Page 28 of Shameless

I couldn’t even tell you what drive-through we stop at or what I order.

I’m just glad we eat in the car, so I don’t have to endure Tiffany’s probing stare and her disapproval of my diet. Living in Star Cove meant being away from her constant control. She even had my boarding school and rehab prepare special low calorie meals for me to keep my weight under control.

I have never been overweight but to Tiffany, if you’re anything over a size double zero or zero, you’re fat.

When we cross the town limits, I ask Crew if he can drop me off at home rather than taking me to the Country Club to help with Jules’s move.

No one questions my claim that I’m not feeling well, probably assuming that I was sea sick like they all were.

I haven’t texted Mason back yet and I just need to be alone to do it. I can’t risk to be seen if I don’t want to face questions I’m not prepared to answer.

“Are you sure you’re going to be ok by yourself?” Stefan asks as Crew stops the Jeep in front of Arianna’s door.

“I’ll be fine,” I lie. “I just need to lay down and brush my teeth after being sick.”

That part isn’t a complete lie, even though I wasn’t sick because of the storm.

The house is dark and silent. We’ve barely been gone for one night and yet it feels like forever since I looked at the tasteful furniture, the light colored woods and the pastel colors that finish each room.

Everything in here feels airy and welcoming, it feels like home like no other place has ever felt before.

This has always been my safe place. Even when my life seemed to spin out of control, this was the place my heart yearned for, my safe haven.

But the truth is that my life is spinning out of control again. There’s nowhere to run, no place where my past won’t catch up to me with deadly consequences.

A familiar pressure starts to build in my head. A dull throb behind my eyes, that travels down, burning everything in its wake. My throat feels hot and scratchy, my heart is pounding as if I had been running.

I climb up the stairs to my room, my limbs trembling with the exertion.

I close my eyes in the futile attempt to calm my racing heart. My fingers are trembling as I reply to Mason that I’ll be there.

The pressure is overwhelming and I need something, anything to relieve it.

My eyes go to the nightstand closest to the bay window near my bed. To its top drawer to be precise.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” I whisper to myself, clenching my fists and willing my feet to stay rooted in place.

Look away, Lula. That isn’t the solution to your problems and you know it.

I don’t listen to the voice in my head, my body moves on autopilot. It takes my shaky hands three attempts to open the drawer.

When Arianna came looking for my stash, unknowingly causing the issue with Mason, she didn’t think about the secret compartment in the nightstand.

Stefan and Jules’s Mom has always considered me the daughter she never had and she furnished my room with the bedroom set from her teenage years.

I’ll never forget how excited I was when Arianna showed me my new room. She had spent weeks repainting her old bed frame, nightstand and chest of drawers. My new bedroom had been painted too and new curtains covered the big bay window that offers the most stunning beach view in the entire house.

But the best part was what Arianna showed me next. My mom’s best friend had always understood my need for an outlet. Especially when Tiffany focused her critical eye on me. She gave me a journal with a lock and key to write my thoughts and then she showed me a secret compartment at the bottom of the drawer in her nightstand. In there my diary would be safe from prying eyes and to my thirteenth-year-old self nothing was more special.

It feels like a double betrayal that I hid my emergency stash in Arianna’s secret compartment.

I was sure that no one however, not even my stepmom, would think about looking in here.

My hands are shaking so much when I get the small bag with a K2 joint and two Oxy pills, that I almost drop the last of Mason’s drugs on the floor.

These will help me survive the night. I swear it’s the last time I use. The last time. I just need to forget for one night and then I’ll?—

“Lula.”

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