his first offense. You, on the other hand, have a file the size of your ego. Cox, let's go. Now."

Riku got up and made his way out the cell behind the officer, turning on his heel at the last minute to give me a two-finger salute. "Sorry 'bout your face," he said. And then he was gone.

And that's how I got two years of probation, and a new best friend.

It was around closing time at the deli and I was mopping up. My boss, Mr. Capucci, a balding Italian man, was yapping on in his broken English about how profits were down and how he was gonna have to cut my pay even more until business picked back up. He could choose to only pay me fifty cents an hour and I would be at his mercy. Luckily though, I was still making enough to afford rent, only because I lived with an older gay man who let me pay less than a fourth of the apartment's full rent because he liked that I spent a lot of time with my shirt off.

All I could think about was the fact my probation was almost up and that I could finally go back to living my life the way god intended—with drugs and alcohol and other illegal activities. I was lost in my reverie and didn't notice Riku come in.

"Hey, you're still up for Marion this weekend, right?" He said, and I jumped.

"Shit, dude. Where did you come from?" I leaned the mop against the wall and looked down at the floor, clutching my heart as if I were moments away from cardiac arrest. "You tracked dirt in."

"Oh well. If gives the place charm." He tossed his hair over his shoulder nonchalantly, clearly oblivious to the concept of labor. "Anyway, Marion. Saturday. Down? We already booked the hotel, so you don't have to pay a dime."

"Awesome, since a dime is like my hourly wage now."

"Yeah, I figured. We're gonna celebrate the end of your probation, man. It's gonna be awesome. Hookers, blow, the whole nine."

"I don't think Naminé would appreciate that," I laughed. "We'll think of something else though."

Like Riku, Naminé forgave me for the nightclub fiasco and became my friend too. She was a little sweetheart who made my heart throb with loneliness every time I hung out with her. And sometimes, for old time's sake, I'd glance at her ass when Riku wasn't looking.

It became a tradition somewhere along the line of our friendship. Every few months or so, give or take, we'd take a small road-trip into the nearest big city, Marion, where they had an art gallery and a huge shopping center and a Starbucks on every corner. It was a mini-vacation. It was a two-hour drive away from us, so we'd leave in the afternoon on Saturday, and we'd have the rest of the day and Sunday to absorb the pseudo-luxury of a utopian metropolis. We'd usually pool together some money and share a suite in a kinda-nice hotel with a continental breakfast and free coffee, and sometimes, if I was lucky, I wouldn't have to hear Naminé and Riku go at it in the bed next to me when they thought I had fallen asleep.

The real allure of Marion, however, were the art shows. Naminé went to school there at some hoity-toity art college, and every time there was an art show, she could get us all in for free where we'd get all dressed up like we weren't society's genital warts and sip champagne out of hand-blown toasting flutes with intricate, impractical stems that somebody probably took a lot of pride in. We'd speak with accents we didn't have and keep our eyes half-lidded to seem fantastically uninterested as we looked at paintings and sculptures that were apparently ingenious and modern, but just seemed like a mess of colors and shapes that had no rhyme or reason.

"And this one was inspired by the fact my daddy touched me and paid for my art school tuition to make up for it," the artists would say, showing off a wall-size canvas full of nothing but splatters of red paint and tiny dollar signs. And we'd 'ooh' and 'aah', and the price tag on it would have a ridiculous amount of zeros for something a toddler with spinocerebellar ataxia could paint. Naminé once told me, "You're not paying for the piece, you're paying for the emotions behind it," which seemed like bullshit, but the whole experience was pretty fun.

"Just think," Riku said, taking a seat at the counter. "This is the last time you'll be breaking the law by leaving town. We really have to up the ante." He thought for a moment and calmly said, "How about we kill someone?"

I went back to cleaning, trying to scrub away Riku's shoeprints. "Eh, I was thinking more along the lines of jay walking or petty theft. I'm not ready to go to prison just yet."

"Trespassing?"

"Only if we find something worth trespassing, I guess."

"Kidnapping?"

"What're we gonna do with a kid, Riku? We gotta feed it and bathe it and stuff. And for what? I don't wanna touch it or anything, that's gross. I'm not into pre-pubescence, I have standards."

