45: Helen's Revenge

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MILO

Okay so yeah, it was weird that the doorbell went off at 10pm night six.

"Are we expecting people?" I ask Rey, then look over at my dad across the board  game.

They're both looking at the door.

"No, we're not," he mumbles. "I'll be right back."

"Weird," Rey shrugs, leaning over to pick up Dad's stack of cards to check what he has. I lean next to her, reading all the numbers. "He's kinda screwed. Dunno why he's playing so confidently."

I stifle a laugh. "Yeah that hand is pretty shitty."

There's a noise from the door. "MILOS!"

"Fuck," I look up.

"NOT TELLING YOUR MOTHER WHERE YOU ARE IS FINE IF YOU'RE GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE! NOT ANOTHER COUNTRY!"

"Helen?"

"I'll get to you in a minute," she snips at Dad. "I had planned to take you in August and I have no idea why you didn't just tell me!"

"Mom?" Rey is staring at Mom. I'm preparing to be grounded for the foreseeable future.

"Hi," I mumble. "So-"

"SO?" She's got her hands on her hips. I'm like 99% sure if she had a wooden spoon somewhere I'd be getting it.

"S'okay so I know it's not like good-"

"Miloš."

"Alright alright!" I raise my hands. "I swear I was going to tell you at some point but I lost track of-"

She's looking right through that. "Miloš."

"So it was a little impulsive! Maybe I didn't think all the way through this!"

"That's what I thought," she shakes her head. "You and your undeveloped prefrontal cortex. I had to find out from your boyfriend who didn't even know that you weren't going to tell me."

"Well I was! At some point! I didn't know when-"

She's mumbling so fast I can't decipher it. "Should've known you would've- agh," she puts her hand on my head, ruffling my hair. "I'm glad you're safe. Next time you decide to do something like this please just tell me."

"I'm not in trouble?"

"Oh you're in trouble."

"Oh," I wince. "Whoops."

"Promise me you'll tell me."

"Promise," I mumble.

"Miloš."

"I promise I'll tell you the next time I do something big and probably not all that smart." I say, louder.

"There you go," she stands up straight again, looking around, eyes landing on Rey who looks beyond scared. "Hi honey, I'm so so sorry."

"Uhm, I-"

"S'okay, Håkon told me, you're alright," she offers up a hug. "It's been too long." Rey leans into it, letting Mom hug her. "You're all grown up, and you're so pretty. I knew your hair would be gorgeous when it's long."

"Thanks," she responds, blush creeping up her cheeks.

"Now, you two stay right there while I give your father hell." she spins on her heel and walks back toward the entryway. "Håkon, may I borrow him?"

"Håkon?" I lean out, looking down the hallway. "Håkon!"

"Hey Milo," he's pink in the cheeks. "So I'm sorry I told your mo-"

I leap at him, arms around his shoulders, legs tempted to wrap around his hips. "Hi, hi hi hi hi," I drop from him, reaching and cradling his cheek in my hand. "Are you okay? Are you feeling alright?"

"M'okay, I lov-"

"YOU!" There's a holler from the hallway and Rey and I look up. Håk doesn't know what mom just said but the look on his face is telling me he's able to read the sheer malice in it. "YOU HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FUCKING MAN!"

Rey puts her hand up over her mouth and I stare blankly at the closed door, muffling mom's voice. I'm still cradling Håkon's face in my hands, thumbs paused on his cheeks.

"You're so fucking lucky that your son is the kindest young man I've ever met because if he had been but an ounce less of an angel you'd have never fucking heard from him ever again much less have gotten your apology accepted!"

Rey glances sideways at me. I look back at her.

"Do you know what you did to that boy? What you did to this family? Do you know how much it hurt as a fucking mother to tell him that it wasn't his fault that we were leaving home? Do you know how much it sucked to watch him try to learn english and do school at the same time? Do you know how many fucking jobs I worked to keep him in the one damn thing that made him happy? THREE. I worked three fucking jobs Miloslav! Three! Just to put him in hockey because it was the only time people were nice to him! Do you know how much it fucking hurt to be his only damn friend for three years because nobody wanted to talk to him because of his accent and that he didn't know english? Do you know how fucking horrible that was for me? And it's your fucking fault!"

There's a beat of rest while she breathes, I reach up and put my hands over Håkon's ears. "And then he gets into this elite league and I'm so scared for every fucking second of it because what if he gets injured! I had to send him to Flint fucking Michigan alone at sixteen! God you don't know how fucking happy I was when he met someone just as dorky as he is because fucking look he's finally got a fucking friend in the form of this skinny kid from Maine in just about as shitty of a situation he's in! You have no idea, Miloslav! None! You're the shittiest fucking father I've ever fucking seen and here you are winning your son back over after ten fucking years of psychological damage to him! That boy is my life!"

