“Fuck you,” I manage to get out before I leave the apartment in tears.
I ride the bus home where a full-blown party is going on. I try to rush up the stairs and ignore the noise, but my mother’s still sober enough that she corners me at the stairway.
“Where have you been?” she asks, puffing on a cigarette. She looks twenty years past her age—wrinkly, sagging skin, and a body that’s falling apart—yet she dresses like she’s my age.
“Out with Conner.” I move to step around her, but she sidesteps in front of me and obstructs my path. The bitter scent of tequila flows off her breath and I know I’m in for a world of hurt. As much as I loathe myself for thinking it, I prefer my druggie, passed out mother over the drunk, chatty one.
“That guy friend of yours?” she wonders with a slur to her speech.
“No, my boyfriend for months now.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts.” She eyeballs my stomach. “After the baby comes.”
I told my mother out of courtesy that I’m pregnant. Her response was to laugh at me and tell me how she’s not surprised and good luck with that. That was it. There was no offer to help. No words of encouragement. No nothing. And I hadn’t expected any more from her. After all, I’ve been taking care of myself for as long as I can recollect. But it did make me painfully aware of how alone I really am without Conner. I hate how vulnerable I feel, but can’t shut off my emotions as well as I used to.
Maybe I overreacted with the party thing.
“Leave me alone.” When I step for the stairs this time, she moves out of my way, but her laughter chases after me as I sprint up the stairway.
Once I lock myself in my bedroom, I try to shake off her words but they linger inside my mind. I decide to send Conner a text before I begin looking for jobs in the newspaper. I already have a job waitressing at Delly’s Good Time Diner, although I’m not sure how long that’s going to last once I start showing and my feet start swelling. My boss is already having issues with my morning sickness.
The jobs are pretty slim around here but I circle a couple that I’ll apply for. It’s getting late so I change into my pajamas and climb into bed then check my phone for messages. I try not to be upset that Conner hasn’t called or texted, but I end up crying my eyes out with the sound of my mother’s stereo tormenting me. It goes on most of the night and somewhere in the late hours, a sleepy Jax wanders into my room and curls up next to me. I should go downstairs and turn off the music—I’m sure everyone’s passed out by now anyway. But I’m afraid. Afraid I’ll see my future staring back at me in the form of my mother. Single, a druggie/alcoholic, who is incapable of being a mother. All alone and bitter.
I end up pathetically begging for Conner to come back to me, sending him text after text. Then I lie in my bed and bawl soundlessly into my pillow until I pass out from exhaustion. By the time I wake up, the sun has risen, the stars are asleep, and Conner is in my room.
“I love you, Avery,” he says as he kneels down beside my bed.
He’s still wearing the shirt and shorts he had on yesterday, but I try not to question too much, try to pretend that everything is as okay as it was the day we first met.
“I’m sorry, okay? But I’m going to take better care of you. Way better than what you have.” He glances around at the patched up walls of my bedroom and the leaking ceiling before he reaches over a sleeping Jax and places a hand on my stomach. “The both of you.”
His reminder of how much I need him makes it easier to ignore the smell of booze and cigarettes on his breath and the fact that I sent him at least ten texts last night, pleading with him to answer me, yet he never did. It makes it simpler for me to take him back. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to admit the truth to myself. That I am scared. Not just of being alone or being a mother, but scared of everything ahead of me. That fear blinds me from seeing all the horrible and difficult stuff waiting for me in the future.
My reality.
Not my dreams.
Chapter 13
Welcome to your own personal nightmare.
Tristan
Hit.
After hit.
Drink.
After drink.
Bump.
After bump.
Pain.
And then nothing.
Pain.
Then nothing.
I’m living in my own self-created nightmare. Nothing makes sense anymore, but then again, I’m not sure anything ever did. I haven’t even graduated from high school yet and I’ve been kicked out of my parents’ house. I’m going to move into a trailer park and live with Dylan, a guy who sells crack for a living. And I’m helping him, something I was ashamed of at first, but now…
Nothing matters anymore.
And part of me likes it.
Likes the silence.
Likes not caring about anything.
I can’t even remember who I am anymore, even when I look in the mirror. And my parents, they’re about as disappointed in me as… well, as much as they’ve ever been. That hasn’t changed. In fact, the only thing that has changed is they’ve banned me from the house. My mother told me the day after Ryder’s funeral.
“I want you gone,” she’d demanded. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Take what, Mom, I’d wondered, me or Ryder being gone?
But I haven’t gone back to the house since then. After I’d said my goodbyes, I just walked around and ended up where the drugs are.
Now a week later, I’ve returned home to get my stuff.
“I told you not to come here anymore,” my mother says as she dithers in the doorway of the room that once used to be mine. I tried to come when she wasn’t home, but she showed up before I could get my shit and go.
“I’m not really here,” I explain to her as I rummage in the dresser for clothes to pack. “Just getting some stuff and moving out like you told me to do.”
“Well, you can’t just show up when no one’s home.” She tentatively enters the room as if she’s scared of me. Then she moves closer and studies my eyes before huffing in frustration. “And you can’t be here when you’re high.”
I stuff a handful of clothes into a duffel bag and narrow my bloodshot eyes at her. “I already told you I’m not really here. Just. Getting. My. Shit.” I zip up the bag, feeling sickly gratified by the hurt in her eyes from my angry tone. “Now move out of my way and I’ll be gone.”
“I wish that were really true!” she shouts after me as I brush by her, slinging the bag over my shoulder filled with the only contents that belong to me now. And the bag is very light. “I wish you were really gone, but we both know you’ll be back here! You always come back!”