Page 65 of Unraveled

It wasn’t fair that all he had to do was basically roll over and be ready for the day.

“What do you want, if you’re not standing there to remind me that I’m late again?” Cara asked.

She headed past Gian in the doorway, going toward her bedroom for clothes. It was what he said next that stopped Cara in her tracks.

“Your brother called.”

Cara turned slowly on her heel. “I’m sorry?”

“Tommas—that’s your brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“He called when you were in the shower. He wanted me to ask you to call your mother.”

Nope.

Cara turned back around and went straight into her room without a word. She dug through her closet, while Gian came to stand in the doorway of the bedroom, watching her in that silent way of his.

“Could you give me a ride to the university?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” he replied.

“Great. Saves me time.”

“I take it you’re not going to talk about your brother, huh?”

Cara shrugged. “Tommas is fine. Not my mother, though.”

Gian nodded as she passed him in the door. “Fair enough.”

“And I’m not calling the bitch, either.”

“Ouch,” he muttered behind her.

Cara kept walking, picking up her bag and the other things she needed on the way. Her hair would have to dry like it was, but it wouldn’t be the first time. “It sounds cold because I mean for it to. I have nothing to say to that woman that will be nice, and everybody knows it. Just because Tommas can muster up an ounce of care for the woman means fuck all to me in the end. I’ve looked for something, Gian.”

“And?”

She turned to look at him, unaffected as she said, “It’s not there. Nothing is there. Maybe when Lea was alive, or even shortly after she died, when I was so alone here by myself—maybe then I might have found something. But, now? Now, when I’m almost fully okay and I don’t need somebody holding me up, it’s gone again. I’m not calling my mother. I have nothing to say to Serena Rossi. She can keep drinking away the shit she did to us kids until she drinks herself into a grave. And even then, I don’t care.”

Gian’s face remained passive and calm throughout her tirade. “I’m sorry, mon ange.”

“You don’t have to apologize. If anything, you’re one of the things that woke me the hell up again. I was missing something for a long time after my twin died, and now I don’t feel so lost or empty. But you know what does makes me feel that way?”

“What?”

“My mother. Even thinking about her makes me revert back into that shell of a child that played a little quieter than normal, as to not enrage the drunks sleeping upstairs, or waited for her brother to get home so she could eat. That lost, lonely child. So fuck her and fuck Tommas for asking me to care, too.”

Gian cleared his throat. “All right. You going to be okay today or—”

Cara opened her apartment door with force. “I’ll be fine.”

“Really? Because you used more fucks in this conversation than the entire time we’ve been messing around, Cara.”

She locked her apartment up once Gian was out in the hallway with her.

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. “I always am.”