Phil’s POV
“ . . . mi amore, I just need you to listen to me—”
“I’ve listened!” I snapped, catching my mother by surprise.
She’d been preaching to me while we sat on the couch in the living room. About good and bad. Wrong and right. Love and lust. I’d been listening and listening and I . . . I was preached out. Exhausted. My patience with this conversation was reaching E and I felt emotionally drained—it’s like she’d poured all of her personal biases and beliefs into one sordid spiel and literally dropped them on me. Or shoved them down my throat. I . . . I just couldn’t take any more.
“I get it,” I whispered. “I understand. You keep repeating yourself like I don’t understand but I do, mami. I get it. I just—”
“Do you?” she asked, glaring at me. “That bo
