Project Love
A/N: Hey everyone, new chapter but I do encourage everyone to go reread the chapters before since I edited them, you might not understand this chapter. Also, I do apologize for this being so late I've been dealing with a lot of stuff for the past couple months, the only good thing was my birthday! Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this, and if any of you have domestic abuse triggers I'm just warning you there's some stuff about that in here so you can skip over this. Any mistakes are mine, have a great weekend everyone! And last but not least go follow my tumblr and twitter, links are on my account page, it would mean a lot and I'll be posting samples of the new chapters to come most likely before I post it on here.
Waking up was hard, as always. When you're in my situation it takes some guts to get up every morning and try and do something about this, but i do it. I do it for Carlos, I do it for me, and now I'm doing it for Brittany. That's why my head's spinning around right about now actually, I heard a knock and then a voice a few moments ago, and it sounded like Carlos. I untangle my body from Brittany's, before walking over to the door, rubbing my eyes free of gunk. I can't be looking as wrecked as I am. I open up the door slowly, peeking into the hall and when I see my brother my heart starts beating against my chest, I turn towards the clock and see that its already 12:30pm. Carlos' eyes are full of fear, his face looking like he did last time he woke up alone. I bend down and pick him up immediately, not having to ask what was wrong. My mom left him alone, again. I stand up with him in my arms, walking to the bed and placing him on it so I can get my shoes and jeans on, then my light jacket. I move close to Brittany's ear and kiss her cheek before I say goodbye, quietly. I take Carlos' hand and bring him down to our room, making him shower and when he's finished he takes his clothes and puts them on, that's when I turn on the TV and allow me and him to watch cartoons together, like the good old days.
"Carlos, Mom left around when?" I ask curiously, if she left early I have even more reason to be pissed.
"I don't know, I woke up at seven first, but then I fell back asleep and got up at nine and she wasn't here. I tried calling your cell but it doesn't have any minutes...so I just stayed in the room until it was late and I got scared." Carlos says and I shake my head in disappointment to my mothers actions, she's been gone at least 4 hours. Does she think Carlos is gonna sleep through the whole day? It's not like he's me.
"I'm glad you went to Brittany's room but don't do that again because I don't want something to happen to you, okay?" I say and he nods watching Ben and Jerry. I let him watch for about half an hour before I make him go to the lobby with me, I see Brittany on the phone like yesterday, so I just sit down on one of the revolting couches while Carlos play's with the other kids that I can tell are from the EAU. They're all going berserk, running around like crazy people, Carlos has a long cardboard tube and to be honest I wasn't paying enough attention to figure out where he even got it from, I was just staring at Brittany. The guy at the front desk look so angry and annoyed, but I'm thinking if my baby brother can have some fun in a situation as fucked as this, I'm gonna let him. He shouldn't even be at Penumbra, but he is, so I'm gonna let him have all the fun he can. He should be outside with a good coat and boots, playing in the snow. I glance at Brittany once more and catch her hanging up the phone before she starts walking over to me, looking pissed out of her mind. She comes and sits beside me so I just pull her closer to me so my arm is around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.
"You okay Mama?" I ask softly, rubbing her shoulder.
"Not really," she says reaching up and grabbing my hand. "Amanda- forget it. I don't want to talk about her." She says to me, rubbing her warm palm on my thigh.
"Tell me, what's up with your sister? Is she not back yet?"
Brittany shakes her head and sighs softly.
"Where is she?" I asked concerned, Brittany can't be left alone this girl needs someone.
"I have no idea, she said she wanted to hang out with her friends for a few days, but she was supposed to be back yesterday and I only have a dollar left." Brittany says on the brink of tears.
"Does she leave you like this often?" I ask feeling troubled at the thought, fuck why do I have to care, I got my own shit going on that I have to deal with.
"She's never done this before, but Jason never let her do anything. When he threw us out she said she wanted freedom for a few days before he let us come back."
"How do you know he'll let you guys move back in?"
"He will, he's just trying to show her that she needs him."
"Do you like him?" I ask trying to see how good of a guy he is.
"I guess, he's a really good father figure but he's really bad to Amanda." She say tightening her grip on my thigh.
"Does she love him?" I mumbled against Brittany's cheek, but I know she heard me cause I can see her thinking of the answer she wants to say.
Moments later I hear her soft angel like voice escape from her lips, and I'm almost left speechless.
"No, but he loves her and he loves me. He takes care of us and we didn't have anything before I met him." She says shrugging. her shoulders.
"Wait, you met him?" I ask bewildered, that doesn't sound right.
