I’ll show her.
My eyes steer from the page to the clock in the kitchen with bright yellow numbers. It’s four in the morning, and mum should be home any second now. Sometimes she’s late. Sometimes she’s early.
I return my eyes to the book and sink under the window sill, where I’m allowed to sleep. I wanted this spot because there’s a small cushion over a bench, and it’s cozier than the floor. Sometimes, when I get really cold, I use the curtain from the window. It’s long enough to blanket around me.
The lock slides and Mum’s giggles allow my heart rate to steady. She’s back. A man mumbles through the doorframe, saying his goodbye’s, and she drops her keys over the side table and closes the door behind her.
She’s wearing a top which shows her belly and a small skirt. She has to be cold, which makes me feel bad, but it doesn’t seem to bother her as she kicks off her heels and stumbles toward me with a cigarette between her red lips. She pulls the cigarette away and blows out smoke before leaning over to kiss me. “You worry too much,” she reminds me when she sees I’m still awake, and my fingers reach out to touch the warm skin on her belly where the scars crawl up, but she slaps my hand away. “You like what you did to me?”
“They’re different. Unique.”
She calls them stretch marks, and they are my fault. She says Oscar gave her beauty, and I took it away. But I tell her she’s beautiful, they’re beautiful, even though she doesn’t agree. The stretch marks are like the lines of a book, each one a sentence telling a story. I’ve caused this, proof of my existence written over her skin. And she hated them.
“No, Oliver. They’re ugly. You completely ruined me. I could be making more money if I hadn’t had you.”
It should hurt me, but it doesn’t. Not anymore. It did the first few times she said it, but I’ve realized she’s in pain and uses me to release it, so I don’t respond. I’m just glad she’s home, and I take a second to remember my page number before closing the book and using it as a pillow. Mum puts her cigarette out in an ashtray over the floor, then falls beside Oscar, twisting her arms and legs around him, finding warmth.
“You made it,” Jinx bellowed with a pat over my shoulder, pulling me from the memory. I flinched, and his expression twisted. “Come inside. You can meet my crew.”
Laughter and conversations rang from all directions, filling the background noise and making my head spin and my palms sweat. It had been a while since I’d been around a crowd of this size. Panic doubled within me, and I couldn’t find focus. Rap music thumped, a song I’d never heard before, and the hype from the party crawled over me, pushing my boundaries. “I’m not staying.”
“You doing alright?”
“I’m fine. I’m okay.”
A smile of scattered teeth stretched across Jinx’s face as my brain pounded inside my head. “Get my mate a drink,” Jinx ordered the girl. She nodded and twirled to head back inside the house.
“Is she your girl?” I asked, leaning against the car and propping up my foot to steady myself. Too much chaos moved around me, and the anxiety within only worsened the more I noticed the little control I had at the moment, attempting small talk to distract myself.
“Leslie? Lila, Leigh or some shit like that … No, only met her tonight.” He pulled out cigarettes and packed the box into the palm of his hand with humor in his eyes. “You looking to smash?”
I glared at him, putting no energy into responding to the ridiculous question before my gaze made the journey over the packed crowd. Smoke swirled in the air between us, and Jinx went on about something that had nothing to do with Mia or Scott.
But I couldn’t focus on a single thing. Many heads turned to face us, looking over to where we stood, judging, plotting, or admiring, I couldn’t tell. There were too many eyes on me, and their noise was too fucking loud.
“Oliver,” Jinx pulled me out, and I snapped my eyes forward where the girl whose name started with an L looked up at me with a cup in hand. Cheap vodka on ice. The burn hit the back of my throat as I drank it in one large gulp to drown out the noise around me. Setting the plastic cup on the hood of the car, I looked back over at Jinx who wore a pleasing grin. “You okay?” he asked, and I nodded in reflex. “Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you all about Scott.”
After two drinks, I’d learned Scott kept to himself and made zero friends with the other security guards at Dolor. My nerves calmed a tad from the liquor, mind stuck in a trance, and my gaze hung on to the blur of bodies dancing before me. A new song I’d never heard of drifted, laughter and soft voices flowed, and the girl with the L name ended up at my side, the both of them feeding me drinks and information. None of which were of any use to me.
Everything he’d said about Scott wasn’t new to me.
Scott was quiet, careful, and cautious.
The only person he fancied was Mia.
“I’d never heard anyone talk to Lynch the way Scott did,” Jinx leaned over and flicked his cigarette, dropping ashes in a cup between us, “Scott just didn’t give a shit, you know? Acted like he was doing Lynch a favor by being there, and Lynch never said otherwise. It was fucking weird, and it pissed off some of my mates. The whole situation was dodgy.”
“So, you have nothing,” I mumbled before bringing the rim of the cup to my lips. Sinking back into the couch, I stretched open my thighs as my heel tapped over the ground.
“The best I can do for you is to try and get his address tomorrow. My shift starts at one, but it’s risky. I’m putting a lot on the line for you.”
“I’ll take care of you,” I said, meaning every word. Usually, I wouldn’t put anyone on the line for me, but Mia? There was no line.
Jinx stood and gripped my shoulder. “I know you will. You’ve never done me wrong.”
After every sip, it became harder to hold it together. I clenched my teeth and fisted the plastic cup at the smiles surrounding me, couples rubbing against each other, and people pairing off. My eyes burned from the memories swirling inside me, reminding me how far apart Mia and I were.
“Jinx says you’re a writer?” L asked with a hand over my stretched thigh and vodka in her breath. I climbed to my feet and snapped my eyes to where Jinx had been sitting moments before. “He’s gone,” she added, tugging on my arm.
“Where did he go?” The room spun as sweat, the beat, and the laughs infiltrated my useless fucking brain. The dizziness sent me back over the couch, and I dropped my head into my hands.
“C’mon, I’ll take you to him.” The girl with the L name lifted me off the couch and led me down a hall. We squeezed through sweaty bodies, and drinks spilled down the front of my shirt and pants until we pushed through a door. The room was bright, and all I wanted was to lay my head to stop the world from spinning. The last time liquor hit my tongue had been with Mia on New Year’s, and my tolerance for it had since ceased. “You’re wet.” She giggled, her hands crawling over my chest.
We were in a small room, separating the kitchen from another door leading somewhere else. Disgusted by the touch, I gripped L’s wrist and pushed her arm away. She had blonde hair, but brown seeped from her roots, and her black eyes looked up at me from below as she held my hips steady against the wall. Everything about her screamed my mum, and I wanted to curl inside a ball until she disappeared.