“No, now fuck off – and don’t even think about coming after me!”
“Don’t walk away from me, Molloy.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.” Upping my pace, I hurried around the street corner, and quickly crossed the road. Because it was so close to Christmas, people continued to spill out from pubs and bars.
“Wait, wait, wait—“ His strong arms came around my body, pulling me flush against his chest. “Just hold up, will you?”
“Let go,” I warned, shivering when his hands clamped down firmly on hips, keeping my back pressed closely to his chest. “Now.”
“I fucked up,” came his thick response, as his breath fanned my cheek. “Forgive me.”
“No.” My heart raced wildly. “You hurt my feelings.”
“Be my friend again, Molloy.”
“No.” Shaking my head, I twisted around to look up at him. “You said that to hurt me, you knew it would, and if I forgive you, you’ll only hurt me again.”
“Yeah, I probably will.” Green eyes, so lonesome and full of regret seared me. “But I won’t mean to.” He blew out a harsh breath. “I won’t hurt you on purpose again.”
Accidentally or on purpose; it hurts just the same.
“I can’t.” Releasing a shaky breath, I took a step back. “You really hurt me with that.”
“I care.” Reaching out a hand, he grabbed the front of the hoodie I was wearing – his hoodie – and fisted the fabric as he pulled me back to him, our bodies flush together. “I care. I care. I care,” he repeated, eyes locked on mine, as his hand moved up from my hoodie to cup my neck. “Too much.”
“See?” Blowing out a ragged breath, I sagged forward, letting my head fall against his chest. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“I know, Molloy.” Resting his chin on my head, he sighed heavily. “I know.”
HOW’S YOUR HALO?
DECEMBER 31ST 2003
JOEY
My life was a sequence of one disaster after the next.
The first of which happened to be the day I was born.
Yeah, that was a fucking mistake in itself.
I didn’t say that because I was suicidal, looking for pity, or depressed. I said it because it was the wholehearted truth. I had been born into a family that never wanted me.
To a weak mother and a wicked bastard of a father.
I was the spare son, the backup, second best to my mother’s favored firstborn, and from day one, it had been a shit show, a train wreck.
More children followed after me, my father’s inability to put a condom on his dick the root cause of our household overpopulation – well, that, along with his inability to hear the word no.
Growing up in a home like ours made it difficult for me to work right. I didn’t mean hold down a job, I’d had one of those since childhood. I meant that I didn’t work right in the head, not like other people my age, at least.
There was a whole host of things wrong with me.
Things I was too scared to invest time in trying to figure out.
Truth be told, my brain was a scary place to be, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near me most of the time.
How fucked up was that?
The current piss-poor state of my life was a direct result of poor choices.
Choices I had made.
Choices that had been made for me by people who were supposed to love me but either didn’t have the capacity to love me or just plain didn’t.
I knew I was far from a saint, and I wasn’t blaming my wrongdoings on anyone other than yours truly. But fuck, things might have been different if I had been given a different start in life – a start like the prick standing in front me had been given, for example.
Yeah, with a stable family, a nice house, and a few quid tucked away in the bank, Paul Rice had been given a good start in life.
A better one than me.
It must be nice to be able to sleep at night without the fear of being dragged out from under the covers and beaten to within an inch of your life.
Must be nice to not be distracted by the screams of your half-starved siblings, or the low wails of your battered and bruised, not to mention brutally raped mother on the daily.
Dick.
“Babe, lay off the vodka tonight, yeah?” he told Molloy, as they wandered into Danielle Long’s jam-packed parent-free kitchen on New Year’s Eve, while her house party was in full swing.
They had spent most of the party in the sitting room. I knew this because I’d legged it out here to get away from them.
I was determined to get off to a good start this year – new year, new me, and all that bullshit – but if I had to watch that prick molest the side of Molloy’s face with his tongue a second longer, I would have lost before I even started.
“…I care. Too much.”
“…See? That’s all I wanted to hear…”
Blinking away the memory before it took hold and depressed me, I concentrated on the prick in front of me as he spoke down to her like she was a small child.
Seriously, I gave more respect to Sean, and I wiped his ass on the daily.
“You know how you get aggressive after drinking,” Ricey continued to put her down by saying. Acting like he owned the air around him, he opened the fridge and retrieved what had to be his seventh can of lager, leaving his girlfriend empty handed. “And I can’t stand it when you get sloppy.”
Leaning against the back door, I watched as Molloy’s cheeks flushed bright pink, but instead of giving him a piece of her mind like she normally would, she just brushed it off.
She just let it go.
She let him speak to her like he was her keeper.
It didn’t settle well with me.
Fuck it, though, I wasn’t getting involved in anymore of her drama. Last time I tried to defend her, I lost the head so badly that I almost killed her brother.
You spoke to her like shit, too, asshole, my mind reminded me, and I flinched at the horrible fucking mess of things I had made with her before Christmas.
My inability to produce a competent fucking sentence to explain to Molloy how very wrong I was for her, had resulted in me spewing poison and making her cry.
Tearing my eyes off her, I took a deep drag from my joint and held it in my lungs for the longest time, reveling in the burn, in the dizziness, in the momentary release it gave me.
It wasn’t enough, though.
It never was.
The little baggie of benzos in the ass pocket of my jeans were proof to that. Mixed in with vodka and vicodin, and I was getting somewhere.
I could forget her voice for a while.
I could forget everything
Staring out the back door into the darkness, I found my mind wandering back to the earlier conversation I had with my mother.
“How could they be so cruel?” Mam demanded, holding her head in her hands, as she stared down at Shannon’s torn, blood-encrusted jumper strewn on top of the kitchen table. “I just don’t understand this, Joey.”
“Neither do I,” I agreed, feeling at a complete fucking loss as to what to do for my sister.
We were on Christmas break from school, and somehow, the bullies from school had managed to follow her home from a walk.
A bloody nose and a torn jumper had been the result.
Since she started second year, the bullying had ramped up to epic proportions. I tried to sort it, I fucking tried to nip it in the bud, but it was like I was fighting against the tide. The more scores I settled; the faster they seemed to keep rising up against me.
It was fucking exhausting, and I was running on empty.
“I thought you said you would look out for her this year,” Mam sobbed then, and I couldn’t miss the accusation in her tone. “She looks up to you so much, Joey.”
“No, no, no, don’t even think about putting this on me,” I warned, holding up a hand. “I didn’t do this to her. And I looked after her last year, too, Mam. I did everything I could for the girl.”
“I know you did,” Mam strangled out. “But couldn’t you have done something to stop it today?”
“Like what?” I demanded, throwing my hands up. “I can’t watch her twenty-four-seven, Mam. I have class, and training, and work and—“