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“I’m nineteen,” he protests.
“You’re so not fun,” laments my mom.
I grit my teeth. I should be in the bedroom, wrapped up in the sheets that smell like Griff and not out here suffering my mom’s barbs. The afterglow is not glowing. I should’ve left with Griff or made him stay. No, not the latter. Then he’d be listening to all the ways Mom can tear me down. No amount of sex would make me feel good about that.
“Where’s Griff?” Mick asks.
I let my chin drop to my chest. I shouldn’t have kicked him out. He would’ve stayed, but then I’d have to suffer a different, more humiliating way.
“What are you doing here, anyway, Mom?”
“This month’s been—” I know what’s coming before she even finishes her sentence—“tight. I need a little help with rent.”
Mick’s mouth grows tight. He pushes away from the table and goes to stare out the window at the brick wall of the tenement behind us.
I gather up the mugs and make my way to the sink. “I gave you money two weeks ago for rent.”
“Honey, that’s how rent works. Every month you have to pay.”
“But not every two weeks.”
“They like me to pay in advance.”
“And two weeks ago?”
“I was behind and catching up.”
These are all lies. I know it. “I don’t have it.”
“I would never ask you unless I really needed it, but I guess I could let that place go and move in here. You’ve only got one bed in your room, but we could probably fit two twins in there.”
The threat of her moving in with Mick and me works. I grab my purse and thrust all my cash at her. “This is my tip money for the week.”
She rifles through the bills. “Only six hundred? My rent is $1800.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not hiding anything. It’s all I have.”
Tears well in her eyes. “You don’t understand the things I’m going through, and you’re just trying to hurt me because I couldn’t give you the life I wanted you to have. It’s terrible that you are lashing out at me like this.”
“She doesn’t have it,” Mick barks.
Mom and I both jump. Mick hardly ever says a word when Mom’s around. He’s careful of her feelings, to a fault sometimes.
“Why are you using that tone of voice with me, Michael Roger Murphy?” Mom says with a quavering voice. Nothing gets at Mick more than his mom crying, but to my surprise, his stern expression doesn’t soften.
“She doesn’t have it. Lolo works two jobs to keep us housed and fed. I don’t do jack shit because I’ve got theft priors and can’t get hired even at a fucking corner grocery store running deliveries, so I got to rely on her like a deadbeat, but I’m getting my act together and you need to also. We can’t be dragging Lolo into the gutter with us.”
“You’re not a drag, Mick,” I snap. “You’re barely nineteen, and your job was graduating high school which, congrats, you did. And you’re going to get a job, so I’m not worried about it.” I turn to Mom. “I’m giving you my last dollar. That’s it. I can’t give you any more for whatever it is that you need it and don’t tell me rent because I don’t believe that stuff anymore.”
“Mom, we love you, but we’re barely getting by. When I get a job, I promise I’ll take care of you.” Mick peels himself away from the wall and comes over to draw Mom in for a hug. I notice that he looks taller, older as his larger frame engulfs Mom’s much smaller one. “I’ll call you a car.”
There’s a finality in his voice that shocks Mom. She numbly nods as he opens the app on his phone. When the car arrives, he walks her down to the curb. When he returns to the apartment, he tells me good night. I finish tidying up the kitchen. Mick’s grown up, and I didn’t even see it.
Chapter Fifteen
GRIFF
“You owe me big time.” I toss my helmet on the sofa in Evers’ office.
