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“How’s Moira?” Girth asked, knowing exactly the effect it would have on me.
My head was already swimming with alcohol and I was fighting the urge to take Mom’s advice.
“Safe now that she’s away from you,” I said to him and he sniggered. Moira was off-limits and they all knew it, but that didn’t stop them from taking potshots at my peace of mind.
“Hey, aren’t you satisfied with one guy’s sister?” Slade was quick to interject. Girth had recently started seeing Sophie, Slade’s sister, and they had embarked on a strange life together. A relationship that none of us thought was going to work. Sophie was sweet and knew what she wanted. Girth was young and scruffy and had too much going on in his family to recognize he had a good thing with her.
But he enjoyed how much this was annoying Slade, nonetheless.
King made to stand up. I could see it on his face that he was done. Since Dad took him under his wings four years ago, we’d been best friends.
“Where are you going?” Girth asked him and King pointed to his watch. It was three in the morning.
“Do you have to say your morning prayers?” Slade said with a laugh, and Girth, King and I all shot him threatening looks. King’s religion was out of bounds, just like Moira was. Even I thought it was a little weird when I first met him, but by now we knew it was what kept him sane. He used to be a street kid, the gang was going to kill him if he didn’t get out and he believed it was his religion that had brought him to Elwood. We respected his beliefs. Slade seemed to be a slow learner and hadn’t caught on.
“Remember what your Mom said,” King said to me, and gestured a salute to me with two fingers. I smirked at him.
“Pussy,” I called after him as I watched him exit the bar, taking his leave from the others as he went.
Now it was just Girth, Slade and me at this end of the counter, still swirling our drinks. At least Girth had Sophie to see if he wanted to. All I had was Sheila, and she wasn’t exactly a human being. It was late and I’d had too much to drink but it was too early to go to sleep as well.
I slipped my cellphone out of the pocket of my jeans and I scrolled through the voicemails.
Meet me behind the bar
I texted the blond. The one who Slade had undoubtedly been calling all night. I could tell from the shifty look in his eyes that he was waiting for her to respond to his messages.
I’ll be there in ten minutes, hun - Barb
She replied almost instantly.
Chapter 2
Ava
I was standing in front of the mirror in Charity’s bedroom, staring at myself because I hadn’t decided if what I was wearing was good or terrible.
“Will this do?” I echoed my thoughts aloud. Charity was sprawled on her double bed, which we had been sharing for the past five days. She was scrolling through her phone and eventually looked up listlessly at me.
“Well, it depends, what impression do you want to create?” she said and I stared at my reflection some more. What impression did I want to create?
Please give me a job so that I can rent a matchbox sized apartment in the bad side of town. If you like the way my jeans hug my ass, maybe you’ll like the way I can pour drinks into an endless stream of glasses that you won’t mind if I break. Maybe if you give me this job, I’ll be able to save enough money to make it through college.
“I think this needs a black shirt,” I said, instead of replying to Charity, and began to roll my t-shirt off. I was walking around in the hot-pink bra I had on and a pair of jeans that were the only decent ones I could find.
When I looked up at Charity, I noticed the look of sympathy she had in her eyes. I didn’t want her to be sympathetic. I wanted her to help me find a black shirt!
“I would have offered you one of mine, but you’ll float in it,” she said and smiled. She liked to self-depreciate herself. She was what…a size 16? She was big and curvy and had the kind of boobs I was jealous of, but she liked to call herself that ugly word… “fat”. To me, she was beautiful and needed to embrace her body more.
“Don’t be silly, Charity, you seriously need to stop talking about yourself that way,” I said, bending down to fling clothes out of boxes as I rummaged through them.
“I’m being honest. You’re skinny, I’m not…which means that my smallest black shirt…you know, the one whose buttons keep popping open when I wear it, will be five sizes too large for you,” she continued in that same tone and I rolled my eyes at her.
I still hadn’t found it.
I was hunched on the floor now, flinging clothes around me. I was going through box after box but there was no sign of a black shirt anywhere.
“What the hell am I going to wear? Everything is in boxes. I need to be appropriately dressed!” I barked at nobody and nothing in particular.
