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“I ruined it,” I said. “I’m the reason she left. Because I jumped to conclusions.”
“It was reasonable to ask,” Leo said, polishing off another beer. “You didn’t do wrong there.”
“No,” I said. “It was how I did it. I blew my one chance with someone who didn’t care about the money, because I was so afraid of being used. Now what do I do?”
The silence from the other side of the table meant they didn’t know either.
Groaning, I put my head in my hands and sighed.
Alcohol wasn’t going to fix this. Neither was a strip club or a night of moaning into my drinks with the boys. I had to think of some other way to fix it. Because feeling like this wasn’t worth the risk of being embarrassed by the media or being sold out to by the mob. I could deal with those things. Money usually made them disappear. But if there was a chance of fixing things with Julia… I would risk them.
I just had to figure out how.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Julia
Days passed and I did nothing. Well, mostly nothing. I did mope around a lot.
It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did. All that mattered now was that I was at home again, living the life I was before I went to college, only now I was older, and heartbroken. I lived with my mom, presumably only had the job at the bar left in my future, and otherwise stared into the abyss that was my life with a mixture of bewilderment and regret.
How did it get there? Was my luck just that bad?
The only thing that could get me out of bed at all anymore was to go run. When I was running, I could clear my thoughts, focus on my body and what it told me, and let everything else go. At least temporarily.
I found myself waking up at the absolute break of dawn, when the sky was just starting to go from the dark purple of night to the hazy gray of early morning, and putting on just enough layers not to freeze, but not to impede my movement too much, and slipping out of the door. An hour later, I would come back, wet with sweat, my chest burning from inhaling the bitterly cold air, and my body exhausted. I’d grab a shower while a space heater made my room as warm as a sauna, and then would turn the heater off, slip into bed and sleep until my body woke me up again.
Usually around eleven.
On this particular morning, I had run a bit longer than I had previously and was even more worn out, not waking up until after one. Unfortunately, I woke up to the sound of my mother and my sister downstairs, talking. About me.
“I can barely ever get her out of bed,” my mother said. “She just sleeps and sleeps and then when I do get her up, it’s like pulling teeth to get her to do anything.”
“She’s depressed, Mom,” my sister said. “What do you expect?”
“I expect her to pull her own weight around here,” my mother said. “She sleeps under my roof and eats my food, doesn’t she? So she should be, at the least, doing some chores around here.”
“She eats the food?” my sister asked. “I’ve watched Julia. She barely eats anymore, and when she does its peanut butter sandwiches. At this point, how far behind on peanut butter and bread has she really put you, Mom?”
“She eats more than that,” Mom said. “Besides, she has me cleaning up after her, doing her laundry, tiptoeing around in the morning so I don’t wake her up, not expecting her at the bar even though she isn’t doing anything else but lying in bed and watching TV. It’s a shame.”
I sat up. The sadness that had permeated my soul had turned to anger. It wasn’t rational, and it wasn’t even all directed at my mother. It was just anger.
I threw the blanket off of me and headed into the hallway, leaving the door to my room standing open. Mom and Lena stopped speaking when they heard me coming, probably knowing they had been caught talking about me behind my back.
They were in the kitchen, each holding a cup of coffee, when I got to them. Lena immediately put down the mug and slunk backward, knowing she was about to get it. Mom, on the other hand, stood steadfast, sipping the coffee out of the mug and staring right at me. The emotions were built up to a boiling point in my body, making my heart thump in my chest, but the words weren’t coming out. Not yet.
Not until Mom spoke.
“Finally up?” she said.
That was all I needed.
“Yes,” I fired back, “I am finally up. Again. After I went on a run this morning at four.”
Mom made a derisive sound and took another sip of her coffee. “Couldn’t run some laundry while you were up?”
“Jesus,” I said. “What do you expect out of me, Mom? Do you want me to just go right back to how I was when I was a teenager? Because I couldn’twaitto get out of this house back then, and I can’t wait now.”