Riku let out a sigh of mock-disappointment. "If we're not gonna do anything fun, can you at least make me a reuben? I'll give you a ride home if you do. My car's probably a lot better than bussing it with the public masturbators and night walkers."

Mr. Capucci popped his head from the back and yelled, "Kitchen closed! Axel, finish and go home!" He pointed a finger at Riku. "Testa di cazzo." Then he disappeared back into his tiny linen closet office in the kitchen.

"What did he say to me?"

"He called you a dickhead." I was always learning new Italian expletives from my boss.

"Oh, alright. Guess I'm gonna starve tonight. Ready to go?"

Riku dropped me off at my apartment building, and I hoofed it up to the fifth floor since I figured a little bit of cardio would do me some good. When I walked in, my roommate was chilling on the couch watching Friday Night Smackdown while sipping Chablis out of a plastic cup with a straw. It was a typical Friday. "Hey Ansem," I greeted.

"Axel! Want to get in on this action?" He gestured towards the TV. "Kane's whooping ass and getting all sweaty."

"Eh, why not?" I threw my apron on the coffee table and sat next to him. He offered me his cup and I took a few sips. "Just so you know, I'm going to Marion tomorrow. Don't miss me too much."

"Aw, baby, you know I always miss when you're gone."

I snorted and nudged him with my elbow. Ansem was pretty alright for some weirdo I found through Craigslist. He got out of a seven year long relationship and couldn't handle being all alone in his two-bedroom apartment that the lease wasn't up on yet. Not that I could blame him. Cheap rent and a good friend, I fucking loved the guy. What was once an office for his partner was now my bedroom, and he even gave me all the shit that was left behind in the breakup. Among them a yoga ball, some smooth jazz CDs, a nice pair of too-small loafers, and a back massager that I'm 92% sure was up someone's ass.

After wrestling was over, Ansem went off to bed. I laid on the couch for a bit just thinking, before my own self-pitiful thoughts lulled me to sleep. And that night, I dreamt I had a family. They were faceless, indescribable beings, but they exuded love as we sat around a table in the middle the woods laughing and smiling. But then the Earth's crust broke open beneath them and swallowed them up, and I was left all alone, on a suede couch in someone else's apartment, before trudging to my bedroom and collapsing into bed.

Marion is beautiful. And I don't mean that bullshit quirky urban beauty with flowers-between-sidewalk-cracks that indie bands go on about, but a consumerism-happy, chain stores and plazas and kitschy neon lights kind of beauty that you could only appreciate if you come from somewhere that doesn't have more than three department stores. It has, in my opinion, everything a suitable living environment should have. All kinds of cheap fast food, 24/7 grocery stores, side-of-the-road hot dog vendors, two full shopping malls, night clubs, more bars than gas stations, rats that are bigger than some dogs, drug dealers in every alleyway, prostitutes on every major intersection, and homeless war vets who will do whatever you tell them to for half of a cigarette. It's paradise. Too bad living expenses racked up way past my budget, and the job market in Marion is oversaturated, even for the jobs no one else wants to do. Kids with degrees are working at Burger King, so I didn't think I'd fare too well. But I told myself that if I ever hit it big or won the lottery, I'd get myself a nice apartment in downtown Marion and live the rest of my days reveling in the convenience and extravagance of big city life.

We pulled up at the hotel at around 6 o'clock in Naminé's fancy little sports car and let the greasy bellhop carry our bags to our room. I belly-flopped onto one of the beds and sighed. "I hate riding in the backseat of your car, Naminé. My knees almost made my chest cave in. I was folded into myself!"

"No one told you to be ridiculously tall," she retorted, collapsing on the other bed. "When I was picking out a car, I didn't take your long legs into consideration."

Riku gave the bellhop a ten spot and turned to us with his hands on his hips. "Get outta bed, you lazy fucks. We got shit to do."

"The art show doesn't start for another hour or so," Naminé said. "We can spare a few minutes for relaxation, can't we? Poor Axel over there had to endure a full two hours of sitting on his butt. You know he's delicate."

