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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 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. ”
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. ”
“I know. ”
