CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1 - BRYNN
“Mom?” I call, forcing the old door to our tiny apartment closed with my shoulder before flicking over the four locks. Some people might see that as a little excessive, but those people had never lived in this part of St Louis before.
They’d also never lived with someone who has a habit of running their mouth after a few drinks—like my mom.
Those locks, they’ve taken their fair share of beating and battering over the years, but by some miracle, they’re still holding it together.
Unlike me, who is falling apart by the second.
Tossing my backpack onto the floor, I march past the kitchen and down the hall. “Mom! You forgot to pick up Jovie again! The school just rang, I need your keys so I can go get her!” I call out, hopping on one foot as I attempt to get the soaking wet shoes off my feet—my sore, aching feet courtesy of the seven mile walk from the community college and back, which is only going to be made worse by the six hour shift I’m about to do at the bar downthe street. After so long playing this back and forth with her, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
Playing psychologist to drunks and perverts for less than minimum wage and a handful of tips isn’t the dream I imagined for myself, but it’s paying the bills.
For now.
The actual dream is to go to a real college.
And get a business degree, so that one day, I can open my own restaurant or upperclass cocktail bar.
It’s the very distant, head in the clouds kind of dream—but one that might actually be within reach if I manage to complete my GED this year. Then I can finally get both me and my daughter the hell out of this place and start living our lives.
Leaving high school during my senior year wasn’t exactly where I wanted to begin that journey, but I was barely seventeen, nine months pregnant, and watching my mom spiral every time another boyfriend walked out on her.
If I wanted to make sure my daughter was looked after and neither of us were taken and placed into foster care, I had no other choice but to leave school and get a job to support us. Because it was obvious the adult in my life wasn’t going to do it.
She’d started drinking.
She’d stopped going to work.
And she’d found someone to blame for it all—me.
I did what I had to do to keep us going. I left school and got a job, thinking it would just be until Mom found her feet.
Several years later, and here I am.
Still working at the bar waiting tables.
Still dreaming of a life outside this.
I pause outside my bedroom door, tossing my wet clothes into the bathroom and finding some dry jeans as I wait for Mom’s response. Usually, there is some kind of grumble orgroan—an acknowledgement that I—the bane of her existence—was home.
But all I get is silence.
“Mom!” I yell, holding my breath as I wait, but still, nothing. I curse under my breath and stomp back down the hall and through the kitchen. “Mom, come on, I need to pick up Har—” My words catch on gasp as I turned the corner into the living room and see her lifeless body sprawled out on the floor. My stomach instantly turns, churning at the sight of the red wine bottle clutched in her right hand, though it’s the bottle of pills in her left that forces me to press my fingers to my lips to hold back the wave of nausea that rushes over me.
This is it.
This is the moment that has been haunting me since the first shitty boyfriend walked out and I found her here, unconscious, drunk, and completely unable to control her body—or her bodily functions.
The first time of many.
I can’t move. My feet are cemented to the ground. I just stand there, holding my breath, watching her chest.
Waiting.
Waiting.
