“He hit Mason, but then Mason pinned him to the car and made him apologise for almost hitting me.”
The girls’ mouths drop open.
“No flipping way,” Lucy says, astonished, a slight smile pulling at the corner of her lip.
“I think he broke his nose.” I wince, remembering the awful sound.
“Who, Mason’s?” Megan asks.
“No, Joey’s. Mason punched him back.” The girls look at one another, smirking in unison. “I need to check that Joey is okay on Monday. It was bad, girls.”
“Nina, screw him! Go check on Mason!” Lucy gets up on her knees excitedly and I frown.
“What? No! Did you forget about the part when he called me a prostitute?” I retort.
“Well, did he actually use the word prostitute?” she argues back.
I glower at her as she checks her phone that’s just pinged with a text.
“Uber’s about to arrive.” She jumps up, the two of them going to the kitchen to clear up before saying goodbye.
“Thanks, girls, I needed this today.” I hug them both close.
“Always,” Megan says with a smile.
They are halfway out the door when Luce turns. “Don’t forget lunch at Mum’s tomorrow. It’s your turn to make dessert.”
I wrap my arms around myself, feeling grateful to have them both as my best friends. “Bye, girls.”
It’s around nine when I hear my phone ringing in my bedroom. I rush to grab it, pulling it from the charger and answering it without looking.
“Nina?” My mother’s shrill voice comes through the line. “Nice of you to finally answer. I’ve been trying to reach you all week. I need some help this month, I can’t manage this place financially on my own.”
I close my eyes as she gives me the same old bullshit excuses. “Hi, Mum. I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I mutter.
“Oh please, if you’d answered my call before now, I wouldn’t be so stressed out. You can be so selfish sometimes.” Ah, there we go with the blame game. It’s my fault she is stressed. It’s my fault the power got cut off. It’s my fault she had to sell her body to pay for new school shoes.
I was just eight when she first started bringing men into our home, sleeping with them for money. She never hid it from me, never apologised or wiped my tears after a night spent hiding in my room, trying to block out the noises.
I puff out a breath, scrubbing a hand down my face and not wanting to remember. “How much this time?”
I shouldn’t give it to her. It only gets spent on cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. But I know once I do, I won’t hear from her for a while. It’s bittersweet, really. How you can long to be held by someone just as fiercely as you fight to keep them at bay; how you can crave a person who has never given you a reason to love them?
And I do love her, despite it all.
“Five hundred. I need to cover the electric. I’m two months behind.” She tries to justify it, but I’ve heard it a thousand times before.
I think about my savings account—or the bank of Nina to my mum. I just want her gone; it’s been a long week. “I’ll transfer it now. Please stop calling me constantly, Mum. Text me, and I will call when I’m free. I teach all day.”
“Thank you,” she tells me, her voice lacking all sincerity before she quickly hangs up. And as always after speaking to her I’m left feeling disappointed. What I would give to be able to speak to my mum, open up about my crappy night and have her tell me I’m being silly and it’s just a boy.
I log into my banking app and transfer the money before she starts hounding me as to where it is.
Throwing my phone down on the coffee table, I round the kitchen island to get a much-needed glass of wine. I’m just about to pour it when I spot an envelope on the worktop.
Those damn girls don’t listen.
I pick it up and contemplate opening it. Thoughts of Mason lying sprawled out on his bed flash through my mind. The feel of his hands as they roamed my torso. The way his scent engulfed me as he buried his face into my neck.
