Chapter 19 Larissa
LARISSA
Phil was in the living room.
I just got back from the cabin with everyone. I’d been gone four days and from the looks of the apartment, Phil had been here the whole time.
I dropped my tote bag at my feet and scowled around at the mess.
Beer cans, pizza boxes—and an ashtray. Right in the middle of the coffee table. The whole room smelled like smoke.
I let out an angry breath.
“Where’s Nancy?” I asked, my tone clipped.
Phil looked over at me, bleary eyed, like he just now noticed I’d come in. His shirt buttons were straining against his giant belly. “Oh, hey.” He coughed without covering his mouth.
“My mom?” I said again.
“Just got outta the shower,” he said, pointing the remote at the TV.
I stomped to the bedroom and banged on her door. “Mom!”
“What is it?” she said, popping her head out, wrapped in a towel.
“You’re smoking in the house?”
She made an exasperated huff and pushed the door open. “I thought someone died the way you’re hollering. Come in, talk to me in here.”
“We agreed you wouldn’t smoke inside,” I said, coming into the bedroom.
She closed the door behind me. “It was two cigarettes. It was hailing. We had a tornado warning.”
“Mom, I live here. I pay half the rent. I don’t like smoke.”
“Well, I don’t like dogs and that didn’t stop you from bringing one home.”
“I asked you! You said it was fine.”
She wrapped a towel around her wet hair. “You’re making a big deal about nothing. I’ll air it out and light a candle.”
I made a frustrated noise.
Now all my clothes would smell like french fries and Newports.
I crossed my arms and looked around. There were beer cans everywhere. On top of the dresser, on the nightstand. And there was luggage in the corner of her room. Three suitcases that didn’t belong to us.
I turned back to her. “Whose stuff is that?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mom…”
“He’s staying for a bit,” she said, rubbing lotion on her legs.
“No, he’s not.”
She stood up straight and faced me. “Excuse me?”
“No!”
She put a fist to her hip. “They are bug bombing his apartment. He needs to be out of there for a few days. Why are you so crabby?”
“Because I don’t want to live like this!”
She looked at me like I was a toddler having a tantrum. “Hon, if you don’t like to share space with people, then get your own place. I had my own place at your age.”
I sucked in a slow breath, trying to calm myself down. “I have no credit, Mom. Dad took care of that, remember? Nobody is going to rent to me. I don’t make enough to live on my own—”
“With you working all those jobs?”
I threw up my hands. “I have thirty thousand dollars of debt that doesn’t even belong to me!
My car breaks down once a month, and I paid all the bills while you recovered—how am I supposed to save?
Or get ahead? And then I come home and you have Phil here?
We’re already sharing seven hundred square feet of space and one bathroom. ”
She sighed. “Maybe you should go stay with Mike this week.”
I blinked at her.
“Why not?” she said. “He’s got a nice place.”
“I just got back from spending the weekend with him.”
“And you think he’s sick of you?” She laughed huskily. “Hon, if he’s sick of you this early, you’re doing something wrong in the bedroom.”
“No, he’s not sick of me…”
The truth was, I was sick of him. A little.
Not sick of him… that was too harsh. I just needed room.
I turned and sat on the end of her bed and put my face into my hands.
I felt Mom sit next to me. “What happened this weekend?” she asked, softer.
“Nothing.”
Something.
“I don’t know. I’d never spent that many days with him before. It was just… overstimulating.”
“How’s that?”
I took in a breath. “It’s like everything has to be a party,” I said.
“Weren’t you at a party?”
“I mean yes, but… it’s hard to explain. It’s like, it’s breakfast, we just woke up, and he wants to make Bloody Marys.”
“Sounds like my kind of guy…”
“And then it’s beers in the lake, and then he starts getting a little loud and he wants to throw me in and I’m just trying to read and he’s splashing me and grabbing my ass. I don’t know.”
“It sounds like you need to learn how to relax.”
I scoffed.
The funny thing is, this should have been a great weekend. And it was. Parts of it. Like when Mike was grilling steaks and Journey was blasting from the speakers or when we were all playing cornhole on the lawn or watching the fireworks while we floated on the pontoon.
The car ride with Chris. That was fun. Actually all the parts with Chris were fun.
I just didn’t love all the parts with Mike.
That was so unfair, I felt bad even thinking it.
Mike took care of me the whole weekend from the second I showed up.
Served me food, made me drinks. He unpacked my luggage for me, wouldn’t even let me make the bed in our room.
But he was drinking the whole time. Literally the whole time.
From the moment I got there to the night before we left.
And Mike was not a good drunk. He was loud and borderline belligerent.
He was sober to drive me home. He never got behind the wheel, he was responsible about it. It was a vacation weekend. Everyone was drinking. He wasn’t doing anything that everyone else wasn’t doing. But I didn’t like it. It wore me out.
“I just think I need a vacation from my vacation,” I said, mostly to myself. “I’m just tired. And I don’t want to hang out with Phil.”
She sighed. “Well I can’t kick him out now,” she said, her voice low. “I already told him he could stay. I didn’t know you were gonna be so pissed.”
Phil sneezed from the other room. A growling man sneeze that was unnecessarily loud.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I didn’t want to go to Mike’s.
It felt like leaving out of the exit I came in. The one that wasn’t the best choice, but it was the door I knew.
I had the strangest knee-jerk inclination to ask Chris if I could sleep in his guest room for a night instead.
Chris. I knew what it would be like at his place. Quiet. Reading. Woofarine. We’d make dinner or he’d get something for us from somewhere safe. We’d talk about books, or we wouldn’t talk at all and that would be okay too.
He wouldn’t make margaritas, running the blender when I was trying to finish my book and then get loud and grabby after he’d had a few.
I wanted to decompress. I wanted silence and calm.
But Chris wasn’t a choice now. He had been once, a million years ago after a concert. But not now.
So I got up and went to Mike’s.