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On nights like these it was most important not to make a sound, not alert a single soul to my presence in the house. It said everything in the world about the state I was in that for the first time in my life I knocked over my lamp from the bedside table when climbing down into my room.
I felt the very moment my toe connected with the battered shade. I felt it and I knew. I whipped around when I landed, already too loud, on the carpet and lunged for the wobbling lamp, still not sure whether it wanted to betray me or not. I lunged and my fingertips stretched, but I was too late. I was always going to be too fucking late.
It didn’t shatter or anything like that. It just fell with a dull thud on the carpet. But it was enough. I knew it.
I crouched low behind my bed, out of sight from the door, as if it made a difference. I strained my ear like I didn’t know with one hundred percent certainty that someone was coming. And someone was coming.
I held my breath like there was still a chance that if I didn’t make another sound, things could be different.
When I finally heard the footsteps, loud and lumbering, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The old me wouldn’t have been surprised. One, because she wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. And two, because she would have been out that window the second that lamp fell over, which it wouldn’t have.
But I had nowhere else to go.
I had nothing to do but wait.
Whoever was coming toward me wasn’t sober. I knew that at least. Big thuds against the walls echoed toward me as I shrank in tighter to myself. The chair wasn’t beneath the doorknob because I hadn’t been here for so long. I could have hurried toward it. I could have shoved it in place before it was too late.
Instead I made myself tinier. I tugged my knees in closer. I buried my face against my chest. I wanted to cry like a little girl, like a child.
The only noise I made was to whisper, again and again, with the words catching in my constricted throat, “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.”
And I didn’t mean Nick.
The door opened wildly, loudly, and I knew from that alone that it wasn’t Nick after all. Nick didn’t lose control. No, no. Control was the single most important thing in the world to Nick. Control of himself. More important, control of others. Druggies were easy enough to control. So were little girls.
It wasn’t Nick who nearly fell as he stumbled into my room, holding onto the shifting door handle to keep his feet beneath him. I thought maybe he was drunk or high enough not to see me. Maybe I would get lucky and he would lumber away, the big brute who had more marks in his inner arms than probably years on earth? Then again maybe my mother would show up and say it was all a mistake, her leaving me, and whisk me away to the suburbs?
“Yer kinda small, aren’t ye?” the guy said, his words slurring.
He saw me. Surprise, surprise. I stood, my knees shaking.
“You’re in my bedroom,” I said. “The bathroom’s down the hallway. Near the front door.” I pointed.
The man wobbled slightly on his feet but did not leave. “I thought ye’d have bigger tits.”
I tugged the strings of my hoodie tighter and wrapped my jacket closer as the intruder squinted at me.
“Yeah,” he said, moving forward but not far enough that he had to leave the door, which was apparently the only thing keeping him upright. “I thought bigger tits. And definitely a bigger arse.”
I shook my head, stepped farther into the shadows of the corner. “What?” I asked.
The hulking man hiccupped and shrugged. “The way Nick goes on and on about ye. Checking in here every day and all. Buying t’ings for ye. Asking yer pops about ye when he ain’t passed out… I thought ye’d have bigger tits is all.”
I stared at him, paralysed with a sudden fear. The phrase ignorance is bliss never felt so true. Nick searching after me was one thing. But knowing it? I wasn’t going to be sleeping that night. Nor any night any time soon.
He raised an unsteady finger. “And definitely a bigger arse.”
“I’d like you to leave,” I said, more softly than I’d intended. The Aurnia of before wouldn’t have been so meek. I hate you, Conor. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
“After ye, luv,” the guy said.
He swept his hand toward the door and nearly fell over.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him. “Didn’t you hear me? This is my bedroom.”
I retreated when the ogre moved farther into my room, his big paw knocking everything off my dresser as he caught himself from falling.
“Didn’t ye hear me?” he slurred. “Nick wants to see ye.”
