Unfortunately for me, Jaret was at the wake. He caught up to me while I was in the back, trying to blend into the wallpaper while people chatted and laughed. I knew the wake was where people were supposed to feel better, were supposed to eat and remember my mom with good memories, and a part of me was happy they were doing it.
But a part of me was angry, angry that while my mom was lying in a box, dead, that people were still able to be happy. I wasn’t happy. I still felt like I had a sinking stone dragging me down, felt like going to sleep and never getting up again.
I was leaning against the wall in the back of the living room at Alex’s house when Jaret came and stood next to me.
Great.
“Shit sucks,” he told me, taking a sip of his beer. I didn’t reply.
“Everyone tells you it’ll get easier, that you’ll feel better. They’re lying to you. It takes a long fucking time. And even then, you’re never going to get completely over it.”
Jaret’s mom had died of breast cancer when he was ten. If anyone here did know what I was going through, it was him.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, even though I still didn’t want to see him.
Jaret nodded and wandered off.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but his words had helped. At least he hadn’t been one of the tons of people that just told me how sorry they were.
* * *
By the time the wake was over, I didn’t feel any better. The pain was still crushingly acute. I couldn’t handle it.
I left the house and went for a walk. Passing by a liquor store, I went in. I needed something to quell the pain. Plus, I had just turned twenty two. I didn’t even need my old fake ID.
Scanning the shelves, but not really looking at anything, I finally grabbed a random bottle of vodka, a 40, and made my way to the counter.
I threw some cash down, mumbled at the cashier not to bother with the change as he packed the bottle in a brown paper bag for me, and went back outside, undoing the cap as I walked.
I started chugging my poison of choice, the alcohol burning my throat as it went down. I didn’t care. I was the very definition of a hot mess, and I couldn’t have given less of a shit.
Wandering through the streets, the alcohol began to numb the pain. The less I felt, the more I drank.
Before I knew it, the bottle was half empty.
I couldn’t remember if I finished it.
The last thing I remembered was staggering past a fountain, crying, yelling out to the world that I missed my mom.
I really, really missed her.
At least the alcohol made it hurt just a little less.
* * *
When I came to, I felt the splitting headache before even opening my eyes.
The fluorescent light was so harsh and bright it tore through my closed eyelids, and I groaned and turned over. The acrid taste of vomit burned the back of my throat.
Every muscle in my body was sore, and I was lying on something hard. Concrete?
Slowly, some of the memories of the night before came flooding back to me.
Crying while sitting in the gutter.
Drinking vodka straight from the bottle.
Seeing a mother and daughter on the street and begging them to tell each other how much they loved each other.
The more memories came flooding back, the worse I felt.
God, it was all so embarrassing.
I was a good girl. I’d never done anything like that before, ever.
And when I finally opened my eyes, I realized just how low I’d come.
I was lying on the floor of a jail cell, a pool of vomit I had to assume was my own only a few feet away. Struggling to sit up, I suddenly realized there were voices near me.
Surrounding me were at least a dozen women, not a single feature that united us all other than the fact that we had all obviously hit a low point in our lives, and we were all sharing this cell.
One woman, with blonde hair whose roots were so long it was obvious she hadn’t dyed it in at least six months, was grabbing the bars and screaming something at whoever was outside. My head hurt too much to focus on the words she was saying, but I assumed it was a not-so-polite plea for her freedom.
On the bench were sitting four black teenagers, two of them passed out, two of them giggling, obviously still drunk.
What the hell had I done?
I wanted nothing more than a Tylenol, a warm bath and for my mom to tuck me in to bed so I could feel better after a good sleep.
When I thought of my mom, though, everything came rushing back. All the pain.
God, mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did this. I swear I didn’t mean to.
I wasn’t sure why I was here, but I knew I had let my mom down by doing whatever I did.
I just knew it.
I sat up, slowly, and moved towards an empty part of the wall. I sat against it, staring at the pool of my own vomit, trying not to think about how disappointed my mom would have been if she saw me right now.
Time got away from me, and I’m not sure how much had passed, but eventually there were footsteps coming from down the hall. Like a pile of meerkats, all of us women in the cell who were awake looked up, anticipatingly.
A bored looking bald man in his forties with a bulging stomach came up to the cell door and unlocked it.
“Prescott,” he announced.
That had to be me.
“Here,” I stammered nervously, holding up my hand. I saw a girl giggle, and I blushed.
This is jail, not grade 1, I scolded myself mentally.
“You’re out, come on,” he ordered.
My head in a daze, I got up as quickly as I dared and made my way to the door. I didn’t know why I was being let out, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to argue about it.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I walked past him, ignoring the angry murmurs of the others not as lucky as I was to be let out.