Brittany looks so puzzled, like she doesn't know what I just said but then she nods, "Yeah, I met him first, we were living with Amanda's other boyfriend before that but I hated that guy. Then I met Jason on my way to school one day, he has this route he's supposed to go and we bumped into each other. He tried talking to me, but then I told him my age and at that time I was only 14 so you could imagine how embarrassed he was. But I saw him a lot after that and every time he would be really nice. Once I was with Amanda and that's how they met, he started talking to her and they went out, the next day we moved out of her boyfriends house and with Jason." Brittany says, and she stops talking for a bit so I don't know if she's finished or not. "He's a good guy, he changed my life.." she says trying to muster up a smile.
I can tell she's getting sad so I try and change the subject. "Well, Amanda's probably coming back right now, she's not gonna just leave you, right?" I say, or ask, I'm not really sure.
"Right." Brittany says smiling and I can tell its fake because her eyes still look dejected.
"Who were you talking to on the phone?" I ask kind of curious, I know its not my business but she looks like she wants to talk.
"Jason, I thought she maybe went back there but she didn't, I didn't tell him she's been gone for days cause he won't like that at all. And he'll know that she's with other guys if she doesn't come back today and call him."
"You still think he's gonna take you guys back?" I ask biting my lip, silently hoping he wouldn't. I mean, he sounds like a creep and I would much rather have someone here with me, I'd even give her some more money if I had to, I know that's selfish but I don't want to be without her.
"Yeah, he said he wanted to work things out with her so that we could come back." She said sniffling, "He's not gonna take us back knowing that she's with other guys." She said, tears dropping down her cheeks. She looks so vulnerable and all I want to do is kiss her. "I'm so stupid." She whimpers quietly and I instantly feel like shit for thinking so selfishly. I just want to consume her pain.
I don't know what to do at this point, so I just grab her hands and hold them in my lap, "Look, you're not stupid. Not one bit. Don't say that Britt, its not true." I say but she denies it shaking her head. I place on of my hands on her jaw and pull her close to me giving her a peck on the lips. "I think you're a genius, you got yourself out of living with that boyfriend you hated by bringing Amanda with you on the route you see Jason, right Britt?" I say and then she starts thinking about it, a small smile forming on her face, and I can tell its palpable because of her expression, she looks like a kid on Christmas, I'm sitting here wondering how many people called this girl stupid for her to be so sad about it.
"Relax Britt, Amanda's gonna come back alright? They're gonna be together and you're going to be back home." I say, pulling her closer to my body so now we're basically one. I don't know if it's true, but I do know that I can't tell her things are going to be shitty, I have to give her a little hope.
Brittany rests her head on my own head, and I look at her with a small smile. "If she doesn't come, do you think you can stay the night again?" She mumbles to me under her breath.
"I really don't know ba-" I catch myself before I call her that particular pet name, I don't want her to feel weird. "-Britt. My mom doesn't know how to take care of Carlos by herself anymore, she keeps messing up. I don't want anything to happen to him."
Brittany nods in understanding, kissing my head and I can already feel it tingling the second her soft lips touch my skin. "Think about it okay?" Brittany says, standing up and I can't help it when my eyes slowly move down to her body. Damn she's sexy. "I know you have Brianna, we don't have to do anything if you don't want to tonight." She says smirking sexily. I can already say, if I go over tonight, something's going down.
When Carlos realizes that Brittany is off the phone he runs over, leaving his new little friends. He jumps right onto Brittany and she's struggling to carry him, I can't blame her he's getting big. When she puts him down his eyes go straight to her ass and I push him before she notices. He comes back to me and punches my arm, so I do what an older sibling is supposed to do. I push him down to the ground, and get on top of him, play fighting with him for a while. When me and him play fight, we go hard, I have to make sure that he grows up strong, I mean he is growing up in the Bronx.
This is the way me and my dad used to fight, punching and kicking, he made me as tough as I am today. We didn't stop till both of us were bloody, damn he used to kick my ass. My mom would be yelling, telling us we were going to get hurt, but knowing that me and my dad are somewhat the same we never stopped.
...
By the time my mom gets back, me and Carlos are in our room. My mom comes through the door carrying two plastic bags like nothing is wrong. She even has the nerve to give me a dirty look, like she's done with me. "You couldn't bring your ass home last night? Even with your little brother starving?" She says to me.
I shake my head, looking back at Carlos playing my game boy. "Does he look starving to you?"
"You know what I mean Santana." She scolds, putting down the bags on the dresser.
