Lauren shut the apartment door behind her.
Tossing her backpack onto the sofa, she headed down the hallway toward her mother’s room. All the way home she’d been trying to figure what to say. Now that she was here, in their apartment that smelled of stale smoke, standing by her mother’s halfway opened bedroom door, she was nowhere near an answer.
She was about to knock when she heard voices.
Perfect. He was here again.
“You remember the night we met?” he said in a gravelly, timeworn voice. All of Mom’s boyfriends sounded like that, as if they’d been smoking unfiltered cigarettes since boyhood.
Still, it was a romantic question, surprisingly so. Lauren found herself leaning forward, straining to hear her mother’s answer through the opening.
“Of course,” Mom said. “How could I forget?”
“I told you I was in town for a few weeks. It’s been a month.”
“Oh.” There was a surprising vulnerability in her mother’s voice. “I knew that. Fun while it lasted and all that.”
“Don’t,” he said softly.
Lauren leaned closer.
“Don’t what?” Mom said.
“I’m no catch, Billie. I’ve done some bad shit in my life. I’ve hurt people. Especially the three women who’ve married me.”
“You think I’m Mother Teresa?”
Lauren heard him cross the room. The mattress pinged beneath his weight. The headboard thumped against the wall.
“You’d be stupid to come with me when I leave town,” he said.
Lauren gasped, heard her mother do the same.
“Are you asking me to come with you?” Mom asked.
“I guess I am.”
“Lauren graduates in June. If you could—”
“I ain’t the waitin’ type, Billie.”
There was a long pause, then her mother said, “It’s too bad, Jake. Maybe we coulda … I don’t know. Made something.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Bad timing.”
Lauren heard him get to his feet and walk toward the door.
She stumbled back into the living room, trying to look as if she’d just gotten home.
Jake came hurrying out of the bedroom. When he saw Lauren, he stopped. Smiled.
It was the first time Lauren had actually seen him. He was tall—maybe six foot three—with long blond hair. He was dressed in biker clothes—worn black leather pants, heavy black boots, and a concho-encrusted black leather coat. His face reminded her of the craggy mountains in the National Forest, rough and harsh. There was no softness in his face; it was all sharp angles and deep hollows. At his throat, a multicolored tattoo coiled up from the skin beneath his collar. It was a tail. Dragon or snake, probably.
If trouble had a face, this was it.
“Hey, kid,” he said, nodding, already moving past her.
She watched him leave the apartment, then looked back at Mom’s bedroom. She took a few steps toward the door, then paused.
Maybe this wasn’t a good time.
The bedroom door cracked open. Mom came stumbling out of the room, swearing as she brushed past Lauren. “Where are my damn cigarettes?”
“On the coffee table.”
“Thanks. Man, I feel like shit. Too much partying last night.” Mom looked down at a pile of pizza boxes on the counter, smiling when she found her cigarettes. “You’re home early. What gives?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Mom looked up sharply. The cigarette dangled from her mouth, unlit. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
Lauren moved closer. She couldn’t help herself. No matter how often she’d been disappointed in the past, she always believed—or hoped—that this time would be different, and right now she longed to be held and comforted, to be told, It’s okay, honey, even though she knew it would be a lie. “I’m pregnant,” she said, softer this time.
Mom slapped her across the face. Hard. They both looked stunned by the suddenness of the movement.
Lauren gasped. Her cheek stung like hell, but it was Mom who had tears in her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” Lauren said. “Please.”
Mom stood there, staring at her, that cigarette still dangling from her mouth.
In her pink, low-rise pants and cropped white shirt, she should have looked like a teenager. Instead, she looked like a disappointed old woman. “Didn’t you learn anything from me?” She leaned back against the rough stucco wall.
Lauren went to stand beside her. Their shoulders touched, but neither one reached for the other. Lauren stared dully at the messy kitchen, trying to remember what she’d even hoped her mother would say. “I need your help.”
“Doing what?”
All her life Lauren had felt alone in her mother’s presence, but never more than now. “I don’t know.”
Mom turned to her. The sadness in her makeup-smeared eyes was worse than the slap. “Get rid of it,” she said tiredly. “Don’t let one mistake ruin everything for you.”
“Was that all I ever was? Just your mistake?”
“Look at me. Is this the life you want?”
Lauren swallowed hard, wiped her eyes. “It’s a baby, not … nothing. What if I wanted to keep it? Would you help me?”
“No.”