The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

Until shit like this.

I seriously couldn’t believe Susie and Ricky were staying there, and that no one had warned me. Diana was going to lose it when I told her.

“Vanessa, please. I’m so happy you’re here. I’ve missed you. You never come visit enough,” my mom laid the guilt-trip road down for me thick.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

There was nothing in this world I couldn’t do, I reminded myself. Everything in my life had worked out. I had more than I’d ever imagined. The past didn’t matter anymore.

With a deep breath, I forced out an “Okay,” gritting my teeth the entire time.

“Yes?” she asked, beaming with hope.

I nodded, urging my muscles to stop locking up. I knew what I was going to say was an asshole comment. I realized I was being immature, but I really couldn’t find it in my soul to care. “Yeah. I’ll play nice as long as she does.”

The sigh she let out?

Yeah, she knew. She knew Susie didn’t know how to be nice.

Chapter Fifteen

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” I snarled as I tried to shake off my anger for about the millionth time in the last day.

Diana scoffed as she moved around me, a stained plastic bowl in one hand, a brush in the other. Her brown eyes temporarily shifted from the section of my head she’d already put color on, to meet my gaze before she blew a raspberry. “You know I don’t want to talk about your family, but when I think they can’t get any shittier, they do.” Liar. She didn’t mind going over the finer defects of four-sixths of my family. How many times had we sat in her room and acted out the hundreds of things we’d do and say to my sisters in retaliation for whatever they’d put me through? A hundred? Not that we’d ever gone through with any of it. They were older than us, and you didn’t mess with crazy.

“The worst part was after Ricky grabbed my arm, no one said anything. They all wanted to act like nothing had happened.”

“Jesus, V,” my best friend muttered. “I told you not to go.”

She had, and I’d been stubborn and didn’t listen. “I know.”

Her hand touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Not as sorry as I was.

I made it three hours at my mom’s before everything went to hell. Three hours before I stormed out of her house, pissed out of my mind. I was honestly surprised that I had managed to spend the night at my hotel before heading to the airport first thing in the morning to catch a flight back to Dallas on standby. The anger hadn’t abated as much as I’d hoped on a good night’s sleep, and the flight back hadn’t helped much either.

As soon as I landed, I’d texted one of the only people in the world who was loyal to me, and then headed over to Diana’s so I could tell her everything and get it off my chest. Did it help? Not much, but it was something. So I told her everything that had happened as she dyed my hair some surprise color I told her she could choose. It was one of the benefits of being your own boss.

“Wait, so you didn’t tell me what happened with Aiden,” she finally noted.

Good grief. There I went getting pissed off all over again. At least that was one issue I’d managed to set aside for a while since the day before, but all of a sudden it was another fresh wound to add to my already existing one. “He called and cancelled on me at the last minute.”

She winced. Her “ooh” just barely audible.

“Yeah,” I mumbled as her boob passed about an inch from my face. “His old coach was coming into town or something, and he was busy watching game film or something with the team when he called, but it doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea to invite him anyway.”

“I’m sure he had a good reason to cancel,” Di tried to assure me.

There was only one reason, and it was the most important one to him. I didn’t need the details to know what the exact wording would be. “Yeah. I’m sure he did.” I let out a shaky breath. “I’m just in a shitty mood. Sorry.”

“No, I can’t believe it,” the smart-ass gasped.

I reached forward and tried to pinch her through the apron she’d put on, but she danced out of the way with a big grin on her face. “Leave me alone.”

She stuck her tongue out. “Put your potato head down for a second, would you?”

I mocked her as I did what she asked. Diana took a step toward me, her belly inches away. She must have reached forward because her shirt went up an inch, exposing a sliver of skin.

I frowned.

Reaching from under the hem of the cape she’d put on me, I pulled her shirt up even higher, exposing a row of small bruises shaped like a smaller version of the ones on my forearm.

“What are you doing?” She took a step away.

I looked up at her, at her face, her neck, her arms, and saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

“What?” Her tone was a lot less harsh the second time, but I knew, I knew from the way she rubbed her pant leg that something was going on. That was her nervous tic.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I had to count to ten again before I could manage to not lose it. “What happened?” I asked her as coolly and calmly as possible even though I was already on my way to becoming even angrier than I’d been when I first showed up.

Diana tried to brush it off a little too quickly. “Nothing. Why?” She had the nerve to look down and pull up her shirt in the same way I had. She even frowned as she touched the bruises I’d bet my first born she knew damn well about.