“You good?” Tristan asks me, still the only true calm one in the room.
Before I can answer though, my mom stalks back across the room.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Mom and I yell at each other a lot. We never throw hands, we just communicate via yelling. This isn’t any different. She’s a few feet away from me, hands on her hips, cigarette long-abandoned, her voice raised and her temper up but nothing out of the ordinary for a heated moment or just… a random Tuesday.
So, I don’t know why it makes me want to fold in on myself until I no longer exist. Maybe it’s because Kyle is standing behind her, staring at me with a mixture of irritation and smugness that I’m intimately familiar with, and I feel like the biggest fool in the world for ever assuming I was past the point in my life where my parents would gang up on me.
I swallow down the sudden urge to throw up and fish around for the tail end of that anger I just worked so hard to get rid of before I completely melt down in front of everybody.
“What am I doing? What are you doing? Why is he here and why am I and Silas the only people who seem fucking concerned about this?”
I spit the words at her, half expecting Tristan to pull me back again but faintly relieved when he doesn’t. At least he trusts me that much.
“I knew you were going to come in here hissing and cussing, I didn’t think you’d start fighting the second you walked inside. This is why I told Silas to let me deal with it myself. The last thing this place needs is more fucking testosterone.”
I turn around and throw my hands up in the air, unable to look at her for a second.
“I can’t believe Silas left you. You’ve been alone with Kyle for what? Forty minutes? And all of a sudden it’s a decade ago and we’re all supposed to pretend like he’s not a piece of shit who’s only here to squeeze you for something.”
It’s impossible not to point at him as I say it, which makes Dad bristle and take a step towards me. Mom throws her hand back up, though, planting herself firmly in between us.
She looks so different, all of a sudden. Confident and sure. It’s not like she’s ever stood in between him and me before when it mattered, so the fact that she finally finds a backbone now and he’s the one she chooses to stand up for is so goddamn infuriating I want to tear myself open, spraying blood and viscera all over the room until everyone else is just as disgusted as I am.
“You’re pathetic.”
They’re not the words I want to say. Those words are a lot more complex and make me sound a lot more pitiful, but I couldn’t even begin to squeeze them out of my chest, so I settle for lashing out instead. Mom looks startled, hurt flashing in her eyes even though it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever called her.
Maybe it hits different when you’re sober. When we’ve been getting along so well lately. I said it specifically to hurt her, so I don’t know why I feel worse as soon as I see it hits my target.
“Cade, I think we should go.”
Tristan crowds me again, pushing me towards the door, but I refuse to move.
“Not until someone tells me what’s happening. Why is he here?”
“Oh, so now you’re gonna let me talk? I thought you only wanted to come in here like a big swinging dick, showing everyone what a man you are.”
Even the sound of his voice is like sandpaper on the inside of my skull, but I force myself to stay quiet while he speaks.
“There’s a bench warrant out for me in Arkansas. It’s total bullshit, obviously. The woman I was seeing found out I was cheating on her and ran to the cops with some fucked-up story saying I’ve been beating on her.”
My heart clenches, because of course this is what’s happening.
He looks me in the eye and points at me as he continues. “I ain’t. She’s a fucking liar. I’ve been cleaning up my act, like I told Kris. I didn’t lay a fucking finger on that bitch.”
I close my eyes, shaking my head because this cannot be my life right now.
“It’s true,” Mom says, interrupting my thoughts. “I called your cousin, and River says the girl already admitted she made it up. She just wanted to run him out of town. She’s bragging to everybody who’ll listen about it, apparently.”
I can’t help but sigh again. “Okay, so? How is this my problem?”
“I just need a place to stay out of state for a while, until I get my shit together. I got some money coming my way and a line on a couple other things. I’m just looking to crash and this is still my home. You can’t turn me out.”
“Watch me,” I say, my anger rising again until Mom interrupts.
“We were in the middle of making a deal when you crashed in here like the lone ranger. If I help let him stay here while he gets this taken care of, he’ll work on paying the child support he owes me. It’s not like the state’s been able to squeeze anything out of him all these years, he’s too good at hiding and immediately spending whatever he makes. I’d rather deal with the devil myself if they’re going to fuck around like this. Besides, he thinks he can get the whole thing thrown out because she’s already bragging about it being a lie, and he just wants to wait it out. It won’t take long.”
