Conflicting Thoughts

Mia's mom eventually left the house but not before placing that tiny seed of hope in her brain.

It wasn't as if she had been looking for reassurance about her feelings, but she often needed that tiny push from her mother to do things out of her comfort zone.

And Yuzuru was pretty much miles away from her comfort zone.

The thing was, in the days that followed, nothing happened.

Yeah, nothing.

She would come from work to pick Alex up completely exhausted and most of the time, she wouldn't even see the Japanese skater.

When they did see each other, he was usually surrounded by other people and waved at her from the distance.

Mia tried to hide her disappointment but every day that passed she became more grumpy and hard to deal with.

Alex went as far as drawing small pictures to try to cheer her up, doing small stupid dances in front of the TV, and doing other small things to get a smile out of her.

She almost felt bad because her son could see right through her whenever things were just a bit wrong. Now, more than ever, he could see that she was sad and grumpy.

"Mommy, why are you sad?" He had asked more than once in the last days and she had never known how to answer.

Because 'I just wish Yuzuru would say something to me' didn't seem like a good thing to tell her child.

The worst of it all was that they were losing time with all of this and the time of Yuzu's visit to Canada was getting smaller and smaller.

🌸

Yuzuru noticed in the past few days that Alex seemed to be bothered by something.

Unlike on that first day when he was constantly excited about every single small thing, the boy was now a bit grumpier and even seemed out of focus in his skating lessons.

Not that Yuzu was paying attention... lies...Of course he was, he cared about Alex as much as he cared for Mia.

He ignored it for a while, but in the next few days, the boy only seemed to get gradually worse.

The skater considered going directly to the mother, but then he thought about people who used to do that to him and he always hated it. As much as Yuzu loved and was thankful to his mother, he often wanted things to be directly said to him instead of her.

This previous experience made the skater go to the small boy, pull him aside and ask.

"Is anything wrong, buddy?"

"Yuzuru?" He asked surprised, not expecting the skater to come to him.

"Ah... It's just mom."

"What about her? Everything ok?"

Concern grew immediately in Yuzuru's brain, was something wrong with Mia?

"She's just sad? I don't know, it's weird. Maybe it's work."

"Sad?"

"Yes, and grumpy. Mommy is never grumpy."

"I'm sure she will get better. Maybe it's like you said, work being a bit hard on her."

Even if Yuzuru's words said that, the whole thing stuck to his head because Mia was just fine a few days ago. He couldn't help but wonder if he had any blame for it.

After overhearing part of Mia's conversation with her mother, he knew that the best thing he could do was distance himself.

She had said it herself.

They couldn't get too attached, not when it could give false hopes to Alex.

But at the same time, Yuzuru wanted to give all of those false hopes to her and give her everything she deserved.

Hearing her story had made him want to make it up to her, show this woman that not all men were idiots like the father of her child, that love could feel good and worth every effort.

The big problem was that he couldn't just ignore the fact that he was going back to Japan in just a few days and didn't have many plans to come back that soon.

More than anything he didn't want to break her heart, he could only imagine how fragile it was with the scars that the other man had left.

Yuzuru only wished that he had met her before, when he trained in Toronto, and would have all the time to dedicate to her and Alex.

Because yes, he was very aware that they came in a package and there was nothing that he would love more than be closer to the boy as well.

Just like the days before, she came to pick up Alex and Yuzuru noticed that yes, she looked tired and a bit out of what he knew of her.

Looking at the empty rink beside him, Yuzuru couldn't help but want to at least bring a smile to her face.

"Alex? Can you stay for a little longer?" He called out, in hopes that Mia would allow it and stay for a bit.

Yuzuru had noticed that she loved watching her son skate, and maybe that would work in cheering her slightly, no matter what was wrong.

"Mom?"

"I guess... If you're not too tired." Yuzuru heard Mia answer with a soft voice.

Just like Yuzu predicted, the woman followed her son inside and settled on one of the benches, giving a small, forced smile to Yuzu.

"Brian told me you wanted to work on your choreo more... I figured I could help for a bit, if you want." Yuzuru said, making Alex's eyes widen in excitement.

"You will help me?"

"Sure!"

"Oh my god, yes!! I will get my music!"

Yuzuru looked at Mia's raised brow and he just shrugged.

Mission is a go.