"Yeah, Naminé's right. I'm like a fuckin' flower."

"C'mon, get dressed, we can hit up some shops before the show. There's a world market in the plaza across the street and I bet they have candles that smell like Egypt. Doesn't that sound nice? The smell of sand and mummified corpses and curry?"

I scoffed and feigned offense. "That's just ignorant."

"Well, you haven't been to Egypt and I have and it smells exactly like sand, mummified corpses and curry."

Naminé and I rolled our eyes simultaneously.

Once we were all dressed, we stood in front of the mirror on the back of the door making faces at ourselves, sucking our cheeks in for maximum cheekbone. We looked hot. Naminé was wearing something white and shimmery, Riku was wearing a dark blue suit that made him look like a Men's Wearhouse cover boy, and I had on a black dress shirt and a tie and nice jeans that had been a gift from the two of them last Christmas. "You look like a tool." Riku smirked, eyeing my reflection. But I knew he meant it as a compliment.

We piled back into Naminé's car and pulled up at the brightly lit shopping plaza. "A bookstore!" Naminé exclaimed. "You guys want to go in?"

"But, but…" Riku started, but Naminé interrupted with, "Oh, stop. We can go to the world market after. We don't have a decent bookstore back home, I want to enjoy it while we can. Is that okay with you, Axel?"

"I'm down. Bookstores are cool," I said as nonchalantly as possible.

Truth is, I always loved bookstores. The smell of paper and dust and day-old coffee, and the dull cadence of idle murmurs and turning pages. When I was young, I was a slow learner. Whether or not that's related to my poor upbringing and mommy issues, I'll never know, but I remember being thrust into public school and being older than the other kids in my class and not knowing nearly as much as they did. I was constantly being referred to as "slow" or "learning impaired" by adults who didn't care that I was within earshot. I couldn't read until I was eight, and it took a few years after that to be able to read faster than a hundred words per minute, and even longer to be able to comprehend the words I was reading. But, I found enjoyment in it. It was a constructive way to forget all the bullshit, and the sense of achievement I'd get from finishing a book on my own would be worth the struggle. While in foster care, I'd spend hours at the locally-owned, now defunct, bookstore in town, thumbing through old books, just to get away for a while. But then I'd leave and go commit a petty crime in case someone got the wrong idea that I was a loser who actually liked reading. I had a reputation to uphold.

Though big and commercially-owned, this bookstore still had charm. It had a cozy, welcoming air to it. But when we stepped inside we were immediately confronted by a dense crowd of young to middle-aged women holding copies of the same book, chit-chatting in excitement and assumedly quoting paragraphs amongst each other. Ahead of the group, there was a disorderly line leading to an obscured table surrounded by even more people and even more copies of the book. It was like looking over a sea of middle class, mostly-Caucasian housewives.

"Paving the Road to Happiness: A Story of Hope, Love, and Overcoming Adversity," Riku read off of the banner that hung over the table. "Man, that's a mouthful. Probably just some self-help mumbo-jumbo."

One of the women standing directly in front of us quickly turned on her heel and gave us a dirty look. "This book," she said, her nose so high in the air I probably could've seen her brain through her nostrils if I looked hard enough, "is a masterpiece. Anastasia Henley is a godsend, without her I'd be a wreck. She helped me get over my divorce. She inspires faith and love, and, honestly, it seems like you guys need a lot of that." She looked right at me as she said that last bit, her eyes scanning over my tattoos and unnatural, Manic Panic hair.

"Oh, I heard of this book! It was Oprah's Book of the Month." Naminé said, unfazed by her implied insult. "Why are all these people here? Is this a book signing?"

The woman's features softened and she looked like a little kid at a toy store. "Yes! Anastasia is here right now! Look!" She pointed at the table where we could make out a hint of someone scribbling away on book covers. "I can't wait to meet her and thank her for all she's done. She really is an inspiration." She held out her copy of Paving the Road to Happiness to us. "Just give it a quick look-through. I'm always trying to get people to read it. I got my mother to read it, my sister, my coworkers, it's great. I must've read it like six times now. I completely have the first two chapters memorized."

