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“Get out. Get your shit, and get out of here. You’re fired. And this time, when he breaks you again, I hope he does it well and good, makes sure you don’t come back from that shit. I’m done with you, Stella. So is your father, and so is Everest.”
The words rocket around my brain, and I think people talk in the restaurant, but they could be whispering or screaming, and I wouldn’t know the difference. I can’t focus on anything, absolutely nothing.
“Come on, Stella,” a low voice says, a comforting one, a voice my body melts for, firm hands wrapping around my bicep, another tucking around my waist, pulling me until my face is pulled from looking at the pure rage that is my mother. “Come on, sweetheart. Amelia, right?” Another voice I can’t place says. My ears are ringing now.
“Can you grab Stella’s stuff? Bring it out?” I think someone agrees but I can’t function, my feet moving without my knowledge as I’m guided toward the exit, the bells tinkling overhead.
Suddenly, my mind registers somehow, somewhere, that might be the last time I hear that noise, those bells.
Fresh air hits my face and my lungs, the smell of impending rain hitting my nose, and suddenly, it’s like the world fast forwards, and I’m rushed back into my body.
Riggins is holding me, my body pressed to his as we stand on the sidewalk outside of the Ashford Diner.
“She hit me,” I whisper.
“Yeah, baby. She did,” he whispers into my hair.
“My mother slapped me.”
“Yeah, Stell.”
“She hit me in public. She hit me.” I’m starting to lose it. I can feel it. The emotion is leaking into my pores, the panic and disappointment and anger and sadness all mixing like chemicals in a nuclear reactor that is my chest, needing an outlet.
“She hit me, Riggs.” And then I break.
The tears come, and somehow, the way he always did, he knows it’s coming before I do. Somehow, he remembers how much I hate having people see me cry and is giving me that bit of decency, that bit of humanity. He turns me into his body, using one arm to wrap my waist and hold me up, the other to hold my head down and I break, as I cry into his shirt.
“Here, Riggins,” Amelia’s voice says. Riggins moves, jostling me a bit but not too much before grabbing what must be my bag. “I’m sorry, but she said if you guys don’t leave, she’s going to, uh,” she hesitates as I take a deep breath to force my tears to slow, my sobs turn into gasping breaths into Riggins’ shirt. “Call the police.”
That snaps me out of it, and I step back, looking at Amelia, then Riggins, then at the open door, my mother standing in it, her arms crossed on her chest.
And despite the fact that I know my face is swollen both from her hitting me and my tears, I move to stand in the doorway.
“You’re going to call the cops? I dare you. I dare you.” A maniacal laugh leaves my lips. “You do, I’m happy to tell them how you assaulted me, then fired me. Bet that would look great at your Sunday morning brunch, explaining the assault charges to your little friends.” Her face goes red.
“How fucking dare—” she starts, but I cut her off, feeling free for the first time in my life. Free of her expectations, of my unexplainable need to earn her approval.
I’m done.
“No, how dareyou. How dare you treat me, your own daughter, like I’m shit on your shoes?
“That’s enough, little star,” Riggins says in my ear, his chest somehow plastered against my back, rumbling the low words right into my body.
“Enough? Enough? A lifetime of taking her shit, nothing will ever be enough, Riggins.”
“I know, baby. I know. Come on. Don’t let her win, yeah?”
Somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, I remember that. I remember him whispering that to me as I cried on a street corner, not unlike how I am now when I cried because she kicked me out at nineteen.
He was right then, too.
Riggins Greene might not be perfect, and he might be fucked in a million and seven ways, but he was right about that.
My standing here, arguing with her, is what she wants. It somehow confirms I am what she thinks I am, and not in a good way.
“You’re right, she’s not worth it,” I whisper, then turn away from my mother.
26 STICK SEASON
