Tate, sweetie, pick up your phone. It's mamma. I wanted to invite you over for some tea before your little teaching career starts up again. Any day is fine with me. I love you Tater-tot. Kisses.

II.

"I hate you too, you careless whore." Twenty-one year old Tate Langdon muttered sardonically as he deleted the message with a click. It was a daily occurrence of listening to his answering machine messages after a run. Saving his mother's for last of course. He drug his nails over his temples, Constance Langdon wasn't supporting him anymore (not that she ever did anyway.) and she still managed to give him a fucking migraine every time he heard her sugared tone in his receiver. His stomach coiled thinking of the cigarette that would be perched in her wrinkled manicured fingers, flinging the ashes where her hand would flip or move when she would go off about something so petty and meaningless in his life.

God, he hated her. There really was no other way to put it. He despised the old hag with everything he had.

She always acted high and mighty when he was in college and often wondered if he still did that now. Criticizing him for being a low paid teacher. Then a week after ripping his manhood apart by the seams, she would be donating to the poor, donating her clothes, just for the recognition of being a "good citizen." it was just a publicity stunt and a horrid one at that. Just something materialistic that would mean absolutely nothing when she was thrown in a box in about twenty years, if she kept up her drinking habits and smoking those cancer sticks.

She may be the hole he crawled out of, as heartless and sick as that sounded, but he knew one thing for certain. Something that wouldn't take the skin off his mother's back if he was the one that drew the blade.

He would never look at Constance Langdon as a mother, even though she told herself he did.

TxVxTxV

Tate stood outside his mother's screen door knocking impatiently as the August sun beat against his back. His aviator sunglasses rested on his long blonde hair, Constance no doubt would ream him for his hair not being at a "professional" length for his teaching at the academy.

"Goddamn it, I'm coming, I'm coming. Hold ya horses." her voice came through the white colored door separating them as she tore it open. Tate stared at her heavily made up face and grimaced. Her eyes were blood shot and slightly red. She had been binge drinking and he could automatically tell.

"My precious baby boy. What on earth are you doing here?" Her voice was quiet and dull, she reached out, brushing his cheek, her hand was freezing to the touch, and as much as he wanted to he didn't pull away.

"I came because you left a message on my machine that you wanted to see me before classes began. So here I am." His voice was cold. Constance didn't notice.

"When did I call? I don't recollect calling anyone today." Her eyes blinked in confusion, and Tate wanted to scream.

"It was you, mom." the word sounded so foreign on his tongue. "You're the only one who calls me Tater-tot." his cheeks flushed red at the ridiculous nickname from his past.

"I haven't called you that in years. You will always be my Tater-tot." She hugged him loosely, the foul smell of alcohol radiated off her clothes, her hair, every part of her. It made him want to gag.

"Sure I will." Monotonous. That's what his voice was whenever he was talking to the bitch who he was forced by god to call his parent. If god was even real, at this point, he had hoped not. If god knew what evil was, he surely wouldn't have stuck him with Constance. She ushered him inside and set him down with the barley standing table. The chair was rickety and unbalanced. Tate looked around his dinning room and saw that his childhood home had really went to shit since he moved out. Not that he was surprised. She set a cup of tea down in front of him.

"So when do you go back to work?" Constance asked, her voice airy and light, those eyes, those deep brown eyes that he inherited from her. Black bottomless pits that could stare into a person's very soul. She was quiet. Too quiet. It was bothering him.

"In a few weeks. I have to look through the list of new student's enrolled for my senior English class."

"Are you going to chop that hair?" Constance asked, chuckling a bit. Something about it seemed forced.

"No. I like my hair like this." His voice held conviction as he looked to his mother's cold lifeless eyes. "Mom. What's wrong with you?" She looked at him, tears slowly streaming down her sunken cheeks.

"Nothing." she whispered staring at the warped wood along the cabinets.

"Bullshit." Sobs ripped at her throat as she threw the glass of scalding liquid she was holding against the wall, the shards of white exploding by the sink. Tate shrunk back in shock as she turned her head to face him fully.

"Tate." Her glare was harsh but her voice was weakening. "Do you hate me?" another sob.

He couldn't answer her.

He couldn't look at her.

He swallowed thickly. Something was wrong.

"Tate." Again, that whine, that weak fucking mewl, he didn't want to see it. All she was at this point was just a weak fucking person.

He isn't standing for it. He wants to yell and argue about how this isn't her he wants to point out that she's a conniving cruel bitch. But his stoic face isn't breaking.

"I have cancer."

Tate's world just crumbles beneath his feet, he doesn't remember tears streaming down his face. He can't hear her voice, he can just see black cornering in his vision.

He slams to the tile floor. His temple slicing against the glass shard from his mother's tea cup as his new reality sets in and cold fear rushes to his bloodstream.

All he can do is lay there and watch his world fade to black.

The last thing he sees is Constance's worried eyes penetrating his own.

Hey guys! Wow! I am stunned to know everyone likes this story! seriously. Thank you for all the reviews, follows and favorites! Please keep them coming for the next chapter. It will be moving day for the Harmon's!

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