Difference between Mom and me, though, is I woke up.
I snapped the fuck out of it.
Life sucks. It changes and screws you. It gives you responsibilities you’re not sure you’re capable of handling. With annoying insistence, it pokes and pokes and pokes at you until you’re at your breaking point.
Mom broke.
Dad’s almost there.
But I am not them.
I will not break.
I refuse to break.
Which is why, ever since early last June, when I got busted with meth in my truck and spent forty-seven days locked up in the hottest goddamn place in our Podunk town, I opened my eyes and took a hard look at myself.
I’m not her.
Sunny McKinney’s life ended when I was two months old. It was accidental. She didn’t mean to kill herself. Her blind choices were what took her from this world.
I was the witness to her death.
I’ll be damned if I’m the witness of my own.
When you spend your summer in a ten by ten cell, hotter than the asshole of Hades, you take a real good look at your life. And my life sucked.
Not now.
Not anymore.
From the moment Sheriff Beauchamp unshackled me and sent me off, after a lecture that made my ears bleed, I’ve been trying to do right ever since.
Which is exactly why I shouldn’t be pushing into a bar called Duncan D’s at eleven in the morning on a Monday.
“If it ain’t ol’ Jailbait Jailbird,” Hank Morrison says, his raspy voice echoing over the jukebox playing something horrifyingly country.
I snort out a laugh and give him a two-fingered mock salute as I saunter into the tiny bar that reeks of stale cigarettes and ancient alcoholic geezers. “I’ve come looking for a job. The old lady who works here,” I retort back with a lopsided grin, “is she hiring?”
Darcy hollers from the back. “We don’t hire your kind here.”
Sidling up next to Hank at the bar, I yell back. “My kind? What? Like super-hot, incredibly intelligent, boy-band-look-alike babes kind? I thought old ladies like you were always on the prowl. I’m cheap labor if that helps.”
Hank starts laughing and sends his decrepit ass into a coughing fit. Usually, at this hour, he’s the only one here. For as prehistoric as he is, and how much he drinks, you’d think he’d be somewhere six feet under in the same cemetery Mom is buried in.
Not this guy.
This guy has a bionic liver.
Still alive and kickin’.
Darcy pops her head around the corner, the lips crinkling on each side of her mouth as she grins at me. “Come here, you little shit, and give your favorite aunt a hug.”
“Only aunt,” I retort, earning the bird from her. Like I used to when I was a kid, I climb over the bar and hop to the other side, barely managing not to take out half her liquor bottles with my long legs in the process. “Hey, Aunt Darc.”
She barely comes to my chin and reeks of cigarette smoke, but she’s the closest thing to a mother I have. “There’s my boy.”
We share a brief, stiff hug. Aunt Darcy, while the only mother figure in my life, isn’t one to coddle or cuddle. But she does love me, which is all that matters. More than I can say for my old man.
“You headed to the city?” she asks, as she untangles herself from my bear hug and begins flinging open lower cabinet doors as she hunts for something.
“Yeah, class starts at noon.”
“Jimmy says you’re not coming into the restaurant tonight.” She glances over her shoulder at me, frowning. “You’re not doing the smack again, are you?”
The smack?
“Smack is heroin,” I mutter. “And no, I’m not doing smack or meth or any of that shit. I told you I was done.”
She whips around and crosses her arms over her ample chest. “So why did you call out from work?”
Jimmy is Aunt Darcy’s new man. Well, new old man. He’s older than Hank. Probably fought in all the wars. When he’s not running the diner on the corner, he’s spending all his extra time at Duncan D’s stuffing all his hard-earned money in Aunt Darcy’s tip jar.
“Because I can work there any day. Mondays are slow as hell. Jimmy doesn’t care.” I rub at the back of my neck and smirk. “Besides, I got me another job.”
“Another job?” She frowns. “This makes three now? Plus college?”
Ignoring her skepticism, I snag a Styrofoam cup and help myself to some Coke from the fountain. “This job pays more than waiting tables at Jimmy’s. And you know the lawn gig is only seasonal.” I chug the rest of the Coke and then toss the cup into the trash.
She grumbles out her disapproval, “Who hired you? There’s only a few folks around here who will touch that record, boy.”
Shrugging, I gulp down the Coke. “Not here. A little java place on campus.”