The other stores closed hours ago, placing the bars over their windows. Groups of men and women huddle around the scores of motorcycles that fill the parking lot. The stale stench of cigarettes and the sweet scent of cloves and pot mingle together in the hot summer air.
Denny and I both know he won’t call the
cops, but I can’t risk it. Mom’s been arrested twice and is on probation. And even if he doesn’t call the cops, he’ll kick her out. A burst of male laughter reminds me why that’s not a good thing. It’s not happy laughter or joyous or HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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even sane. It’s mean, has an edge, and craves someone’s pain.
Mom thrives on sick men. I don’t get it.
Don’t have to. I just clean up the mess.
The dull bulbs hanging over the pool tables, the running red-neon lights over the bar, and the two televisions hanging on the wall create the bar’s only light. The sign on the door states two things: no one under the age of twenty-one and no gang colors. Even in the dimness, I can see neither rule applies. Most of the men wear jackets with their motorcycle gang emblem clearly in sight, and half the girls hanging on those men are underage.
I push between two men to where Denny
serves drinks at the bar. “Where is she?”
Denny, in his typical red flannel, has his back to me and pours vodka into shot glasses.
He won’t talk and pour at the same time—at least to me.
I force my body to stay stoically still when a hand squeezes my ass and a guy reeking with BO leans into me. “Wanna drink?”
“Fuck off, dickhead.”
He laughs and squeezes again. I focus on the rainbow of liquor bottles lined up behind the HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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bar, pretending I’m someplace else.
Someone else. “Hand off my ass or I’ll rip off your balls.”
Denny blocks my view of the bottles and
slides a beer to the guy seconds away from losing his manhood. “Jailbait.”
Dickhead wanders from the bar as Denny
nods toward the back. “Where she’s always at.”
“Thanks.”
I draw stares and snickers as I walk past.
Most of the laughter belongs to regulars. They know why I’m here. I see the judgment in their eyes. The amusement. The pity. Damn hypocrites.
I walk with my head high, shoulders
squared. I’m better than them. No matter the whispers and taunts they throw out. Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
Most everyone in the back room hovers over a poker game near the front, leaving the rest of the room empty. The door to the alley hangs wide open. I can see Mom’s apartment complex and her front door from here.
Convenient.
Mom sits at a small round table in the
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corner. Two bottles of whiskey and a shot glass sit beside her. She rubs her cheek, then pulls her hand away. Inside of me, anger erupts.
He hit her. Again. Her cheek is red. Blotchy.
The skin underneath the eye already swelling.
This is the reason why I can’t move in with Noah and Isaiah. The reason I can’t leave. I need to be two blocks from Mom.
“Elisabeth.” Mom slurs the s and drunkenly waves me over. She picks up a whiskey bottle and tips it over the general area of the shot glass, but nothing comes out. Which is good because she’d miss the glass by an inch.
I go to her, take the bottle, and set it on the table beside us. “It’s empty.”
“Oh.” She blinks her hollow blue eyes. “Be a good girl and go get me another.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Then get you something too.”
“Let’s go, Mom.”
Mom smoothes her blond hair with a shaky
hand and glances around as if she just woke from a dream. “He hit me.”
“I know.”
“I hit him back.”
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Don’t doubt she hit him first. “We’ve
gotta go.”
“I don’t blame you.”
That statement hits me in ways a man can’t.
I release a long breath and search for a way to ease the sting of her words, but I fail. I pick up the other bottle, grateful for the pitiful amount remaining, pour a shot, and swig it down. Then pour another, pushing it toward her. “Yes, you do.”
Mom stares at the drink before letting her middle-aged fingers trace the rim of the shot glass. Her nails are bitten to the quick. The cuticles grown over. The skin surrounding the nails is dry and cracked. I wonder if my mom was ever pretty.
She throws her head back as she drinks.
“You’re right. I do. Your father would never have left if it wasn’t for you.”
“I know.” The burn from the whiskey
suppresses the pain of the memory. “Let’s go.”
“He loved me.”
“I know.”
“What you did…it forced him to leave.”
“I know.”
“You ruined my life.”
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“I know.”
She begins to cry. It’s the drunk cry. The type where it all comes out—the tears, the snot, the spit, the horrible truth you should never tell another soul. “I hate you.”
I flinch. Swallow. And remind myself to
inhale. “I know.”
Mom grabs my hand. I don’t pull away. I
don’t grab her in return. I let her do what she must. We’ve been down this road several times.
“I’m sorry, baby.” Mom wipes her nose with the bare skin of her forearm. “I didn’t mean it.