The anxiety of staying here is almost as bad as leaving. Going back to the real world. Being in a house that I share with my parents because they can’t take care of themselves without me even if I could afford to live alone.
I probablyshouldn’tlive alone.
Though, I suppose the other night is enough of a reason to believe that I’d at least eventually call for help when I inevitably take too many pills that I also can’t afford to replace but desperately need to keep my head on straight.
They weren’t even mine, they were Mother’s.
God, this is so fucked.
“Aunt B,” I mutter when she fiddles with the blanket all over again, placing it just so over my skinny and always freezing legs. “I’m okay.”I’m not. “Just tell them someone’s out in the lot for me. I’ll walk.”
She shakes her head slowly.
“I couldn’t do that. Not after what you went through.”
“You mean what I did.”
Her head snaps my direction, and I can see it in her eyes.She knows.
“You shouldn’t be by yourself, sweet boy. Accident or not.”
She’s trying to believe my lie.
God, she’s too good to have me around.
I put that downturn on her lips. I am the reason she’s scared to let me leave. I’m the one that made her feel like I might end it the second her back is turned. Gave her trust issues. Made her believe lies and question truths.
And this isn’t the first time.
I am my mother and my father all in one.
“It could have been coke. Heroin.Meth.”
Bobbie doesn’t take the bait of my shitty joke. I suppose it is pretty ill-timed, now that I consider it, but I can’t take it back.
“I heard sugar is twenty times more additive that that shit.”
I groan at the sound of Tristen’s voice coming from behind my aunt and drop my head to my hands.
“Thought I got rid of you,” I mumble.
There’s a chuckle that’s light and airy and has the hair on the back of my neck standing up moments before my senses are consumed by the sugary-sweet scent he brought in with him.
“Nice try, bub. It’ll take a lot more than the two-hour silent treatment and a nap to chase me off. Coffee?”
My aunt falls right into the trap with a smile on her face, I’m sure, while I just dig the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. It does nothing but make colors burst behind my lids and force me to blink to refocus my eyes.
When it does … I’m staring right at Tristen and his bright white smile as he talks to my aunt. One of his front teeth is a little crooked, slightly overlapping the other. I fixate on it. That the defect does nothing to take away from how … alluring his grin is. How it just adds to thewoke up like thislook. Messy hair he probably spent time in the mirror perfecting. The white shirt beneath a leather jacket—because ofcoursehe’s got one of those that he’s worn every time he’s come in—is rumpled like it laid out on a chair all night instead of a hanger.
Meanwhile, I’m in the same striped shirt my aunt brought me when she found out I was here. On day three of a sponge bath in the sink because the idea of getting completely naked in an unlocked room makes me feel dirtier than the grime on my skin.
I shiver.
Tristen’s smile wavers.
He pats Bobbie’s arm, then produces another to-go cup with a little tag flying off the side and—
Fuck, he’s offering it to me?
