Page 42 of All the Ugly Things
I cracked open the door.
“You feeling better?”
“I’m fine.”
“I made a kit for you. Things to help get you fixed up. I can help if you like.”
My heart squeezed painfully tight in my chest and more tears surfaced. As a mom, she probably had cabinets filled with band-aids and first aid cream and ice packs, but the gesture meant everything.
“Thank you, but I can manage,” I finally said and took the basket from her arms.
“There are teas in there, too. Oils and tinctures that might help you sleep.”
I nodded, peered down at the basket and back at her. She looked pensive, sucking a corner of her bottom lip into her mouth.
“You should call the police.”
“I don’t need attention from them.”
“Men like him… he won’t stop. He’ll just get angrier.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered and stepped back to close the door. “Thanks for the stuff. I’ll return the basket soon.”
“That’s not—”
I shut the door on her and the muffled wordnecessaryfiltered through.
Whatever.
Samaya’s life probably hadn’t been easy. No one who lived in this neighborhood had an easy life, but I didn’t need her lecture about men and their behaviors or anger issues.
I’d lived it.
* * *
Eight YearsEarlier
“Get up.”
From my perch at the kitchen island, hunched over and trying to be invisible, I flinched as my dad shoved my brother in the stomach with his Ferragamo shoe.
“Damn it, Josh.”
It wasn’t a kick, necessarily, but getting closer.
Josh, for his part, was passed out on the kitchen floor, so he wasn’t exactly helping the situation. He got out of rehab two weeks ago. It wasn’t his first trip, but it’d been the longest he’d stayed clean.
Two whole stinking weeks.
Pretty sure he was going back in before nightfall. He’d have to dry out before he reported for football in a few weeks.
I prayed this last time took and went back to my cereal.
My brother was the smartest idiot I’d ever met, throwing away a career with talent he was born with and sacrificing it all for booze and girls and probably drugs I wanted no knowledge of.
Gone were my fresh-faced days of being a naïve pre-teen and clueless about the cloud of addiction that hovered over him. Reality smacked me in the face two years ago when he crashed his truck into our garage.
It was always better to remain unnoticed when Dad got like this but watching him try to shove his son across the tiled floor made me lose my appetite. Our dad was a dick, and Josh and I always promised we’d stick together. Even if he was an idiot, he was there for me.
