I drum my fingers on the counter. It’s a sad day when even my internal narrator hates me. Perhaps instead of thinking up insults about counter boy, I should take another stab at how I’m getting myself out of this mess.
There’s a pawn shop in the nearby mall. Even in my heels, it should be a matter of twenty minutes there. If I get enough for my bangles, perhaps I’ll even splurge on a cheap pair of sneakers, so I don’t permanently disfigure my feet on the walk back.
“Fine,” I say, as though Ben had just spoken to me instead of pointedly ignoring me for the last five minutes. “Can I at least move my car out the back of the garage?”
“Keys,” he says, extending his pudgy palm for me to drop them in. “I’ll move it out of the way when I get a chance.”
“Thanks for all your help,” I say with an extra helping of venom on my way out, glimpsing one shot of Ben’s satisfied smile in the automatic doors before they part to let me through.
I cross my arms as I stalk away from the petrol station. There’s a nip in the air, but it’s not that. I just need some shields up as I work through my current problem. I cast a forlorn glance at my car as I leave it behind. If only I’d kept my concentration where it should be, I’d be at the park by now. Looking over the city from high above instead of being down here among the rabble.
Much as I’d like to consign my entire relationship with Zach to the great dustbin of history, I have to admit, I got a few things out of it. Foremost among them, my scrappy little car.
It’s not much, but that’s more than enough to satisfy me. A roof to keep the rain off and an engine that makes it go forward are all a vehicle needs to meet my most stringent criteria.
At least these days when Mum kicks me out of the house for being too loud while she’s in full sensitivity during her comedown, I have a car to shelter in.
Hell, even if I can’t drive it around, just parking it in the driveway at home and curling up in its backseat is a thousand times better than when I used to walk around, sometimes all night, too scared to sit down in case I fell asleep, leaving myself vulnerable to any human vermin scurrying about.
Zach might have missed most of the cues I was sending throughout our relationship, but he picked up on that one, big time. A week after we started dating, and he’d found it online, almost new. I hadn’t been able to believe it. The generosity. The way he saw my need and solved it without even needing to check.
You don’t even like me.
Except I had. For that moment and many others. I would have fucked him forever if it meant I got the benefits of edging under the umbrella of generational wealth that protects him from everything bad in life.
And whoever said liking someone was a condition to making a relationship work. Mutually assured benefits would be more fitting. Maybe with a few mutually assured destructions thrown in for good measure to force each other to stay throughout the hard times. If a genuine connection had meant so much to him, why didn’t he pull the plug earlier?
But of course, there’s a reason. I made it easy, didn’t I? Made it easy for him to move into a new school with his arsehole friends and lend them my status while they assimilated. Caught him up in his classes. Made it easy to get his dick sucked whenever he wanted.
I push the anger down, down, down, but it bobs back up to the surface. It always has done, but lately it doesn’t even stay buried for a moment. I’m losing control of it the same way I’m losing control of everything else.
You know who you should call.
But that gets shoved out the second I think it. Things haven’t come to that. Not yet. Maybe never. It’s been over six months since I saw Wilbur; the last time not long after meeting Zach. If I can just offset some expenses for a few months, maybe sort a part-time job during mid-term break, I’ll be able to keep that record going.
End of the year, I’ll be out from under my mother’s roof, not scared every time I bring money home that it’ll be stolen or cajoled from me, repurposed for something beyond what I earmarked it for.
If I’m supporting just myself, I won’t need nearly as much. Just a month ago, I talked to a girl at a party who shared a room with three others to knock the rent down to twenty a week.
I could swing that in my sleep.
My thoughts come back to my present problem as I draw near enough to the pawn shop to read its name off the sign. Inside the doors, the bangles take a bit of work to get over the knobs of my thumb. The ring comes off easier.
“You got a receipt for these?” the guy behind the counter asks with open suspicion.
“Nah. They’re a gift from my boyfriend. Ex,” I add when his face remains twisted.
He picks the bangles off the counter and stares at the inside seam, reading off the information imprinted there. He chucks them onto a scale and frowns. “I can’t give you much.”
“They’re worth two hundred each. I need at least forty.”
“Can give you forty total, including that.” He points to the simple ring. The tourmaline stone might be a beautiful shade of teal, but that doesn’t magically transform it into a high value gem.
“It’s worth that much alone,” I complain, meeting his eye with the promise to be an irritant until I get what I want.
“Sixty for the lot.”
It doesn’t feel enough, but it’s not like there are a hundred other pawn shops nearby, waiting to be blessed with Zach’s taste in jewellery.
