We both fell silent. But whereas Ashley’s silence was weighted with expectation, mine was filled with resistance.
And more guilt, damn it.
“I can’t, Ash.” I glanced around the room. “I…I need to find an apartment.”
“Not right away, though, right? And the trip is only twelve days. It’s a free vacation. Honestly, you should be jumping at this.”
So I should be grateful?
“One of us is going to have to go, and one of us going to have to stay with Mom. If I go, then you’ll have to come up and take care of her,” Ashley said.
She was bluffing. She was bluffing. It was too bad about the tickets, but nobody actually had to go.
This whole thing was so stupid and unnecessary. And now, Ashley was practically accusing me of being the reason Mom hurt herself again!
I mean, sure, I could picture Mom getting herself all worked up about it, and I could maybe see how that might have contributed to some poor decision-making on her part. It was how she’d always been; the less control she felt she had in her life, the more she tried to exert it in other areas.
Like walking to the bathroom by herself against her doctor’s advice.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
When I woke up the next morning, my head was pounding.
My laptop—open on Leo’s side of the bed—was still playing sitcom reruns, the faint theme music looping endlessly. A quick glance at my bedside table reminded me that, at some point, I’d finished off the bottle of wine.
I groaned and rolled over, burying my face in the pillow.
Every morning since The Incident, I’d woken up with the same heavy realization: I had nowhere to go. No show to plan. Not one of my coworkers had called or even texted, so I had no reason to even get out of bed—let alone shower and get dressed.
Today, though, there was an added layer to this purgatory.
Guilt. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
Here I was, wallowing in self-pity while my sister—practical, dependable Ashley—was stuck being the adult in the family.
I forced myself to sit up. My body felt heavy, like I was wading through quicksand.
The room wasn’t just a mess, it was a health hazard. The air smelled like dirty laundry and…ugh, cheap wine. Wrinkling my nose, I lifted the hem of my T-shirt for a sniff.
Oh. It wasn’t the room.
It was me.
I was the dirty laundry.
I leaned back against the headboard, staring at the mess around me.
The old me—the me from before The Incident—would have bundled all my dirty clothes into the washer, scrubbed the counters clean, and marched into the bathroom for a long, hot shower. That version of me never would have let things get this far in the first place. She would have been sending out resumes. Checking out dating aps.
Before Leo, I’d been fearless in an oblivious kind of way. I moved out the day after graduation, took the first restaurant job I could get, and figured things out as I went.
Spiders in the bathroom? I handled them. Leaky window? I bought caulk.
When my parents visited, Dad had been proud. Mom...not so much.
Now, my life was a wreck. And this time, Dad wasn’t here to tell me everything was gonna be okay.