Another beat of rest, Rey is staring at me and Håkon is very much confused, trying to pry my hands off his ears.

"And then to watch him go into the pros? To be the only person at the draft for him? The only one that hugged him when his name got called when everyone else had their entire family there? You don't know, Miloslav! You don't have a clue you useless, useless, man!"

"Wow she is... handing him his own ass." Rey mumbles.

I choke out half a laugh. Håkon, bless his soul, has still no clue what's going on but is able to read enough context to wrap his arms around my shoulders and support me against his chest. It's much needed. My knees are feeling a bit weak and I need his safety.

"And do you understand what that meant for him? The only thing he's ever loved like that is hockey and hockey is keeping him from being who he is and loving who he does! And it hurt to watch him grow older and not be able to have that type of relationship because he can't in that league and then he does and he finds someone and he finds Håkon and at first I'm terrified of the man because he's scary and that's my little boy and I'm so scared for him all the time but then Håkon turns out to be the sweetest thing and now they can't even breathe without worrying that they're going to be hated for loving each other and you're part of the problem you useless man! And I'm counting down the minutes until he can retire because I just want him to be safe for once in his life and finally able to breathe and not worry about a concussion that ends what I know of him or one bad move that kills him! You took everything and the next from my son!"

There's another slight pause for her to catch her breath, her voice is breaking apart from screaming so much. "I couldn't call him by his name for seven years because looking at him and calling him your name broke everything inside me! The second he got a nickname even his own MOTHER called him that because she was so sick and tired of hearing him referred to with the same damn name as the man that shredded his life!" I hear an inhale. Holy shit. "And it wasn't until I heard his boyfriend calling him by his own name and watching him melt to it that I realized that you even took his name from him! He missed having a name that he could call his because of you! Having someone call him his real name became something so precious to him that only one person was allowed to do it and it wasn't even his own damn mother!"

I collapse back into Håkon and he scoops me up, arms securing around my ribs, legs moving backward, pulling me down onto a hard kitchen chair, setting me gently between his legs, holding me closer to him.

He taps my leg three times and I just shake my head.

"And you know the worst part of it, Miloslav?" She shouts. "The worst part of this whole damn thing?" He does as he's expected to and stays quiet. "The worst thing is that I missed you for every second of the last ten years! No matter how many times I fucking told myself that you were the scum of the Earth and how many times I watched your effect damage my son I still missed you because you've been my second leg since I was fifteen! And then you go and do that because of what? Because you're scared of him? You're pathetic, Milo! I love you to the ends of the Earth and every day is a painful reminder that I'm too weak to sever my ties with you. The older he gets the more he looks like you and the more painful it is for me to even be around him and I don't know what that means for me as a mother so I planned to come back here and finally give you hell for this because if there's one thing I can't handle in this god awful world it's being without my son! I wasn't going to let you take him from me too!"

Håkon pulls me tighter, kissing the back of my neck.

"And don't even get me started on my fucking daughter!" She shouts at him. "You stripped me of my second child and I've spent every damn day wondering where she is now and what happened to her and I wasn't here to watch her grow up and I had to guess what was happening with her based off what was happening with Milo and I finally get here and she's not my son she's my daughter and I didn't get to see any of it! If I find out that you did one thing wrong with her I'll kill you myself and I'm not kidding with that! Are we fucking clear!"

"Clear." he mumbles.

"Good! Now watch your fucking words, Matějček."

There's a long long long pause and I'm almost afraid she's shouted him into being mute.

"I'm not worth your forgiveness, Helen," he manages. "I..." he stops, then thinks for another few moments. "If... if I could go back I would. In a split second. I'd give my life to go back. I'd rather be dead than have done that. But I can't undo it, so I beg of you, please, just let me fix what I can." He takes a deep breath, or at least there's a pause for a breath. "I'll rot forever in hell for what I did to my own son out of fear and ignorance, and I'm okay with that. I deserve that. But, please, let me salvage what I have with the time I have left."

"I don't forgive you."

"Oka-"

"But..." there's a soft 'oof' from the other room. "I miss you. I hate you and there's things I won't be able to get over no matter what you do but I'm sick of standing on one leg."

"Hel-"

"Shut up and let me hug you."

"O-okay."

It lasts a whole of about 2 minutes more before Mom and Dad re-enter the room.

