World record attempt at the most amount of self-aware, pretentious, horrific, water-related metaphors in a single piece of "literature". GxG angstyfluffsmut. send help
“You take that secret and lock it up tight, throw it into the ocean.”
There’s a problem with throwing something away if that something contains a part of yourself.
Anna bounced -borderline skipped- through the halls of their LA family home on the balls of her feet, talking on the phone, the day her world fell apart.
Anna hadn’t even meant to say it, hadn’t meant to say it like that. Or more specifically, she hadn't meant for anyone to hear her say it like that. It had just… slipped out as she was finishing her conversation.
“-ha okay sure, see you then. Love you too Gawonie,” Anna smiled as she rounded the corner and came face to face with her mother.
The words hung there, thin and fragile, like they might break if anything touched them, barely out of Anna’s mouth before they were caught, practically held aloft by the tension in the room.
For a moment, nothing happened. The explosion of disgust and disappointment she had dreaded for months, years came and went without so much as a ripple, still like the surface of the pond outside the window.
No anger. No shock. No vitriol or judgement. Just… silence.
Her mother stood at the kitchen counter, looking at her askance, absently wiping the same spot on the kitchen bench over and over again. Anna was a deer in headlights, phone still in hand held out to the side, thumb hovering the end call button. Her mother wasn’t supposed to be home this early, she had pilates or yoga or golf or one of another million other rich housewife activities she kept herself busy with. Anna effaced a smile, forced enough that it probably just made her look constipated instead, and spun to leave.
“Who,” her mother’s voice stopped Anna cold before she’d even made a full turn, “was that?”
“What? Oh ah, no one, just messing around with a friend,” Anna said quietly, relief almost flooding her at the question, almost, before…
“Gawon? Lee Gawon? The girl in your class that joined from the west coast last summer,” her mother spoke slowly, chewing through the words one by one.
Shit.
Unfortunately, one of those rich bored controlling housewife activities was being a part of the Parents and Teachers Association at Anna’s private school. Her grades had been fine, one of the top students in her class on her own merit, but that hadn't stopped her mother from rubbing shoulders with the principal and the parents of kids she thought were elite enough for Anna to associate with. Her mother was acutely aware of every student with ‘potential’, as she called it, in Anna’s orbit and equally aware of those she deemed lacking.
“I told you when she joined your class that girl wasn't worth your time. That’s doubly true now, if she’s got you saying such ridiculous things. Give me your phone, I'll erase her number.”
“NO!” Anna started, a little too loudly and took a step back. “Gawon is my friend Mom.”
But the mistake had been made, the truth in Anna’s words collided with the suspended ones that she’d spoken earlier and they dropped together, cracking the surface of the water and her mothers facade.
Her mother’s hand on the counter stopped moving then, slowly, she set the cloth down.
“Dont be silly girl, no west coast brat is worth messing up your future. Forget her.”
The dismissal of her closest friend lit a fire in Anna, she faced her mother and met her eyes, defiant. “Gawon isn’t a brat, she’s brilliant and talented and kind and I-” Anna hesitated but the cat was already out of the bag, “I like her. A lot.”
There was a loooong pause while her mother watched her, eyes boring into her own, looking for, and finding, sincerity there.
“You’re too young to know that. You're too young to know what’s right, what's good for you,” she said, taking a step forward for the first time since Anna walked in. “Give me your phone.”
Anna swallowed, “I think I know.”
Another pause, longer, heavier. Her mother arrives in front of her and Anna could see the edges of anger in her expression. Tight, controlled, for now.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Some thoughts… some phrases… they don’t need to become anything. I’ll take what you said how you should mean it, Gawon is a friend, temporary and nothing more.”
“She’s not just a f-”
“This is a phase, honey,” her mother interrupted, voice dripping in barely restrained rage, the term honey, dripping in condescension.
Anna felt something twist in her chest. “It’s not a phase.”
That had done it.
Her mother drew herself up to tower over her daughter, looking down at her, all for being the same height but now there was something sharper in her eyes—not loud, not explosive, but firm in a way that didn’t leave room for argument.
“Anna.”
Just her name. A warning. The pond had stilled, wind outside held its breath.
“You have a future,” her mother continued. “You’re doing well. Don’t make things harder for yourself.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“Then don’t.” The words came quicker now, cutting in. “Don’t turn this into something real. You don’t have to say it out loud. You don’t have to… act on it.”
Anna’s throat tightened.
“But it’s already real.”
Her mother’s expression didn’t soften.
“Only if you let it be. You don’t have to let this take over my good, beautiful, perfect daughter.”
She said it like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else.
The room felt smaller, the air thicker. Her mother wasn’t taking her seriously at all, she wasn’t arguing against the person in Anna’s heart, or the concept as a whole, she was just … telling her to change. She treated Anna as if she was broken, something that needed to be fixed. And it cracked something in Anna’s chest. Her mother glanced toward the window, over the water, then back at her.
“Some things,” she said more quietly, “are better left alone.”
Anna didn’t respond.
“Take it,” her mother added, her voice steadier now, almost practical, like she was discussing how to remove an insect or bothersome piece of trash. “Whatever you think you’re feeling… put it somewhere it won’t affect anything… anyone.”
Anna’s fingers curled slightly at her sides.
“Throw it away, if you have to,” her mother said. “Somewhere deep. Somewhere no one will find it. Never let it out.”
The sunlight on the water shifted now, across the courtyard and pond, hidden by a cloud maybe, retreating from the kitchen slowly and across her mother’s face, across Anna’s hands, as she looked down at them. For a second, she imagined it, something small and fragile held between her palms. Something alive, something of hers, something that was her.
Slowly, she closed her fingers around it and her mother stepped up to close her fingers around Anna’s.
“You take that secret and lock it up tight, throw it into the ocean...”
They were the only words her mother said to her for a long time, all summer in fact, until she cast her adrift..
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