“What did he take?”
“None of your goddamn business.” She stands, feeling her back pockets for her smokes. Since I was a kid, she’s always shoved them and a lighter there. She pulls the crumpled pack out, lights one up, and blows the smoke in my direction. “I have to go.”
My heart breaks with the visceral image of her being no better than she was weeks ago. Along with her inability to change into a clean pair of clothes, her hair is a rumpled mess atop her head. A rat’s nest is a nicer way to describe it. Physically, she looks like she could use a makeover and a pound of moisturizer lathered on her face.
I step forward. “Mom. Wait. Has anyone been around?”
She sucks half the cigarette down in one inhale. I can’t imagine what her lungs look like. They have to be as black as the crud caked underneath her fingernails.
“You’d know the answer to that if you were around, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m serious.”
She challenges back. “So am I.”
I grit my teeth together. Is it me or has she gotten harder to deal with? “Have you seen Finn?”
“I thought we handled that.”
Wedidn’t do anything, I want to say.I’vebeen the one busting my ass to pay him back and getting the crap beat out of me in the process while she continues to live life on her own terms.
“I’m working on it. Call me if he comes around. And don’t make any more deals with him, got it?”
She glances over her shoulder at the door, her hand shaking as her cigarette hovers in front of her mouth.
“Mom,” I repeat. “No more deals. Understand?”
“Yes, yes, yes.Fine.”
She puts the cigarette out on the edge of the coffee table, then tosses the butt of it in a nearby ashtray. “I can’t stand here talking about shit we’ve been over.” With that, she turns on her heel and walks out the front door, not bothering to lock it before she goes.
My heart twists. I can’t stand seeing her out of her mind from whatever it is she’s getting off the street these days. I wish I was enough to make her change her ways, to see that she’s so much fucking better than this, that there are better things in life than that feeling that comes when she’s high. Like the sucker I am, I get rid of the rotten food, wash the dishes, and vacuum the floors before I climb back in my car and leave. The entire drive back to Chatham Hills, I think about what it would be like if mom loved herself enough to check into rehab again and stay clean.
For good.
The apartment is notquiet when I get back. I should head for a shower—wash the lingering scent of cigarettes off before Sebastian smells me a mile away—and get to bed so I’m not dragging at work in the morning. However, the second I get in the door he calls out, “Yo, Colson. Get your ass in here!”
I’m weary as I enter the living room. The guys are sprawled out on the couch, playing on one of the consoles. Some kind of shooter game.
“You in for a round?” Sebastian questions, quickly glancing over during game play. I don’t understand how he can spend hours on that damn thing, wasting his days away between his collegiate duties, but ever since his parents bought him one of the old school Nintendo systems when we were kids, he’s loved it.
Giggling comes from behind me. Sylvia, Everleigh, and Violet skirt around me from the kitchen, heading for the floor of the living room with a bowl of popcorn each.
Now that I see it, the apartment does have the buttery aroma of the popular theater treat.
“No thanks,” is all I manage to get out before my eyes move to Violet. She doesn’t sit on the floor with the others but takes a small chair next to the couch. Her features are normal, a small smile playing at her lips from laughing with her friends.
“Dude, come on,” Sebastian whines at the same time his guy is taken out. “Fuck!”
“That’s what you get,” Webber smirks. “Don’t camp, and I won’t sneak up behind you.”
“I wasn’t fucking camping,” Sebastian insists, smacking the controller in his hand out of frustration.
“The hell you weren’t,” Tristan pipes in. “I took you out in the same spot the last time we played.”
“Bullshit.” Sebastian looks at me. “This is why you need to play. They’re teaming up on me. I need someone on my side.”
“Something tells me you can handle it,” I tell him. “It’s getting late, and I have to work early.”
