“Why are you following me?” I grit out.
He moves beside me, and I feel him looking at me but don’t look at him.
“I’d like to talk.”
My head whips in his direction, and I scowl. “Oh, you’dlikeit, would you?”
“Cameron—”
“No, Austen, you don’t get to suddenly play nice.”
“Why not?” His eyebrows furrow slightly, and he sounds offended.
Is he fucking joking right now? His staring tells me he’s waiting for a response. So I give him one.
“Why not? Because I’m not a backup plan, Austen. I’m not some convenience you can pick up when you’re bored. You’re not going to stand here and pretend to care now, not after you destroyed me like I meant nothing to you.”
And with that, I walk off.
I bang on the door for the third time. At this point, I think my mother is dead. It’s been so long that I’ve talked to her, it’s possible her body has become one with the house. No such luck. The door is pulled open, and there she is.
“Oh, Cameron, it’s late. What are you doing? Why didn’t you call?”
She steps back, allowing me in so I step inside, the air stale and wreaking of cigarettes. It has me coughing.
“I did call,” I tell her once I catch my breath. “About a hundred times.”
She’s shaking her head as she closes the door. “I’d have answered it.”
“Maybe the ringer is off.”
She waves me off, walking down the short hall into the kitchen where the lights are on. I follow her in there to see her taking a seat at the table that’s covered in stacks of mail, books, newspapers, and magazines.
“If this place caught on fire, it’d go up in seconds.” I pick up one of the magazines, reading the date from almost three years ago, then put it back on the pile.
My mother looks up at me from over her glasses.
“If you’re going to talk shit, you can leave. What do you want, anyway?”
She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t have any money. You know that.”
“I don’t need money.”
“Oh good. So you can fork some over then?”
My jaw clenches and I bite back the hurtful remark. She’s my last resort. If I piss her off, I’ll be sleeping in my rental car.
“I just need a place to stay for the night.”
As the words leave my mouth, I wish I would have gone out instead. My buzz is wearing off, and if I have to tolerate my mother for the night, I need to be intoxicated. If I got drunk enough, sleeping in the rental car would have been just fine.
My mother looks me over, seemingly unimpressed with what she finds. It’s not a look I’m used to, considering most people like what they see when they lay their eyes on me.
I look just like my mother. At least, I did before her smoking caused too many wrinkles and the tanning made her skin look like leather. Our eyes are the same color though, and so is our hair. Hers has a slight curl to it while mine is mostly straight.Get that from my father, I suppose. If I knew who he was, I’d know for sure. Don’t think she knows who he is either. Pretty sure she’d have gone after him for child support if she did, but not knowing embarrassed her, so instead of looking, not only for money but for me, she just struggled. Didn’t give a shit what I thought about the whole thing, and now I’m old enough that I don’t care about my father. I do wonder if he knows I exist though.
She reaches for the half empty pack of cigarettes on the table, pulls one out, and lights it up.
“Yeah, you can stay here.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to thank her, but then she adds, “On one condition.”
