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Then I feel Ben place a small kiss on the back of my neck before the padding of shoes on the floor hits my ears and the door shuts behind me.
The kiss—which should, in all honesty, have been chaste and simple—burns on my skin throughout the entire day as I try and forget what happened.
Twenty
-Lola-
The music is quiet tonight,the night after my strange morning with Ben. It’s just a dull, barely there hum.
But this time, I wish there were a loud noise, pounding in my head, the distraction I need.
I can’t sleep. Again.
My lack of sleep has nothing to do with Ben and his playing music or deep laugh that I can hear through the thin walls, up the echoey stairwell, through the small corridor between our doors.
No, my lack of sleep is because, for the first time in a long time, I am terrified.
The kiss this morning was a great distraction throughout my day, as was baking and working and then cleaning, but now that I’m lying here, alone and with my own thoughts, I have the space to focus on what’s really happening.
Last night I was too scared, too caught up in finding new solutions, but also completely drained from the emotional weight of the day.
Tonight I have the space, the distance my mind needs to overthink and overanalyze everything in my life.
Tonight I’m free to ponder the threat to my sanity, to my safety.
The dark mark on the fair skin of my wrist is a constant reminder of the fucked-up spot I’ve gotten myself into.
My dad has always made things difficult. I’ve always made things easy for him, always covered up, always figured things out. When Mom died, Lilah had enough trauma that I didn’t want to add more.
So I took it on.
But now . . . I’m here. I’m stuck. I’ve become the endless supply for my father and have been dragged into his mess, too.
And for what? So that Lilah can live her life of carefree chaos, the perfect Malibu Barbie of the Jersey Shore, galavanting to the city and the beach and off on weekend trips to the Hamptons with her friends, spending the money she earned because she doesn’t owe it to anyone else?
To keep a promise that, the older I get, the more I realize it waswrongof my mother to ask me to make?
And now it’s escalating.
Now they’re coming to me when I’ve told everyone I’mdone.
I told my dad I wouldn’t be helping any more a year ago, and in those twelve months, I didn’t hear from anyone about anything related to debts of the seedy underworld of Ocean View.
I assumed that meant it was handled, and I went along with my life, thankful to be starting new, excited to see where it would take me.
Until that note on my door.
Until Johnny showed up at my bakery.
Until Dad told me that he wasn’t out like I thought, that instead he’d only gotten in deeper and promisedmewhen he couldn’t pay.
That Lilah was in danger, too.
And now, I’m scared.
Because what is there to do?
I don’t have seventy thousand dollars.