I apprehensively took it and began skimming through it with Riku and Naminé trying to peer at it with me, catching glimpses of words like "addiction", "poor", "self-control", "falling in love", and "true happiness" on the dog-eared pages. It just seemed like someone was trying to monopolize off their rags-to-riches sob story. These things were a dime a dozen. I choked back a scoff.

Riku grabbed it from my hand. "Let me see that."

I peered over his shoulder as he flipped the book over to the author portrait, and I felt my heart drop into the pit of my stomach with enough force to herniate.

"Huh," Riku said. "She looks weirdly familiar." But his voice sounded far away. I felt like I was dissolving into the ground, the very molecules of my existence breaking apart, the atoms sinking between the floorboards. There was a jam in my processing abilities. I couldn't see anything but that smiling face from the back of the book, magnified in my mind and reflected across several instances like a room full of mirrors. Those sharp, exotic facial features. Mass of thick red hair. Soft brown eyes.

I vaguely heard Naminé comment, "She's very beautiful. Look at that face structure."

"She's too pointy," said Riku.

There wasn't a doubt in my mind. I couldn't see anything but her. The author. Anastasia. My mother.

Suddenly, there was a hand on my forearm to bring me back to present-day planet Earth. My blinking must've not been on autopilot because the second I forced my eyes closed, I felt relief. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, and I was back in the front of the bookstore where the mass of ladies still congregated. Nothing was displaced, nothing was out of the ordinary. I just found my mother, the woman who birthed me and gave me up and left me with a persistent feeling of inadequacy as a human being, and Naminé had the audacity to tug at me, saying, "Come on Axel, let's go get some German candy from the world market." She attempted to pull me back towards the door, but I kept my feet planted. "Axel?"

"Uh, you guys go ahead, I still want to look around in here."

Naminé looked at me curiously. "If you still want to look around, we can stay."

"Nah, you guys go. I'm just gonna fuck around and look at magazines or something. Not really feeling the world market, they always smell weird." I waved them off. "Seriously. We can reconvene out front in twenty minutes."

"Well… If that's what you want then we're not gonna argue. Come Riku, let's go see if they really have Egypt candles." She laced her fingers through Riku's and waited for him to hand the book back to the lady in front of us before pulling him away. He kept his eyes trained on me suspiciously until they were out the door.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of, you know," the woman said, holding the book against her chest and looking at me with the kind of disgusting sympathy reserved for the animals in those Sarah McLachlan commercials. I narrowed my eyes at her and she stepped back defensively. "Some people need a little extra help in life," she said softly, "If you want the book, get it. If your friends care, they'll understand."

"Honestly, lady, the book seems like a crock of shit." I puffed out my chest and grabbed the book from her. She opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off before she could begin. "In fact, this shit is so laughable, I'm gonna go tell Miss Anastasia Henley," her name felt like a spoonful of too-hot soup in my mouth, "how much of a scam she's pulling here with this literal steaming heap of cat vomit that she's selling for thirty bucks a pop." I began marching up to the front of the line before she could react, causing many sounds of displeasure as I pushed through the crowd.

"The line starts back there, asshole!" Somebody grunted.

By the time I reached the table, piled high with hardcovers and paperbacks and audiobook CDs, I'd already caused a ruckus and women were shouting and requesting a manager to remove me for cutting. Some swung their handbags at me. A few whacked at me with their books. "Excuse me!" I yelled, commanding the attention of everyone within a fifty-foot radius. "I'd like to speak with the author of this self-aggrandizing bullshit!"

A woman peeked up from behind the wall of merchandise. And it was her, in the flesh. Anastasia Henley, the banner above her said in a swirly, barely-legible script with a heart dotting the 'i'. The woman who gave birth to me and abandoned me all those years ago. So very different from what I remember, yet still exactly the same. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what to do. She smiled at me with a mouthful of perfectly symmetrical pearly whites, and for a moment, I thought she had recognized me and that we were going to have a heartfelt reunion and that everyone would applaud and dab tears from their eyes. A warmth radiated from my solar plexus as my heartbeat pounded in my ears.

She opened her mouth to speak and, for a split moment, time stood still.

