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“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” he asked softly.
“I know.”
But I wouldn’t talk to him about my growing attraction to him because he was too important to me. He didn’t just know those things he’d mentioned, he knew my hopes and dreams, and his faith in me made me believe I could achieve them.
He also knew what threatened them.
Barry Evans might be nearly too tempting to resist now, but he was my best friend in the whole wide world. No one understood me like he did, and I couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk losing him.
Popping open the door on my side, I climbed out to put some space between temptation and me. With my hands up in the air, I twirled in a circle.
As I danced in the back lot behind the garage, a ray of sunlight broke through the gloomy clouds and became my spotlight. The soles of my Steve Madden boots kept time, crunching on loose gravel. My body swayed to the rhythm, and only I knew that my imagined dance partner was my best friend.
“You piece of shit!” my mother yelled at me.
“Call me whatever you want.” I returned her glare. “Just no parties in the apartment while I’m on my shift.”
Pretending her words didn’t hurt, I stomped across the cracked linoleum on my way to the door.
“I’ll do as I please,” my mother spat out. “Rachel can close her door.”
Furious, I whirled around. “A door without a lock isn’t going to keep creeps out of our bedroom.”
My mother had been beautiful once, before drugs became her sole focus in life. But now her skin was waxen and her body gaunt. Only her eyes remained the same, a pretty light blue shade like my sister’s, but her pupils were merely pinpoints from all the cocaine she’d snorted today.
“My friends aren’t creeps.” My mother crossed her too-thin arms over her chest.
“Your dealer is.” I propped my fisted hands on my hips. When high like she was right now, my mother didn’t care about anything. “He offered Rach cash to blow him.”
My mother’s gaze widened, which told me she didn’t know. I’d wondered if she did.
“No partying tonight, Lorraine,” I said firmly, wanting her agreement. My mother was a lot of things, most not good anymore since drugs became her priority. But if she agreed to something, she usually held up her end of the bargain.
“I think you forget who the parent is.” She came closer, grabbing the iron balustrade to keep from falling over. It wasn’t even five o’clock, and she was already so messed up she could barely stand.
Interacting with her nowadays just made me sad. Every time I looked in the mirror, I told myself I would never be like her.
“I think you forget that you have daughters.” I glanced at the coffee table where an empty vial lay beside a rolled-up dollar bill, and a bottle of vodka that she’d almost finished.
“How can I forget?” Leaning heavily into the railing, my mother gestured to the furnished but unkept interior of our government-subsidized apartment. “I’m the one responsible for all the bills since your piece-of-shit father split.”
“You don’t pay all the bills.” I shook my head, and strands of my long blond hair slapped my cheeks. “We wouldn’t have any food if not for me working at Dick’s Drive-In.”
Mom’s receptionist job at the Land Rover dealership downtown paid well, but her habit ate up everything that wasn’t set on automatic payment. She might be a grownup, but she wasn’t responsible. She was out of control.
“I’m the mother, Adelaide Lucy Footit. You are the child.” She moved in front of me and poked me in the chest with her bony finger.
I hated when she called me by my full name. I hated that all I was to her now was an adversary. She never spoke softly to me anymore, or treated me with consideration like she had before my father abandoned us. Having experienced her gentleness, then having it ripped away because she preferred drugs, wrecked something vital inside me and my younger sister.
“Addy,” I said firmly, correcting her, wrinkling my nose as her body stench and sour breath hit me.
“That’s not the name on your birth certificate.”
“It’s the name I go by, Lorraine.”
This was an argument we’d had before. We were never going to agree, never going back to a time when we shared a love for music and she gave a damn about me. I should have learned to accept it by now.
“I’ve gotta go.” I swiped my apartment key from the decorative green glass bowl my sister had placed by the door, and grabbed my black wool cap from a hook above it.
