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My heart sinks to my feet. “What are those?”
“They’re just painkillers, Jessie. I have a headache. That’s all,” she snipes.
That’s all.That’s all.
So casual.
Like she didn’t just straight up lie to my face.
Like I haven’t found other packets of pills in the house before. Not that she knows that. Only Cam and Harriet know what I found a few months ago.
I watch her swallow the pills quickly, without even needing to wash them down with water, her throat bobbing at the intrusion. My eyes blink away the threat of even more tears, as the realisation that I’m going to have to tell Cam and Harriet again dawns on me. But not tonight. I’ve hit my emotional limit for tonight.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce.
“Jessie, wait.” The plea in her voice is the only reason I turn to face her. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know I’ve not been myself lately, but I swear I’ll do better. For you, okay?”
She sounds so sincere, full of promise. I know that deep down she wants to mean the words she’s saying. The Jess who was with Liam an hour ago would want to believe her right now, give her a hug and tell her everything is going to be okay, just like I’ve done a million times in the last year. But the Jess that's here now, fighting back tears, is tired and fed up with not being enough for her to stop this shit.
Which is why I reply with a simple, “Okay, Mum, night.”
Because tonight I just wanted to be the girl who could revel in the fact that she was falling in love with her best friend, not the girl whose mother was an addict.
When I collapse into bed, the cool, soft, familiar comfort of my duvet wraps around me like a cocoon. I steady my breaths, not wanting to feel like I’m losing control of my emotions again. Picking up my phone, I notice that Liam has called. A pang of guilt I have for leaving so suddenly earlier hits me square in the ribs. I want to tell him so much; I want to explain that I’m scared my mum is lost in this world of addiction and she’ll never find her way back to me.
My whole life, it’s just been her and me against the world. She never left me lacking when my father (for lack of a better word) didn’t want to stick around. It didn’t matter because she was enough; she made everything better until she didn’t. And now, my whole world is crumbling slowly and has been for the past year, as I watch her become a ghost of herself. As hard as I try to help her, I can never get it right.
Tears fill my eyes again, but I don’t want to cry anymore tonight. There’s only one thing I need right now.
Without a second thought, I press his name on my phone, clear my throat and inhale deeply.
He answers on the second ring. “Hey.” His warm voice filters through the phone, instantly calming me.
“Hey yourself,” I answer back, begging the emotion to stay out of my voice.
“Everything okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod before remembering that he can’t see my face. “Everything is… better now that I’m talking to you.” It wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the complete truth… again. If I tell him what I came home to, I know he would insist I stay at his house or at least call Nora, and I don’t want to do that tonight. I just want to forget for a second.
“You know you can talk to me, Jess, right?” His words slice through something in my chest. I knew I could talk to him, I just didn’t know how. That, and I never wanted to be the girl with ‘issues’, but I guess that was a pipe dream now anyway because those issues were following me no matter how hard I tried to ignore them. No matter how hard I tried to be the carefree Jess I was last year, my reality keeps smacking me in the face every time I get home.
When Mum broke her back, everything changed and I’m angry about that. Her happy outlook disappeared almost overnight; everyone knows she struggled with her recovery, but they don’t know everything.
My pulse picks up at the thought of what would happen if she just never came home one day, or I came home to something worse than what happened tonight.
What if…
What if she…
I stop the thoughts before they plague my mind anymore. My breathing is shallow and uneven when Liam’s voice pulls me back into the moment.
“Jess, are you there?”
With my heart beating double time and my fist clenching my bedsheet, I try to grasp onto anything. I feel the weight of the phone in my hand, the soft bed beneath my legs, the smell of the washing powder from my hoodie.
Breathe, Jess.
“I get to keep you, right?”
