Page 40

When I creep through the door to my house that night, I get a bad feeling in my stomach. It’s like a sixth sense, knowing when something bad is going to happen. A buzz in the air. I creep into the living room to find the TV is too loud, but no one is sitting down to watch it.

Picking up the remote, I click it off and head up the stairs. As I pass Cadence’s door, I notice it’s shut, which is a sign that Mom is off the deep end. My sister has the good sense to ignore my mom when she’s in one of her bad moods, but she has the liberty of being her favorite and not infuriating her by just existing.

Cadence is probably also avoiding me. We haven’t spoken since she was turned down by Alexander yesterday. I’m not sure if she blames me, but she never checked on me after I stormed out of there, so I’m assuming she does. At least a little.

Standing in the hallway, I think about going back to Alex’s. I should, but hindsight is, as they say, twenty-twenty.

Instead, I move farther down the hall toward my room. But when I pass my mother’s, I look inside and see her sobbing into her margarita. And I know it’s too late.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” she spits at me.

I don’t answer, just turn and walk toward my room.

“You think you’re so perfect. So smart.”

Cadence steps out of her room. “Mom, stop,” she says, either groggy with sleep or high…or both.

Mom ignores her. She stalks toward me, carrying her wide-rimmed margarita glass, which is now almost empty. My mother is the kind of drunk who doesn’t sway or slur, but her personality changes in a way that only those who are close to her have the honor of being able to see.

I swallow down my nerves in the doorway to my room, knowing that I’m cornered prey. If I disrespect her or shut the door in her face, I’m only fueling her rage. If I knew how to talk to her, I would defend myself, but I’m unable to form the words that would make my mother love me.

“Don’t you fuck him, Sunny. Do you hear me?” she says, taking a drink.

“Mother,” my sister whines, rubbing her head as if this is painful for her.

“I’m serious. Men like Alexander Caldwell would eat you alive, and you’d only be ruining your sister’s chances. You keep your legs shut, Sunny. Men like him can’t help themselves.”

I want to vomit. My mother sees me as nothing more than bait. The virgin walking around tempting poor unsuspecting men who don’t know any better. She once yelled at me a couple summers ago for wearing a bikini in front of Cadence’s friends, which to her wasn’t fair, if I, and I quote, wasn’t going to do anything about it. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time.

Alex’s name coming out of her mouth makes me want to punch her. I hate her for saying it, his first and last name, like that. For saying such awful things about him. For reducing him to nothing more than the sum of his parts.

She doesn’t know the real man. Not like I do. The one who aches and tries and hurts and fails. The who cares about me.

After what he told me tonight, as he held me in his hands, making me feel like I was actually worth something, worth keeping and loving, I hate the way she taints that good feeling with her ugliness.

“Just shut up,” I say before I can stop myself. It comes out through gritted teeth, but I have to defend myself. I have to defend Alex.

But as my mother’s hand comes crashing across my cheek, I regret it. The pain of being truly slapped comes more from the shock and humiliation than the impact, and as I hold my face in horror, my jaw hanging open with the sting spreading through my face, I realize how badly I wish my life was different. I wish my family wasn’t so broken and the love between these walls overpowered the pain. But it doesn’t.

Lost in her rage, she swings again, making impact two more times: again on my face and once on my shoulder.

“Mom!” Cadence screams as she pulls her back. I’m already on the run, trying not to cry, as I take off in a sprint down the hall toward the back door.

I hear the scuffle between my mom and sister, and I sense the rage in my sister’s tirade. Before I hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs, I hear Cadence shoving my drunk mother into her bedroom, and shouting, “You’re lucky I don’t call the cops on you.”

My head pounds and it feels like blood is pulsing out of my face as I cross the yard toward Alex’s house. Branches scrape at me as I burst through the hole in the hedge, not being as careful as I normally am. When I feel one cut my face, I cry out, whimpering as I land on the other side, falling to my knees and blinking my tears into the grass.

“Sunny!” my sister calls into the backyard from our house.

“Leave me alone,” I scream back.

Standing up, I scamper through Alex’s yard and up to his house. I pause in front of the pool house, not sure where to go from here. When I left just thirty minutes ago, he was already in bed, assumedly asleep.

He said he would take care of me. He’d want me to come in.

My panting breaths fog the glass as I stand outside his house, staring at the dark, silent space inside. With shaking fingers, I open the patio door and step into his kitchen. Briefly, I register the fact that he keeps his backdoor unlocked…and I can’t help but wonder if it’s for a reason.

The house is quiet, and a sudden tempest of fear floods my body when I remember that I’m standing in someone else’s house. I just broke into Alexander Caldwell’s house, and he could think I’m insane for it and tell me to never come back.