Chapter 1 #3
“I don’t care what everyone does. I care what you do.” I stopped. I made myself stop. I was raising my voice and would shut him off completely soon. I took a deep breath.
“Look, I understand that you are fourteen. I understand that fourteen means doing things that are stupid and that make sense at the time. I understand that. I was fourteen once, believe it or not.”
River said nothing. He stared at a fixed point on the floor and refused to move his eyes from it.
“I understand that you are going to push back and test things and make choices I don’t like.
That is practically written into the contract of being fourteen.
I accept that. What I do not accept is Noah Walker in this house and beer on the coffee table and —“ I looked at the tilted lamp. “Whatever happened to that lamp.”
“The lamp was an accident.”
“Everything tonight was an accident according to you.”
He finally looked up. His jaw was set.
“River. I’m not trying to ruin your life. I’m trying to make sure you still have one.” I said, quieter.
This was when he snapped.
“I’m not a little kid. So stop treating me like one.” he shouted.
“I know you’re not. A little kid would not have been able to drink that much beer.” I shouted back.
I knew I shouldn’t have been shouting on top of his shouting, but I lost all control over my senses.
“You’re always telling me what to do, you’re always watching everything I do, you’re always —“ He stopped. He pressed his mouth together. His eyes were red and he was furious and also, underneath all of it, embarrassed, which only made the furious worse.
“You’re not my mom. Leave me alone.” he screamed.
Everything went very quiet.
“I know I’m not Mom.” I said.
“But I have been the person who fed you and kept the lights on and got you to school and sat with you when you were sick since you were four years old, and I will keep doing all of that for as long as you need me to, whether you want me to or not, because that is what we do for each other. We are all we have. Mom has been gone for ten years. Dad —“ I stopped. “Dad is not someone we are counting on. Which means it’s you and me. That’s the whole list. And I need you to be safe, and I need you to stay away from Noah Walker. I need you to not have beer in this house, not because I am trying to ruin your life, but because your life is the only thing I have been trying not to ruin since the day I put you on a bus out of that town. I —”
“I hate you. Stop lecturing me. I know how to live my life.” he screamed.
I stopped talking. We both looked at each other for a long moment. Then he turned around and went to his room. He slammed the door shut behind him.
I stood in the living room by myself.
I picked up the beer bottles one at a time. I lined them up by the recycling bin in the kitchen. Then I found one that was still mostly full, left on the windowsill behind the curtain by someone who had perhaps been hedging their bets, and I stood at the kitchen counter and drank it.
It was bad beer. The kind that came in a variety pack where every single variety was worse than the one before it. I drank all of it.
A Sonnenberg doesn’t marry a pole dancer.
I set the can down on the counter.
I had run from my father’s house at seventeen years old.
I had run with River on my hip, and I had boarded the first bus I could find because it was going somewhere that wasn’t there.
I had spent three years in Vegas dancing in a club, in heels that hurt, for men who thought they knew what I was worth.
And I had saved every dollar, every single one, to move us here.
And I had spent the last three months convincing myself that Cade Sonnenberg was different.
He was not different.
He was just better at the smile.
I picked up a disposable cup from the coffee table and dropped it in the trash. Then another. Then another.
I was a fighter. I had always been a fighter.
I had fought my father, I had fought a customer in Vegas who thought buying a lap dance meant buying a fuck, I had fought every version of the world that tried to tell me I was less than what I was, and I was going to fight this too, which in this case meant not letting Cade Sonnenberg take up one more square inch of space in my head than he already had.
He had been a distraction. A very handsome, very well-dressed, ‘very good at walking you home under the fall leaves’ distraction.
I was done being distracted.
River was fourteen and clearly needed more of my attention than he’d been getting, and Happy Steps had its busiest season running right now with the fall tourists.
I had twelve foster kids to get ready for the Fall Festival performance, and I had a life, an actual built-from-nothing life, and I was not going to let one man’s opinion of what I deserved hollow it out from the inside.
Girls like her don’t belong here.
I turned off the kitchen light.
I went to bed.
I did not cry.
I told myself I was not going to cry and I meant it and I kept it, which was more than I could say for certain other people’s promises.
***