“Migraine. Stress. And I didn’t drink enough water today.” Now my vision blurred and filled with black globs. Malone’s head seemed to be a foot away from the rest of his body.
“What do you need?”
“I have meds in my apartment. Hopefully, that and a nap will do the trick,” I said, turning to go.
“You can stay here. Let me play nursemaid.” The hope in his voice tugged at the heartstrings that only a month ago I would’ve sworn I didn’t have.
Tempting. Too tempting.
“No thanks. I can handle it.”
“But you’ll call me if it gets worse?”
“Yeah,” I said, almost irritated by how much he cared. How dare he pretend he cared that much about a headache when he wouldn’t take the first step to suggesting something more in our relationship?
That’s not fair, Stella. He said there were planes and phones.
Yeah, but then he admitted he didn’t want to do long-distance.
I made my way across the breezeway, fumbling with the lock because I couldn’t see straight to insert the key. BB meowed at me, and I had to take short, careful steps to make sure I didn’t step on herbecause the black blobs in my vision were growing larger and taking on a sort of technicolor aura.
In mere minutes, the pain would begin in earnest.
After popping an Imitrex, I stumbled into the bathroom and wet a washrag to put over my eyes, then trudged to the bedroom, kicking off my pants and wriggling free from my bra before slipping into bed. BB jumped up with a little trill and circled around my pillow before curling up beside my head. I didn’t have the energy to move her.
She began to purr, and it did feel slightly better. Enough for me to wonder about Malone. He was really going to make me say it first, wasn’t he? I couldn’t. No way. Never once had I been the first person in a relationship to say “I love you,” and I had no intention of starting now. Not when my track record was abysmal.
The one time I’d declared my affection first was the one time I’d tried to make someone stay by declaring my love. Instead, I’d ruined everything—
No, absolutely not going back down that particular stretch of memory lane.
Oh, hell. Why not reevaluate that night while you’re already in pain?
My career in karmic facilitation might have started at age six, but I achieved peak pettiness at the age of nine. And that pettiness brought my entire world crashing down.
Mom and Dad had always been on-again, off-again.
When you get pregnant at the age of sixteen, you aren’t exactly mature—and girls tend to mature faster than boys, so that should give you a good idea of how immature my father still was.
We lived in an old, cramped house in Austell, one that wasn’t particularly well maintained. My father had plenty of time on his hands for home maintenance, but he hadn’t had the will since losing his job at the Lakewood Assembly Plant. Mom worked two jobs. We pretendedto be a happy family whenever company was around, but they argued long and late into the night, and my father often smelled of body odor and beer.
Every now and then, he’d feel fatherly and talk to me about football or baseball. Every six months or so, he’d think to take me out for ice cream. But usually, he napped, drank beer, went to play poker with the guys, or, and this was his favorite pastime, he would sneak out to a strip club.
One summer afternoon, my mother made the mistake of leaving a wad of cash on a kitchen counter. She’d just gotten back from her second job, waitressing, and she was too exhausted to think straight. She trudged down the hall, leaving the odor of burned coffee and bacon grease in her wake.
Five minutes after the creak of the bedsprings indicated my mother had flopped onto the bed, my father was at that kitchen counter thumbing through her cash.
“Where are you going, Daddy?”
“Uh, to the bank.”
My eyes narrowed. “The last time you said you were going to the bank, you went to watch women dance. That’s what Nana said.”
“Well, you shouldn’t eavesdrop. And don’t believe everything your nana says,” he said as he placed the money in his pocket.
“You shouldn’t steal Momma’s money. She worked hard for that.”
He muttered something about getting his rocks off, but that wasn’t an expression I understood yet. I only knew it had something to do with seeing the women dance and take off their clothes, which was something Momma had whispered to Nana when she thought I wasn’t listening.
