Mrs. Gallo was borrowed with Guine’s permission. <3

Word Count: 1515

“Precious, I wish you’d told me you and Chris broke up.”

Paris stopped sifting through one of the large plastic boxes that currently crowded the Gallos’ Great Room to glance over his shoulder at his hostess. Mrs. Gallo had stopped rummaging through her own box to sit on the edge of one of the upholstered couches. She seemed relaxed enough, but wore an expression of mixed curiosity and sadness.

“Oh…” he said, unsure how she expected him to respond. Should he play it off? Should he tell the truth? “Yeah, um… things just… weren’t working out, I guess.”

He turned back to his box and the decorations within, hoping that would be the end of it but assuming it was not.

It was Saturday—a cool first day of October, and Mrs. Gallo had invited him over for lunch and requested his help setting up her autumn decorations. Paris had hesitated to agree due to the strain in his relationship with her son, but she had always been so kind to him and he’d liked her since the moment they’d met, and he couldn’t just say “no” when she seemed to care so much. He hadn’t simply grown attached to Chris; he’d grown attached to Chris’s family—his mother most of all.

He’d felt uncomfortable all morning, not because she’d been especially clingy or hovering—she hadn’t; no more than usual, at least—but because he’d been warring with himself to tell her the truth since he’d arrived.

He’d done enough lying. He didn’t know when he’d gotten into the habit of doing so, but it had to stop.

Yet, every time to tried to broach the topic, his throat would tighten up and he found himself unable to speak.

“What is it we’re looking for again?” he asked.

“A scarecrow wreath. It goes on the front door. It wasn’t in any of the other boxes, so I thought I must have misplaced it with all the Christmas decorations instead.”

Paris continued his search through the box, carefully moving aside garlands and glass ornaments and a picture of Santa Claus that looked like it might have been colored by Peter when he’d been a few years younger, probably a drawing from school that Mrs. Gallo didn’t have the heart to get rid of.

Mrs. Gallo was exactly the sort of mother he always wished he’d had, the sort of mother he’d wanted his own mother to be. Perhaps she was a bit flighty sometimes, and he suspected she had the tendency to become very emotional under certain circumstances, but she was so caring and affectionate, and she did all the little things that made up his idealized image of a mother—she cooked and spent all day baking, she always had things for her children when she came in from a day of shopping, and she decorated the house for the seasons, all on her own.

He’d expected people like the Gallos’ to have hired help, but he’d been pleasantly surprised to learn that Mrs. Gallo still did most of the housework herself.

“Was it because you’re a boy?”

Paris dropped a candle shaped like an angel and froze where he was, kneeling on the floor in front of the box. He was momentarily stunned to silence, and swallowed through the tightness in his throat a few times before he was able to force himself to speak.

“How… how do you know that?”

“Your mother told me.”

“My mother?” he wondered, confused, and slowly turned to face her.

She didn’t look upset or disappointed, but retained that same faintly worried expression. “She said you’d told her you were dating Chris, so she looked us up and gave me a call,” Mrs. Gallo told him, smiling lightly. “I thought it was so sweet of her, wanting to introduce herself that like.”

“W-When was this…?”

“Oh, about a month ago,” she said. The look on her face grew somewhat more pronounced. “I’m not upset with you, Precious. I know Chris must have been so worried about what his father and I might think. I wish he’d felt comfortable enough to tell us. I tried to remind him that we’d love him no matter what, but it still doesn’t seem like he’s ready. My poor Pumpkin. I don’t know why he’d think we’d be ashamed of him. And then to put you in such an awkward position!”

Paris didn’t know what to say. He faced the box again to keep himself from gaping at her, staring into a pile of tinsel and colored lights and the face of a scarecrow beneath, without really seeing anything.

Mrs. Gallo had no idea. She thought they hadn’t told them because Chris was worried about what his parents would think of him dating a boy. She thought Chris had known all along.

He should tell her, he knew. He should set the record straight, tell her he’d lied, that it wasn’t Chris at all. He’d already done such a horrible thing. He couldn’t let her worry about her son more than she already was, especially over something like that. She didn’t have any reason to worry. Chris wasn’t hiding anything from her. At least not anything but what Paris had hidden from him.

He knew in his heart how wrong it was to let these misconceptions continue, yet when he opened his mouth to speak, the only thing that came out was, “My… my mother called you?”

“Yes, we had such a lovely conversation,” Mrs. Gallo patiently responded. He heard her slide off the couch to begin looking through her box again. “She was only worried about you. You should really call her more often. Mothers worry, you know. And especially since you dropped out of school…”

“I had to...”

“Oh, I know, Precious, and it was a very noble thing you did, and I’m sure your mother’s so proud that you’ve grown into such a caring boy, but you have to understand how worried we are. It’s going to affect your entire future, after all. I don’t mean to pressure you,” she rushed to reassure him, “I know you have enough to worry about, what with your father being sick, and now that you and Chris have broken up. I can’t pretend I didn’t see this coming. As soon as Chris told me about your father I wondered how long you and Chris would last. Not that I didn’t just love you two together, Precious. You were so good to him, but you’re already under so much stress. Worrying about a relationship on top of all that must have been so difficult for you, especially with Chris being so unsure of himself.”

“Well… the thing is…” he tried to say, but it came out weakly, too quiet to make much of an impact, and he ended up trailing off.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder and pulled him away from the box. Paris found himself turning around, and was quickly enveloped by a pair of warm, thin, comforting arms. The hand on his shoulder went to rub at his back, while another hand tenderly brushed at his hair.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Mrs. Gallo said. “You’re always welcome here. Everything’ll work out. You’re doing so well. If you ever need anything, you know you can call me any time. I can give you a ride to work, or pick you up from dance, or if you ever need help with your father, I wouldn’t mind at all. Oh, and we can go shopping! You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Just you and me. I always feel better after a little shopping. And you have to come over for dinner more often. It gets so lonely with Beau gone and the boys out of the house. You and I could both use some company, hm?”

Paris didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t find the right words. There was so much he wanted to get off of his chest, so much he’d been holding inside for so long, but he knew Mrs. Gallo wasn’t the person to unburden himself to. She was just a normal woman with normal concerns—too giving and far too loving for him to drag her further into his overcomplicated life.

He placed his head on her shoulder all the same and slipped his arms around her as she continued to coddle and pet him.

“You’ll let me know if you need anything, won’t you, Precious?” she asked.

He nodded. He could barely do anything else, just nod and clutch at her like a lifeline, and speak through a hoarse throat that strained and cracked his voice. “Thank you, Momma.”

“For what?”

Paris shook his head, but she seemed to understand all the same. She held him tighter, and Paris closed his eyes when he felt them stinging and took a shaky breath.

He hated lying to her, hated feeling so guilty when he’d already caused enough harm, but at the moment he just wanted to be selfish.

He’d already lost Chris.

He couldn’t lose this, too.