Page 15 of Give Me Perfect Love

I narrow my eyes. What the hell is she talking about?

“I always thought He shouldn’t have taken the day off. He half-assed it and I think it’s the humans who got short-ended.”

“You mean because we’re so flawed?” I ask.

“That’s exactly what I mean. We’re flawed, lacking. He made this great big world beautiful in every way except for us.”

I chuckle and wipe my nose. She’s crazy, but I’m fluent in crazy.

Is this her way of saying she isn’t perfect?

That she made a mistake?

I scoff. A mistake is putting a red shirt in with whites.

Her leaving wasn’t a simple mistake. It was a life decision that affected my well-being.

My eyes skip past her, looking down a road I thought I’d never see again.

I used to sit under the tree when I was just a girl, staring dreamily at that road, wondering if she’d ever come back down it.

My eyes are transfixed. The breeze picks up, encircling me in an icy whirlwind, but I don’t move.

The sky shades and the world bleeds gloom.

A faint smell of whiskey causes the hair on my arms to stand up and I’m unable to decipher if I’ve cheated time as a memory plays out before my eyes.

“Come here.” I hear his loud voice coming from the open window of the house. His voice is slurred and causes me to roll my eyes.

Mama has been gone for five years now, and I still look down this gravel road, praying she’ll come back for me.

I’m thirteen now. I love daydreaming and reading books from the school library. Books are fun because they let me escape my true reality.

Mama is gone.

My stepdad is an asshole.

I’m unwanted.

“I said come here!” he yells again, causing me to jump from my thoughts.

I stand up from under the tree and head inside.

The sky is as gray as the smoke from the cigarettes he smokes, and the smell of rain makes me homesick for a home I don’t have.

“Yeah?” I ask, walking into the house.

“Get in here and clean up this mess.” He’s piss drunk and reeks of whiskey.

I look behind him at the kitchen I cleaned only an hour ago. Now crumbs from a sandwich he made covers the counter, along with an open bread bag and a dirty butter knife. The ham is still out, and I see beer bottles on the stove.

I shake my head at him. “You clean it. I didn’t make this mess.”

I regret saying this as soon as it leaves my mouth. He throws his beer bottle toward me, missing my head by an inch, but beer splatters onto my face when it passes by. Before I can wipe it off, he has my hair fisted in his hand and he’s roughly directing me to the kitchen.

I wince and try to pull his arm off, but it’s a futile attempt. My face is shoved in front of the beer bottles covering the stove, so close my nose touches one and it tilts over, spilling a last swallow onto the stovetop. “Grab them,” he says. I reach my arm up and collect as many as I can. He then pulls me to the trash. “Toss them.” He speaks to me like I’m an imbecile. I drop the bottles and they clank against each other loudly.

He walks me over to the counter, and for some stupid reason, I try to fight back. I’m not sure if it’s teenage hormones or stupidity, but I do it without thought.

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