“He runs through guys three times your size every day of the week. I’d listen to him,” the bouncer called out from his sentry post.
The guy squinted at me and then glared at Alexis. “You would’ve been a sloppy lay, anyway. Have her.”
I balled my fists at my side, grinding my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
I shifted from the balls of my feet, ready to lay into this guy, but then Alexis slipped her hand into mine. “Berk, I don’t feel so well. Can you take me home?”
Grabbing her hand, I hustled her out of there and into my car. Street lights whipped by as we drove in silence to her apartment.
My former foster parents had moved her into a studio apartment in the University City area, probably hoping she’d finally make a decision about college by being around so many students. All it had done was open up even more free places for her to get booze until she was twenty-one. Sometimes, late at night, I’d stare up at my bedroom ceiling and try to picture what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t been kicked out of their house. Would I have had a place to go back to for Thanksgivings? Christmases with presents under the tree with my name on them? Parents who texted and called to check up on me, see how school was going? If I was dating anyone?
Alexis never seemed to care. Never got comfortable there. Never believed it was real. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been there too. But they actually gave a shit and I’d sacrificed something real for her. Something she still didn’t feel she could trust. It broke my heart for us both.
I used my spare key and helped her inside with my backpack slung over my shoulder. It had never failed me yet. Everything I needed and everything I cared about was in the bag.
The light gray walls and coordinated teal accents pulled the space together and made it look like something out of a catalog. Other than the empty pizza boxes, take out containers and half-empty cups on most flat surfaces.
With my lips slammed together tight, I flung open the cabinet under the sink and shoved paper plates and other trash into the garbage can. This place looked worse than The Brothel, and there were four guys living there.
When the garbage bag was filled to the brim, I tied it off and dropped it beside the door, grumbling the entire time. I rummaged through my backpack, gently pushing aside the gift-wrapped box and found the overly large bottle of ibuprofen. After filling a glass of water, I checked the time. Fuck, I had practice in less than four hours.
“Are you mad at me?” She stared up at me as I handed her the pills and shoved the water into her hand.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “No.”
She downed half the glass. “You look mad.” Her small voice reminded me of the scared little girl on her first night in a new placement. The first time she’d ended up in the system with a paper thin dress in the dead of winter, clutching a stuffed bunny rabbit missing one eye. The grayed ear of that same rabbit peeked out from under her blankets.
And the simmering anger at her irresponsibility evaporated. She was still just my kid sister. “I worry about you. This is the second time you’ve texted me this week to come get you. You disappear all summer and then football season’s right around the corner and you keep having meltdowns.”
“Good to know football’s more important than me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and the SpongeBob T-shirt that might as well have been a tent.
“You’re my sister. Nothing’s more important than that.”
“Except for football.”
I threw my arms up. “You’re drunk. You need to get some rest and I need to get back to my place. I have practice in the morning.”
She grabbed my hand. “Can’t you stay?” The puppy dog eyes. Always with the freaking puppy dog eyes, and she used them because they worked.
“Fine.” I grabbed my stack of blankets from the closet.
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“Like I want to get punched in the face by your flailing all night. No thanks. Plus, who knows when you last washed your sheets.”
“Mom came over last week, so a week ago.” Mom and Dad. The same Mom and Dad bankrolling her tiptoes into adulthood that bordered on aimless—outside of partying.
“Still have her doing your laundry.” I took a couple pillows out.
She shrugged. “She offers.”
“Maybe they don’t want you to attract bedbugs.”
“That happened one time. They still bring it up every Sunday dinner.”
“You mean the ones you don’t even go to anymore?”
“I have food here.” The eye roll was practically audible.
“When’s the last time you went for one?”
She shrugged.
I unfolded everything. Kicked off my shoes and snatched my backpack up off the floor.
“Maybe she’s just looking for an excuse to check up on me.”
“Like any concerned parent. You’re not exactly known for making the best choices.”
She flopped back on the bed and flung her arm across her eyes. “Not with this again.”
“With what? Me telling you that maybe you need to make some decisions and stop waiting for everyone else to clean up your messes?”
“I don’t ask anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.” She glared at me.
No, she didn’t. She never did. It was always a request, but the vivid images of what kind of trouble she could get herself into always drove me to action, even when I should let her learn from her own mistakes. That was the bitch about caring about someone who didn’t seem to have any form of self-preservation—you always wanted to protect them from the fall.
I took my stuff into the bathroom. My toothbrush sat on the sink beside Alexis’s. In the studio apartment her parents rented for her. The same ones who had been my parents for a short while. They’d opened their arms to me—to us.
It had taken me a week to finally go to sleep without my shoes on, but then I did and we had movie nights with popcorn and soda. Homework time after school every day. Some of the kids griped about it, but the fact that Barry and Patricia—although she said we could call her Patty—gave a shit about us at all was another way they showed they cared. Like before I’d gone into the system and my biological mom would come home from her second job before her third shift and make sure I’d done mine. It was simple worksheets and stuff, but that didn’t matter.
But even after all these years, I’d never been invited back to Barry and Patty’s house. Not for a single holiday. Not after what they thought I’d done. Maybe it wasn’t worth their time for the kid they saw as throwing their generosity back in their faces. I wasn’t bitter about it anymore—at least I tried not to be.
I pushed those thoughts aside. No use dwelling on that shit. Ha, said the guy who’d put his whole damn pro career and this entire football season on something that should’ve been left in the past. I changed into my sweatpants and T-shirt from my backpack. This tattered navy-and-black Jansport always had my back.
Alexis had turned out the lights while I was in the bathroom. Punching my pillow a few times, I laid down on the pillow- and blanket-laden couch. Alexis had been getting more and more out of control, but it was up to me to be there for her no matter what.
We were family.