"You're the one you turned up here," I mutter, pulling my smokes and lighter from the back pocket and tapping a cigarette out. "You shouldn't have."
"What's your problem?" she hisses, pulling on her panties, then shoving her arms through the straps of her bra and hooking it behind her back, hiding her tits from me. "And what are you looking at?"
I smirk at her, knowing it will piss her off more. "Your tits."
"Screw you." A flush rises to her cheeks, and I reach down to stroke my hardening dick through my pants. "What's wrong with you?"
"That's a long list," I tell her, "and a long story."
She bites her lip, and I exhale, remembering her teeth scraping against mine as we kissed, her pussy gripping my cock like a vise as she came, my name on her lips.
Fuck.
"Save it," she says, "I don't want to hear it," and it shouldn't fucking hurt, but it does.
"Suit yourself." I light up, and limp over to the couch. I wasn't really offering to tell her my life story.
Was I?
I throw the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the coffee table before sinking down on the sofa with a sigh. God, my knee's fucked. "And here I thought you came here to talk to me."
"Now you remember that?"
"What the hell do you want from me, Gigi? Just tell me." Fuck, and now my eyes burn like I'm about to cry like a little girl. Fuck my life. "Make up your mind."
"Funny you say that." From the corner of my eye, I see her yank on her dress and sweater. "You're the one in a gang. You're the one ignoring me when your friends are around. And you're the one asking for sexual favors to help my friend, and to keep me safe."
I shake my head. "You think that fucking low of me. You really think that's why I'm helping your friend and keeping you safe?"
"What … what do you mean?" She walks around the couch to face me, hands on her hips, her long blond hair falling in her face. She's beautiful. "Explain, Jarett."
"I only ignored you to protect you. And … " I flick the ashes of my cigarette, and take another long drag, hoping my eyes will stop burning. "You know what? Fuck that. Christ."
She takes a step back as if I slapped her. Her brows dip. "Stop … confusing me."
"I'm confusing you? What the fuck are you talking about?"
I'm really fucking lost here. I gave her my number, for fuck's sake. Went down on her. Kissed her. If there's a girl I've ever cared about … it's her.
And because of that, I can never have her.
She's still watching me, as if she can see behind my words, behind the smoke from my cigarette. She's always been able to see me where others couldn't.
Or so I thought.
"Just … nothing." She walks over to where her jacket is on the floor, picks it up and puts it on. "Nothing at all."
She's leaving again, and this time she's not coming back. I fucking know it.
She's walking out of my life, just like she did two years ago, and this time I know I shouldn't invite her back in.
Things are going downhill, with the gang getting deeper into dangerous jobs and Seb flying off the handle more and more often. Better if she's not nearby. I can't drag her down with me, even if letting her go is the last thing I want.
Suzie was right.
I got fired from the bar. Too many missed shifts, and with her not willing to cover for me anymore, I was handed a pink slip and shown the door.
Fuckers.
It's my fault, I know, but with Angel and Mav riding my ass for not joining the gang activities enough and getting all suspicious about anyone I hang around, like Gigi, it's not as if I had much of a choice.
So now I'm checking ads on my phone, trying to find something else, and wondering where the hell Sebastian has vanished to, again.
I'm worried, even if I hate the guy. After all, he's my charge. He's probably getting high somewhere, or coming down, shivering and sick. He may be lying dead from an overdose, and I'll never know, not until the police find him.
I rub my forehead, trying to erase the headache tightening its hold around my skull. His mom will ask me where he is, how he is. Once more I'll have to lie to her. You'd think after two years of this, I'd be used to it, be good at it, do it without a second thought.
Yeah. I wish that was the case, too. Would've made my life so much easier.
Letting out a long breath, I lean back in my rickety kitchen chair and look around me. Since Gigi has been here, I've been seeing my apartment-hell, my life-with different eyes. Cold, bare, empty. A hand-me-down, old and worn and unwanted.
