TWENTY-FIVE
Belle
Are you still watching?
I hit “continue” on Netflix and shift position on the sofa as my phone signals an incoming message. The next episode starts as I reach for it. Dad and Cerise have gone out car shopping for her before he starts work, and Zeus hasn’t got in from his day working on the road yet. I bring the device to my lap, eyes on the screen, and hit the home button.
Hopefully Zeus is on a break and he’s seen the message I sent him earlier. Ever since he took me to his house last week, I’ve been inundating him with interior design pictures; black furniture, masculine-toned accessories—everything I think of when I imagine him knocking around a house that’s just his.
His. Hopefully one day it’ll be ours.
I punch in my passcode and then stiffen at the name displayed at the top of the thread: Kate.
Weeks have passed since I met her at the chemist. Weeks without a single word. Weeks where I’ve avoided social media for the better part, after Scott thought it would be amusing to start taking the piss out of me with stupid memes.
As far as I’m concerned, I left his immature arse behind the day school finished. Until now I thought I’d done the same with Kate.
K: Hey. I spotted your mum in town.
Simple, and to the point. Yet the fact she chose to contact me about it has me suspicious. Either she’s worried about how I feel, or she’s fishing for gossip. I choose the safe option and keep my reply minimal.
B: Yeah. She’s back with Dad.
The dots dance across the screen as I hit pause on my show.
K: Wow. Are you okay?
B: For now. We keep our distance.
There have been no mother/daughter days, no girly gossips on the sofa while she catches up on everything she’s missed. Nope. Not with Cerise. Her claws are firmly in Dad, her focus on recreating this perfect ideal she must have of what life with him should have been.
Turns out the split from her sugar daddy was ugly, and he paid a pretty penny to keep her mouth shut about the things she’d seen in her two years at his side. The woman came back with money, and she’s not shy on spending that on things that satisfy her wants and needs.
Namely alcohol.
K: What have you been up to? You’ve been quiet.
No kidding. I roll my eyes and slide to lie down on the sofa as a reply comes through from Zeus also.
Z: Might have to take you shopping with me. Almost done for the day ;)
That’s what I’ve been doing. Spending time with somebody who actually gives a shit about me. I send him a kissy face and then reopen Kate’s thread.
B: Not a lot. Trying to find a job. You?
K: Hanging with Brock, but I’m pretty sure we’re done.
I smile as I type my reply.
B: Oh no. Why?
K: He doesn’t want to travel. I do. We argue more than anything else now.
B: That sucks. Maybe he’ll come around.
K: I don’t think so. Do you still want to travel?
Do I? Given the opportunity I wouldn’t pass it up, but now that Zeus has his place with the studio space I’m torn over what to save my money for when I get a job. Maybe I could do both? Guess it’s something to talk to him about….
B: I’d love to see Canada.
There. Doesn’t say yes, but doesn’t say no either.
K: We should go.
I sigh as the front door opens, Dad and Cerise chatting as they walk in. The idea of a trip with Kate sounds great, but I can’t shake the fair-weather friend feeling. If Brock wanted to travel I have no doubt she would have gone without giving me a second thought.
“Hey, sweetheart.” Dad jerks his chin toward my phone. “Who you chatting with?”
“Kate.”
“She going to come over for dinner one night?”
“Don’t know. Maybe,” I call after him as he takes some shopping through to the kitchen.
Cerise hangs in my periphery, awkwardly still. I glance over, a creepy feeling spreading over my skin when I find her watching me. “What?”
“Do you have any plans for your future, other than mooching on your father’s couch?”
Hi to you too, Mum. I twist around to sit up straight.
Her gaze tracks Dad as he cuts through the living room on his way to the bedroom. “I better get myself ready for work.”
“Okay, love,” she calls cheerily, her eyes warm as she watches him go. The ice returns as her gaze slips back to me. “Your dad can’t afford to carry you forever, you know.”
Is this bitch for real? “I imagine it must be hard for him, given you never sent a single cent to help pay for my upbringing.”
Her lips twitch as she stares me down. “I moved out of my parents’ house at eighteen.”
“You had Dad.”
“You have someone also, don’t you?” She smiles.
I burn alive. “No.”
“Huh.” My stomach knots as she walks to the bay window and sighs. “I may have been gone for a while, Belle, but I still know when you’re lying.”
Fucking ears. “What’s it to you anyway?”
“I’m your mother. I care.”
“I can still tell when you’re lying too,” I deadpan.
She smiles, almost as though she’s proud of my comeback. “His world has revolved around you for the last ten years. You don’t know the half of the sacrifices he’s made for you.”
“And what sacrifices did you make?”
She remains silent. I’ve got the bitch. She did nothing for me. She can’t even spin some bullshit story about how she left for the good of the family. My parents didn’t hate each other, from what I remember of life before the split. Staying together wouldn’t have meant we struggled to get by. She left for her own benefit, fuck what it meant to anyone else.
She hurt the ones who loved her, all for her own selfish need.
“Don’t be a burden, Belle.”
I open my mouth to give her what for, yet Dad walks back in, dressed in his work clothes. “Everything okay?” He glances between the two of us.
“Fine. Right, Mother?”
“Yes. Lovely.”
Dad looks at the two of us, his brow pinched, and then turns for the kitchen with a huff. “Women,” he muses. “I’ll never understand you lot.”