“What… what do you mean?” She walks around the couch to face me, hands on her hips, her long blond hair falling in her face. She’s beautiful. “Explain, Jarett.”
“I only ignored you to protect you. And…” I flick the ashes of my cigarette, and take another long drag, hoping my eyes will stop burning. “You know what? Fuck that. Christ.”
She takes a step back as if I slapped her. Her brows dip. “Stop… confusing me.”
“I’m confusing you? What the fuck are you talking about?”
I’m really fucking lost here. I gave her my number, for fuck’s sake. Went down on her. Kissed her. If there’s a girl I’ve ever cared about… it’s her.
And because of that, I can never have her.
She’s still watching me, as if she can see behind my words, behind the smoke from my cigarette. She’s always been able to see me where others couldn’t.
Or so I thought.
“Just… nothing.” She walks over to where her jacket is on the floor, picks it up and puts it on. “Nothing at all.”
She’s leaving again, and this time she’s not coming back. I fucking know it.
She’s walking out of my life, just like she did two years ago, and this time I know I shouldn’t invite her back in.
Things are going downhill, with the gang getting deeper into dangerous jobs and Seb flying off the handle more and more often. Better if she’s not nearby. I can’t drag her down with me, even if letting her go is the last thing I want.
Suzie was right.
I got fired from the bar. Too many missed shifts, and with her not willing to cover for me anymore, I was handed a pink slip and shown the door.
Fuckers.
It’s my fault, I know, but with Angel and Mav riding my ass for not joining the gang activities enough and getting all suspicious about anyone I hang around, like Gigi, it’s not as if I had much of a choice.
So now I’m checking ads on my phone, trying to find something else, and wondering where the hell Sebastian has vanished to, again.
I’m worried, even if I hate the guy. After all, he’s my charge. He’s probably getting high somewhere, or coming down, shivering and sick. He may be lying dead from an overdose, and I’ll never know, not until the police find him.
I rub my forehead, trying to erase the headache tightening its hold around my skull. His mom will ask me where he is, how he is. Once more I’ll have to lie to her. You’d think after two years of this, I’d be used to it, be good at it, do it without a second thought.
Yeah. I wish that was the case, too. Would’ve made my life so much easier.
Letting out a long breath, I lean back in my rickety kitchen chair and look around me. Since Gigi has been here, I’ve been seeing my apartment—hell, my life—with different eyes. Cold, bare, empty. A hand-me-down, old and worn and unwanted.
Like me.
I look down at myself, my ratty sweats and bare feet, the ink on my chest. At the empty bottle of scotch on the table. Look at my package of cigarettes and reach for them but let my hand drop on the table, empty.
If I light up now, I’ll go up in flames, I’m so soaked in alcohol. I stink of it, and sweat, and grime.
Why the hell do I care, though? There’s nobody here to smell me, or see me, or talk to me. Nobody to get offended, or upset.
Nobody to worry about me.
I make myself get up anyway, to take a leak and splash some water on my face. It’s late, the time when I’d normally be working at the bar or following the gang around. Ironic that I was fired just when gang activity eased a little.
Then again, what did I expect? Just my fucking luck, and fuuuck, I’m so drunk. The bathroom tilts in my eyes as I piss, and I end up splashing urine all over. I find myself on my knees, snickering, wondering what Seb will think if he finds me like this, if he finds the bathroom covered in piss.
And then get angry, because why the fuck should I care? I’ve been cleaning up his messes for years, worse messes than a little piss on the tiles, and what the hell am I doing with my life?
I curl up on the floor, and close my eyes, fighting a new wave of depression. Dammit, getting shitfaced was supposed to make me forget, not drag me down deeper.