Madison

Asher makes me promise to call him if I need anything, and I feel a heady mix of giddy and embarrassed at the gesture. Part of me wanted tell him to drop me off before we ever got close to the park, but the other part me wanted to own my life, the bad bits and shadows included.

Maybe he needed to see where I came from to get it. He was going to find out eventually, so he might as well see it up front.

I walk inside and I know he's still there as I reach for the door.

I look over my shoulder and give him a small wave before he starts to back up and pulls away. He gives a small wave in return before he does though, and that makes me smile because I've never seen Asher Brent small wave at anyone. People, myself included, would have thought he was way too cool.

I go inside, and the contrast gives me pause in a way that I can't say it fully did before.

The change has already happened, and I hate that. I knew it was coming, but hope is a disease that I don't know the cure for.

I can hear Ashlyn's music coming from her room, the only sign she's in the house.

Beau is on the couch in front of the TV. The same couch he wanted to bend me over. The high I was on with Asher falls so heavily to the earth that it already feels like a dream. The fairy tale version of me was living that life, the actual me lives here.

Mom is in the kitchen, cooking, which is almost as shocking as any one of the events I've gone through today.

Beau looks me over, long and uninterrupted because there's no one there to witness it but me. He brings the beer bottle to his slips and takes a swig. His long hair covers part of his chest in a wife beater and doesn't cover the myriad of tattoos running down both of his arms.

"That her?" Mom says, not bothering to call out for me.

"Yeah, that's her. Fancy truck dropping her off here and everything."

I turn to the TV and take in the window gave him a front row view of me and Asher in his truck.

"Fancy truck? Who's truck?" Mom comes from the kitchen, and I still haven't moved far into the house.

"That Brent boy from the looks of it."

"Well no shit." Mom says, and I wonder to myself how long the conversation could go on without me ever being a part.

I notice the age lines on her face as she wipes her hands on the honest to goodness apron she's wearing. Like that's something she does. Like it's a normal, everyday thing.

"Get in here," she says, and I do. I'm so trained, I'm surprised the word obedience is not actually engraved on my skin.

I walk to sit at the table off the living room. A generous person would call it our dining room; an honest person would call it the yard sale find in the corner that it is.

She sits next to me at the table, and Beau watches us from his perch on the couch. He leans forward, beer still in hand, as his elbows rest on his knees.

"You fucking him?" she asks, not one to beat around any bush. She's not here enough to waste the time that she is here.

"No."

"You lying to me?"

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, ma'am," I say, the irony of her formality not lost on me. All I want is this over and for Ashlyn to stay exactly where she is, away from this.

"I don't know whether to be grateful for that or to call you stupid."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want you thinking some rich boy is going to come here and save you."

"I'm not asking him to."

"And I sure as shit don't want you think that he'd bother staying around when he knocks you up and leaves you all for dead. I'm not raising no babies." Spittle flies from her lips and lands on the table next to my arm.

"You're not raising anyone." I don't bite my tongue when I should. I don't learn from my former mistakes.

She leans in, the smell of cigarette smoke coming off of her skin, and she gets close to my face.

"What did you just say?" Her voice is quiet, and when it is, she sounds like the mom I remember. The one who worked with my dad. The one who wasn't perfect but who tried to be, between jobs, for him. My eyes start to burn.

Beau walks over to us and leans over my chair, facing her from above me. He snakes his hand down to my back, and it's obscured by me sitting in front of him.

"Now, Angie, she's just talking. That's what little girls do when they're mad and powerless. They bark." I feel two of his fingers run up my spine, and I tense. He's getting bolder. She's right in front of me, and he's pulling this stuff anyway.

She sits back and looks at us. I want her to see it. I want her to see him.

"You're lucky Beau was here or I'd rearrange that pretty little face of yours," she says, and I know she's on something. She's never threatened me before, not this overtly, so it can't just be coming from her. "You always were like that you know." She directs her words at Beau. "Always thought she was better than everyone, every fucking body."

'"I didn't." I lean forward, some part of me wanting to plead with her. Beau's hand no longer touches me.

Momma leans in as well. "You did, and you still do, and it's your daddy's fault. He made you think you're something better than all this. But you need to hear this. You're not, and the sooner you learn that, the better."

I don't sit back because I know Beau is still standing there, but I don't keep arguing. There isn't a point.