Like me.
I look down at myself, my ratty sweats and bare feet, the ink on my chest. At the empty bottle of scotch on the table. Look at my package of cigarettes and reach for them but let my hand drop on the table, empty.
If I light up now, I'll go up in flames, I'm so soaked in alcohol. I stink of it, and sweat, and grime.
Why the hell do I care, though? There's nobody here to smell me, or see me, or talk to me. Nobody to get offended, or upset.
Nobody to worry about me.
I make myself get up anyway, to take a leak and splash some water on my face. It's late, the time when I'd normally be working at the bar or following the gang around. Ironic that I was fired just when gang activity eased a little.
Then again, what did I expect? Just my fucking luck, and fuuuck, I'm so drunk. The bathroom tilts in my eyes as I piss, and I end up splashing urine all over. I find myself on my knees, snickering, wondering what Seb will think if he finds me like this, if he finds the bathroom covered in piss.
And then get angry, because why the fuck should I care? I've been cleaning up his messes for years, worse messes than a little piss on the tiles, and what the hell am I doing with my life?
I curl up on the floor, and close my eyes, fighting a new wave of depression. Dammit, getting shitfaced was supposed to make me forget, not drag me down deeper.
If I left the gang, if I moved away … if I became someone else, would I stand a chance with a girl like Gigi?
A chance with Gigi, dammit, cuz there's no other girl like her, and now I'm shaking with cold on the wet floor and cursing.
Something's got to give. This ain't no life. It's a lie I've been telling myself.
And what's one more fucking lie, right? Until you realize you don't know what is the truth anymore.
Macy, the receptionist at the nursing home, gives me a critical look. "Rough night?"
I shrug. "I've had worse."
Waking up on the bathroom floor, frozen solid and covered in piss is a new fucking low. Even worse is the weight on my chest that won't let me breathe, a weight coming from the inside, from my dark places in my mind, from the pit. Digging myself out is getting harder every time.
I'm not even sure I made it out. My skin is crawling, my thoughts are full of shifting shadows and patched-up holes.
Sometimes I'm not sure how my mind doesn't come apart at the seams. It feels like it's held together by a thread that's slowly unraveling.
"Jarett?"
I blink. "What?"
Macy is glaring at me. "You spaced out. What's the matter with you? I'm not letting you inside if you're high."
"What? I'm just tired."
"You sure?" She gives me a long look, and it annoys the hell out of me.
I mean, shit, I know I look like roadkill, but I've been coming down here for two years. Just because I won't fuck her, that doesn't give her the right to keep me out.
"I'm sure," I tell her, and head toward Mrs. Lowe's room before Macy can try and stop me, or send the bored guard standing by the entrance after me.
Goddammit.
My knee is killing me, and my head is pounding. Today is pure misery. Which is why I need to see her face.
Mom's face.
Even if I don't get to call her that. Even if she's not really my mother, or will ever be. There's no one else who can replace her, and today I need her.
When I open the door and step inside her little room, she's sitting at her usual place in front of the TV, and my heart gives that funny twist it always does when I spot her.
Gray hair pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail, her face more lined than it was a year ago, her kind eyes hooded. On the table beside her, there's a plastic plate with a small cake, like every Thursday, brought by who knows who.
She turns them on me, and a faint smile spreads on her lips. "You came."
It's a moment frozen in time, a moment from the past, and I don't wanna move in case I break it. In this stolen moment, she's my mom, and we're home, and everything's fine with the world.
Then she starts trying to get up, and her gaze turns anxious. "Sebastian?"
My heartbeat falters. "No, I'm not-"
"Seb. You're here."
My jaw clenches, and sadness washes through me. This happens sometimes. She thinks I'm him, and today it hits me harder than ever.
"Seb. Gonna make you those meatballs you like." She's still trying to get up, but her motor skills are shot, and she'll never make it up on her own.