“Down the hall,” came the reply, and I walked through an old brick building that looked like the last coat of paint it had gotten was long before the Vietnam War – I supposed the police department figured grey doesn’t fade – and out to an office area where another officer sat at a desk behind a plexiglass window.
“Name?” she asked, sounding just as bored as badly, who went into the office through a side door.
“Michaela Prescott.”
“Sign here,” she ordered, handing me a pen and a sheet of paper. I wasn’t in any state to read what it said. I just signed.
“Straight through the door on your left,” she continued in that same monotone when I handed her the clipboard back through the small hole in the glass. “Your brother is waiting for you outside.”
I had to have heard her wrong. Still, I felt shitty enough that I wasn’t going to hang around and find out. I went out the door, and sure enough, Jaret Black was standing against the wall, leaning against a poster in both Spanish and English about how doing drugs is bad.
“You look like shit,” he told me when he saw me, that same old cocky grin on his face.
“Thanks. What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to talk normally through the pounding in my head.
“Bailing you out, obviously.”
“What happened?”
“Lots of time to tell you that. Right now, you’re gonna have a shower and sleep for a while. You obviously need it.”
I wanted to argue. Every inch of my body wanted to tell him I was fine, that all I needed was a cup of coffee. But I didn’t have the energy.
Plus, he was right.
I mumbled something in reply and meekly followed Jaret out of the station and to his waiting car. I must have passed out again on the ride there, because the next thing I knew we were standing in front of an old apartment, a bit on the shabby side, but obviously just old and not completely abandoned.
“Where are we?” I asked as I followed Jaret into the building.
“My place in the city,” he replied as he unlocked the door to the ground floor apartment.
The inside was insanely nice, but still with a bunch of empty pizza boxes on the coffee table in front of the 80 inch TV and a pile of beer cans by the door. The ultimate crash pad for a rich kid in his early 20s.
Still, I walked past in a daze as Jaret led me to the bathroom.
“The towel on the rack’s clean. Spare bedroom’s down the hall. I’ll be back later tonight,” he told me.
I think I mumbled a thanks in reply, but I wasn’t completely sure.
The rush of hot water on my body felt amazing. I stood in the shower, letting it wash over me, letting it wash away the cloud that filled my head, before I wrapped myself up in the towel, went down the hall and collapsed into the bed Jaret had left for me.
I was too exhausted to even wonder who else had slept in it before.
* * *
When I woke up the sun was just starting to ebb down towards the horizon. Given the time of year, it had to be about three in the afternoon.
The memories of the last 24 hours came flooding back, and in my newly sobered up state, became all the more embarrassing.
“Oh God, what did I do?” I muttered to myself. I was about to put on my old clothes, despite the fact that they smelled like puke, when I noticed a small pile of brand new clothes sitting by the door with a piece of paper with “Mikki” scribbled on it on top of them. I pulled on the Lululemon pants and shirt, and I briefly felt thankful for Jaret.
Ugh, what is wrong with you? He’s an asshole, remember? I forced myself to think as I made my way to the main part of the house.
“Hey,” he greeted me. His gorgeous eyes bore into me, and I looked away, my body instantly remembering the way he made me feel when he took my virginity, my brain forcing me to be ashamed of that night.
“Hey,” I mumbled back, sitting down on a chair next to a small dining table in the corner that was so covered in papers I wasn’t sure what it was made of.
“So you sure went on a hell of a bender last night, eh?” he asked, his grin getting wider.
“I can’t say I remember,” I replied, and the grin turned into an outright laugh.
“Don’t worry. I know what you’re going through. Honestly, if I could have drunk myself to death when my mom died I probably would have gone for it. That’s probably why they don’t let ten year olds go wild at the liquor store.”
“Yeah. What did I do?” I asked. I figured Jaret was the only person who was going to be able to tell me just what I did the night before.
“Well, I’m not sure. But I got a call from a guy I know that my sister was in lock-up. Apparently you were arrested for vandalism or something, and resisting arrest.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “Thanks for getting me out.”
“No problem, my cop friend owed me a favour anyway. Besides. As I said, I understand where you’re coming from.”
I gave Jaret a small smile, trying to ignore those perfectly chiselled cheekbones and the fact that the years only made him look sexier.
Nope. Nope nope nope. You are not going there. You’re his step-sister now.
Besides, I still hadn’t forgiven him for being a total asshole to me, or for sleeping with my best friend after sleeping with me.
“I brought you here since I figured my dad would be pretty pissed if you turned up at his place looking how you did this morning.”
“That was a good call. When I was being let out I couldn’t help but think how disappointed my mom would have been in me.”
“Yeah. That doesn’t really go away, the thinking about what your mom would think about your decisions. It gets easier though.”
“I hope so,” I whispered. I could feel the tears welling up inside of me again. God, how long was it going to take before I could mention her without tears threatening to come out?