"I'd be happy to sign your book, sir, but there is a line and it wouldn't be fair if I skipped all these people." She gestured to the grumbling crowd that surrounded me. "I promise I'll try my hardest to get to everyone."

I deflated. And something inside of me snapped. There was no way she didn't know who I was. We shared the same facial features, from our narrow, upturned nose and chiseled jawline and widow's peak. My eyes were my father's, and when she looked into them, she had to remember how one cumshot left her with a lifetime of mistakes, one of which was standing before her like a ghost of the past she must've tried so hard to forget.

I loudly scoffed, a burn in the back of my throat like I was seconds away from spitting fire. "Are you fucking serious? You think I want your signature, you cold-hearted bitch?"

And that is how you start a mob of angry housewives.

Commotion erupted around me and I was suddenly grabbed by two acne-ridden young men who worked at the bookstore and roughly escorted away from the ravenous group of ladies who wanted to rip my testicles off in the name of the self-help for women genre. "You don't understand!" I yelled at them manically. "You don't understand what she's put me through!"

"Calm down, sir or we're calling the police." One of the employees said, his sausage fingers digging into the fleshy part of my upper arm. I tried to thrash out of their grip but my skinny ass wasn't going anywhere.

"The police? For what? It's a free country! I can express my displeasure! I pay taxes!" Truthfully, I don't pay taxes.

"Calm down, sir. You're causing a scene."

"Causing a scene? Causing a fucking scene? You want to see causing a scene?" As they steered me towards the entrance, I kicked over a bookmark display like I had something to prove, causing hundreds of bookmarks, metal, plastic, and cardboard, from kittens to bible verses to Gandhi quotes, to spill onto the floor. "That's me causing a scene, now let me go!"

"Get the cops on the phone," one employee deadpanned to the other. "I don't get paid enough to deal with all these drug addicts that come wandering in here."

"Drug addict? For serious? Fuck off." Once I was no longer being held by two sets of hands, I yanked myself out of their grip and bolted out of the bookstore. "Get back here!" The employee yelled at me, but he made no effort to come after me, opting to instead stand in the doorway and wave his fist in my general direction. Riku and Naminé were waiting by the car and seemed sadly unsurprised, but they sensed the urgency and quickly hopped in. I climbed in the back and before shutting the door, yelled, "Drive! Cops are coming!"

Naminé peeled off without a word, like the good getaway driver she is. Riku turned to look at me and casually asked, "So, Axel. What'd you do?"

I felt like crying, but otherwise just ignored the question and tried to let everything sink in.

"This isn't going to be one of those situations where we have to ditch the car and torch it, right? Because I'm still making payments," Naminé said barely above a whisper, completely serious. "I mean, I'll do it, but… Please don't tell me we're going to be accessories to murder."

With a dry laugh, I shook my head. "I fucked up. But not that bad."

"We were only gone for fifteen minutes. What did you do?"

"I, uh, saw my mom."

Both Naminé and Riku turned to face me at the same time. "You what?"

They knew about my childhood. Not the full story, but the fact my mom gave me up when I was five and that I haven't seen her since. They knew I was bitter but generally accepting of it, and they knew I had no desire to seek her out. Not that I could, since I didn't know her full name. Everyone called her Ana, and my last name is Novak, but when I looked up Ana Novak on the internet several years ago, I never found anything. I resigned to the fact I'd never know her, and I was okay with that. Who'd want to reunite with a person who didn't want them?

"What do you mean you saw your mom?" Naminé asked slowly.

"The shitty book—" I began, before Riku cut me off.

"You mean the shitty book you're holding right now?"

I looked down and sure enough, the book from the woman in front of us was tucked still under my arm. I turned it over in my hands, looking at the back portrait again. "She wrote it. My mother, I mean. It's gotta be. Looks just like her, like me. Her name makes sense. Anastasia. It's her. She was there."

Neither of them knew what to say. The only sound for several minutes was the sound of acceleration and light traffic. They must've had a hard time processing the information, too.

Finally, Naminé said, "So that's why you got all weird."