Håkon bends and sets his chin on my shoulder, hands in mine.

"You three heard all of that, didn't you?" Mom looks between us.

"To be fair I didn't understand a single word so only two." Håkon responds, killing the tension.

Mom lets out a soft laugh, wiping off her eyes. "So this is the gang now, huh?"

"Yeah," I manage. "This is the gang."

Håkon shifts, releasing me a little, tapping my leg four times, then three times. I tap back four times, then twice.

"You too, Håkon." Reyna offers. "Milo told me what happened, you need people to support you and so you can have in on our little train wreck."

His head picks up, looking over at her. "Huh?"

"Welcome to the circus." I translate her accent out for him. He looks down at me, frowning.

"I'm allowed in?"

"That's what I just said."

"Okay, lovely lovely," Mom smacks her hands together. "But Håkon and I just got off a plane and we're hungry."

"Dad only knows how to cook two things," Rey points at Dad. "and Milo and I inherited it from him."

"You're kidding." Mom's face drops. "No cooking and you didn't upkeep the house? Miloslav maybe-"

"Helen," he opens his mouth to keep talking but shuts it again, deciding that maybe not bickering just yet is a good move. "I didn't wanna change anything without your permission because you used to get into the details of stuff and I didn't-"

"Miloslav. It's been ten years since you've painted the house or redone the roof. Those are very neutral things."

"Well okay but there's-"

"Big Milo."

His eyes go all wide and the four of us watch him blush for a moment. "Uhm, okay, so... maybe I kept getting cold feet about it and then there's always the whole like saving money thing and all that but then again maybe like, maybe you'd come back and tell me you wanted the house to be brown or something not green so I just patched here and there and waited around but like-"

Håkon laughs softly into my hair. "He rambles like you."

"Shush." I mutter back, smiling.

"And then I kept asking Rey stuff because girls are better at the little aesthetic design stuff and she had no idea and didn't really wanna change anything either so everything has been at a weird standstill." He puts his hands on top of his head, running them through his hair. "So I waited. Because I didn't want to make you shiver in your skin all the way across the ocean because you could feel something was being changed about our house."

Mom raises her hand, thinking. "I have shivered like that occasionally."

"He had to take out the clawfoot tub because it cracked." Rey supplies.

Mom whips around. "My clawfoot tub?"

"It cracked!" Dad holds up his hands, scared. "It cracked I swear it cracked and it didn't hold water anymore and it was a weird heating fluke we had a power outage in winter and it got freezing cold and then the power came on and the first thing it spat out was hot water for some reason and the whole thing just cracked I'm so sorry, Helen, I would've never if it hadn't cracked."

She's smiling at him. "You're still the same man I left here, aren't you?"

"In some ways."

"Guys stop flirting in the kitchen." I mumble.

"Says the man getting actively cuddled by a very large viking." Rey retorts, grinning.

I stick my tongue out at her. "You're just jealous."

"So you didn't change the paint, nor the roof, nor the windows, nor any of the kitchen appliances, apparently, because that oven still looks broken like the day I left, and you look like you haven't gone clothes shopping either, Miloslav I can't believe you've survived." She gestures around at the room and he just watches, a soft little glow in his cheeks. "And that shelf- I told you to replace that shelf years before I even left and it's still there? Oh-" she spots something. "You fixed the table leg, so that's one bonus point." She stalks off into the next room and he follows, blindly. "I'm going to be so mad at you if you still have the wallpaper in here that I was telling you to- ugh, as hideous as I remember."

Rey is trying not to laugh too hard. "He's been waffling over replacing that like every single day since you guys left."

"Oh my god the couch- Miloslav you make me fear going upstairs."

"S'okay it's all the same up there too. Except Rey's room, she's changed things."

"Well I sure hope so. At least one person in this house isn't useless."

She makes her way back into the kitchen area, arms crossed, looking around, he's following like a lost puppy, just watching her.

"Milo, be careful, that poor boy is going to fall asleep on you." She says. "He's tired. I've doubled up his jet lag."

"Wouldn't you have just undone it?" I frown. "Like, the uno reverse card of jet lag, just going back to the same timezone... I dunno."

"Surprisingly," he mumbles into my shoulder. "It's not reversed."

"Really?" I turn to look at him. "But if you went there and then came back here and-"

"I really hoped it would be reversed, but I'm in a horrible balance state between exhausted and way too awake. I am absolutely starving, though."

His stomach grumbles against my back to prove it. 

***

okay i hate to say this but if all things go as planned the next chapter is unfortunately the last one. 

whoops

-rabid

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