I really can't believe her right about now, "Don't even try and get out of this, why would you leave Carlos here by himself?"
"He was sleeping was he not." She says giving me attitude, but I don't have time for it.
"You left here before nine in the morning," I say shaking my head not making any sense of her logic. "It's after one right now, you really think he's gonna sleep through the whole day?" I ask in complete shock of her idiocy. "And what do you think he was gonna do when you weren't here when he woke up?"
"I thought you would be here by the time he got up." She say giving me more attitude than before.
If Carlos wasn't here I would cuss her out because her attitude is really pissing me off. She knows she's wrong but of course she tries to blame me. She does this so much, it's impossible for me not to get pissed. She's always blaming other people.
When she used to do this around my dad, even though he's never been a violent guy I've seen him beat the shit out of her twice for this shit. I'll be honest it was hard seeing my mom get a beat down like that, but on the other hand she's that kind of woman that can drive a man to do some pretty fucked up shit.
The first time my dad hit her was after the first time he got out of prison. He hated how much she changed, the apartment was disgusting and she never cooked. That's mainly because my abuela was living with us while he was locked up and my mom did nothing. But when my dad got out she went back down south before he was out of jail, he kept telling my mom to go back to the woman he married but she never did. She acted like she couldn't do anything.
One night he came home from a party, woke her up, and dragged her out of bed. I woke up cause they were making a shit ton of noise. My dad was cursing and screaming, and my mom was crying. He had her by her shoulders dragging her from the kitchen to the living room and every other dirty room in the house, showing her what wasn't clean. She tried to talk back to him and shit, but he just hit her once and she didn't dare to speak any more. Finally he said that the house better be spotless when he woke up in the morning, and again she talked when he said not to. She was complaining how she couldn't stay up all night cleaning and that she was tired. All I could see was the back of his hand fly across her face, I remember wincing at the same time she dropped to the floor. I was just standing there with my mouth wide open. I wanted to say something, or do something, but I couldn't, he was my dad. I just wanted to tell her to shut up and get cleaning before he killed her or something.
My dad didn't say anything else that night, he drank a beer and then went to bed. When he woke up the apartment was spotless, as clean as a house in the projects could get. I'll never forget that night, while we were eating breakfast I saw how bad my moms face looked. No one said anything though, and it wasn't mentioned after that. At all. I couldn't even believe that my dad did something like that to her.
The second time was almost two years ago, right after we moved out of the projects. My dad was making really good money from his parties. I was really happy back then, cause me and him were hanging out all the time. I went to a lot of his parties, and I would help him DJ or just chill. Then when we got back to the new apartment, at like, four or five in the morning we would just sit on the white plastic chairs that are on the terrace and just smoke a blunt and talk about nothing watching the sun come up.
One of those mornings my mom got up and saw us out there, she got all pissed off for no reason. She was screaming at him uncontrollably, saying how he lied to her about the new apartment, she said she thought that she was going to be set up in a really nice place, but this place was basically the projects all over again. She said he should have set her up in a better place, and I barely heard the last few words from her sentence because he got up and punched her dead in the face, like she was a man on the street. He walked back to the terrace after it happened and he didn't even look back. My mom was on the floor, looking like she didn't know what the fuck just happened. Her nose and teeth were bleeding, but she didn't, no, she couldn't even cry. Her and I were both in shock.
I helped her up, and took her into the kitchen but she didn't cry until I started cleaning the blood off her face. Then she cried hard, I didn't even know what to do so I just told her that he didn't mean to do that to her and he was going to feel sorry, but reality was that he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
My dad doesn't play. Seeing that shit go down fucked me up, at first I didn't want to talk to him about it. Then a couple parties later, we were back on the terrace, I was high out my mind and that shit came straight to my head. I asked him why he had to do that to her and he just explained that when you spend all day handling your shit on the streets you don't need to be dealing with shit at home. He said when you find yourself in a situation that needs correcting, you gotta find the easiest way to get the job done.
"Let me school you Santanita," my dad said that night, "My whole thing is that I don't have any respect for a man that is beating his wife all the time for absolutely no reason. But I don't respect a man that never hit his wife once, cause every now and then a man has to show a woman who's running shit. You need to get a woman's respect. And if she doesn't give it to you, you have to demand it."
He was dead serious, no games, like what he was saying was really important. I didn't say anything, I just sat and listened. I gotta be real though, the shit he told me that night was deep. And I would be lying if it didn't make me think about shit differently.
Sitting here looking at how my mom is now, all I can really think about is how fast my dad would get control of her. Because no matter what I say to her she's just going to keep arguing with me.
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