"Yeah. I saw her picture and it hit me. And then I realized that she was there and I… I didn't think and I pissed off a lot of people."

"Are you in her book?" Riku asked.

"Huh?"

"Like, did she write about you in her book? Isn't her book about her life struggles and how she overcame them? Maybe she mentioned you in there. Maybe, I dunno, you were the catalyst for her becoming a self-help author?"

To be honest, I hadn't thought of that. I turned on the overhead light in the car and started from page one, skimming through looking for any mention of the son she gave up on. The acknowledgement page just said 'To my loving family, thanks for believing in me', no mention specifically of a son. Chapter one, which was all about her youth, had nothing about a son. Chapter two, how she got addicted to drugs, no son. Chapter three, bottoming out, nothing about having a kid. Chapter four, epiphany and recovery, nope. Chapter five, falling in love. Chapter six, a new family. Chapter seven, a son!

'When I fell in love with James, I knew of the son he had from his previous marriage. He was still very young, so he never knew his mother before she passed, and I knew right away that it was my calling to mother this boy as if he were my own. He needed a mother, and I still had an empty place in my heart where this beautiful blue-eyed boy would fit perfectly. The first time I held him in my arms, it felt as if I was engineered for cradling him. I said to him, "I am your momma", and for the first time, I felt like I had found my purpose in this world.'

"What the fuck?" I said aloud.

"Well? Find something?"

"Just some bullshit about someone else's kid that she apparently decided to claim as her own. She gave away her real child so she could get a new one. Fuck this. I wish we never went to that bookstore." I threw the book to the floor.

"Axel," Naminé said, her tone soft and comforting, "Are you sure she's your mom? What are the odds that the woman who gave you up ended up being a successful author that we just happened to run into at a bookstore? This woman has been on talk-shows about this book."

We had arrived at the art gallery, and several people were loitering about out front, smoking their American Spirits and probably boasting about how artsy and tortured they are. Naminé parked and we sat in the car for a moment.

"We look alike, Naminé. We have the same hair color, the same face shape. I'd remember her from anywhere." I picked the book up and handed it to her. She inspected the author portrait, occasionally glancing back at me to bridge the gaps in our resemblance. "I mean, obviously we aren't identical. I know I look a lot like my father too, but I doubt he writes books."

"You shouldn't dye your hair," she finally said. "Your natural color is gorgeous." She handed the book back to me and again my eyes were drawn to my mother. She looked so beautiful. Her hair was carefully styled, her makeup made her look not a day over thirty. She looked happy. And I hated her for it.

"What do you think though? Do you see it?"

"I see it," Riku said. "You both have a weird ass pointy face, it's hard to miss."

"What're you going to do, Axel?" Naminé asked, giving me a look that let me know right away where she stood on the issue.

"I guess nothing. She seems like she's fared just fine pretending I don't exist. So I can back to pretending she doesn't exist either."

"You don't need her anyway," she said. "Look how far you've come without her. You're better off without someone like that, Axel. We can be your family. You don't need her."

I felt tears welling in my eyes.

"Let's go have fun, yeah?" Riku suggested, opening up the door and getting out as to not leave room for protest. I knew the whole touchy-feely disposition wasn't his thing. He ducked his head back in to say, "We'll get drunk and have a cheap laugh at the expense of others. It'll get your mind off things."

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through my nose. "You're right. Let's go have a good time." I tossed the book on the floor and kicked it under the seat.

We joined arms and went inside the gallery, reveling in the pretension and abundance of infinity-sign tattoos and pseudo artiness and neon pixie cuts. But, for some reason, it seemed less charming. I couldn't help but think about the fact that these kids had mothers who probably supported their hobby. And even if their mothers didn't approve, they probably still loved them and had bad school pictures of them lining the mantle over the fireplace. These kids were pursuing their dreams, and I was here for the sole purpose of poking fun. And for what? What had I done with my life that made me so much better? Riku at least comes from a rich family and has traveled the world, and Naminé graduated art school and does commission painting, they have a reason to feel smug. But me? I make sandwiches for a living, while on probation, with no family or significant other or anyone to let me know that I'm loved, or that someone in this godforsaken world gives two shits about me.