Page 22 of Into Pitch

“She liked drugs more than she liked me, and men more than both. I never knew which one would be in the apartment when I got home. Sometimes both of them.”

I rap my knuckles to the bar top and let my mind wander back, Imogen reaching out to grip my wrist softly.

“She wasn’t cruel by standard means,” I add, because that matters. “Just absent. Checked out even. Everything revolved around whoever was sleeping in her bed that week. I don’t want to risk becoming all of that, and I don’t want to disappear again.”

Imogen’s hand tightens on my wrist. “First, you aren’t your mother. Second, you didn’t disappear, and letting me sell your art is not the same thing.”

“I ran,” I correct.

I was seventeen and old enough to know better, but I was young enough not to care. I didn’t pack much when I left. Just a backpack, a sketchbook one of my mother’s try-hard boyfriends gave me, and a bus ticket I’d been hiding in my sock drawer for months. I left my mother a note telling her I was safe even though I had no idea if that was true.

Not that it mattered, she never came looking.

I got my GED because it was fast and because it didn’t require teachers asking questions or guidance counselors pretending to care. College brochures went straight in the trash. Art school was a dream for kids with parents who filled out FASFA forms and showed up.

I had needed rent money.

So I lied about my age and I started pouring drinks.

Six years later, I’m still here.

“Bartending isn’t a failure,” Imogen cuts through my thoughts, somehow already sensing them.

“I know,” I murmur.

A drunk guy at the bar whistles and I shoot him a sharp enough look to cut. He raises his hands and turns back to his friends. My attention slides back to Imogen and I find her watching me carefully.

“You don’t want to be one of those people who peak at twenty-three, still talking about what could’ve been.” Imogen whispers and I level my gaze at her.

“If I give you—”

“Yes!” She blurts bouncing onto her feet, I wince at her explosion of energy.

“Christ, Im, you don’t even know what I was going to say.” I hiss.

“Bullshit, you were going to say you’d give me a few pieces to try out.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, because it was indeed what I was going to say. I just would have liked to be the one saying it before she exploded in all that energy.

“I’ll take a few pieces,” she grins as she snatches up her jacket. “Just to display. No pressure, of course.”

“Of course,” I deadpan.

“Oh my god, they are going—”

“But if they don’t sell—”

“They will,” she cuts me off.

I smile despite myself, and after she leaves, I sit alone behind the bar for a moment staring after her.

I don’t want to admit it, but Pitch pushed me out of my comfort zone in ways that I can’t say were wholly bad. Or maybe it was simply the therapy?

Who fucking knows.

I flop onto the couch of Dr. Dormsworth’s office like I own the damn thing.

I don’t, obviously.