Page 28 of Restless
“I’m so disappointed in you, Harley. The disrespect you showed your daddy and Knox is bullshit. They deserve better. Even if CJ was fucking every bitch he saw,thesetwo motherfuckers haven’t done you a goddamn thing. The fact that you don’t have fuck all to say about who the boy is with because you broke his goddamn heart makes your treatment of Mortician and Knox all the more fucked up. You owe them both an apology.”
“Of course I do,” Harley sobbed. “Their precious feelings are hurt, but what about my feelings?”
“Fuck your motherfucking feelings,” Lolly snarled. “They’re too fucked up to be important. I’ve never heard no fucking bullshit about a motherfucker not being a real gangster because he hasn’t gone to prison. It just makes the motherfucker a smart gangster. Apparently, the apple don’t fall far from the tree. Nardo’s daddy is a stupid motherfucker and so is he.”
“I hate you!” Harley screamed.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Lolly said. “I love you dearly, but I want to beat your ass for your fucking disrespect.”
“Mother, get out,” Mommie said in a trembly voice. “And don’t come back until you have more sympathy for my sweet baby.”
“Sweet baby, my ass. She’s turned into the fucking devil.” Lolly wrenched open the door and stomped off.
Pop didn’t bother to say ‘goodbye’. He slammed the door shut.
As Mommie hugged Harley and promised everything would work out, Daddy leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.
“Bailey, you and me need to talk,” he said once Mommie released Harley.
“Unless you tell me you’re firmly on Harley’s side, Lucas, I have nothing to say to you. The pictures speak for themselves. CJ is guilty.”
“He is, Daddy,” Harley said, calmer. Now that it was just her and her parents, she didn’t feel so attacked. “He promised he’d wait for me, untilIwas ready to go steady. I even told him he could get another girlfriend and he said he wouldn’t.”
Smoke pouring through his mouth and nostrils, Daddy took his cigarette in hand. “Harley, you always been my pride and joy,” he said quietly, sadder and more subdued than she’d ever seen him. He looked crushed. “Right now, you not being nice or fair.” He glanced at Mommie, then back at her. “CJ is older than you and Roxanne right.Youturned him down. You can’t put a motherfucker on the shelf and keep him there untilyouready. Suppose that never happens? He got a life to live, too. Having said that, the little motherfucker adore you. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. But have you even thought about what he’s going through? He idolize his old man, but he’d move heaven and earth for Meggie. He love her to bits and pieces and he almost lost her. He not having an easy time. Maybe, ease up on him for now. Be the friend he need, instead of turning on him at this crucial moment.”
“You’re still blaming Harley, Lucas.”
Daddy pinched the tip of his cigarette and headed for the door. “I’m not, Bailey.” He sounded tired and weary. “I’m just advising her to be his friend.” He left, quietly closing the door behind him. A moment later, his Harley rumbled to life, and he sped away.
Mommie stared at the door, then pasted a smile on her lips. “I guess it’s just you and I for dinner, hunny bunny. Wash up while I set our plates out.”
Debating on texting Mattie to inquire if she and Aunt Kendall would join them, Harley trudged to her bedroom. She told herself her angry words to Daddy, Lolly, and Pop were justified, but in the silence of her room, she wasn’t sure. Worse, the pain and disappointment in her father’s eyes haunted her.
After changing from her school uniform and into a romper, she sat on her bed with her phone in hand. Instead of texting Mattie or Daddy, she sent one to CJ.
Chapter Four
“When will she grow the extra two hundred bones needed to survive?” Molly asked, staring at Jo through one of the windows of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Hortensia General. Christmas decorations hung in the hallway and inside the NICU. Behind the nurse’s station stood a small tree, surrounded by presents.
“She has all the bones she’ll ever need and more, Molly,” CJ said tiredly, staring at his newborn sister and hating all the tubes and IVs attached to her.
Though she was nearing two pounds, she still looked so small and fragile. Sometimes, CJ worried someone would awaken him and tell him he’d been dreaming, that his little sister and mother had, in fact, died. So far, that hadn’t happened.
“She doesn’t,” Molly insisted. “Adults have ten thousand eight bones. Kids are born with eight thousand eight. She needs two hundred more. That’s why her skin is so…so…”
Translucent?
CJ didn’t have the energy to address his little sister’s skin and he wished he’d left Molly with fuckbag, instead of pretending they had to work on their science project. “She’d need two thousand more bones, Mo. Babies are born with three hundred or some shit. Adults have less. A hundred ninety-six or two-hundred-six.” He squeezed his temples. “I can’t remember the number.”
An instrumental rendition ofRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeerpiped through the hospital’s loudspeakers.
CJ had never felt so disconnected from the holiday season. That fact added to his misery.
Molly pulled back the sleeve of the jacket he’d lent her to reveal her hand and laid it against his arm. “Your baby sister is fighting,” she said quietly. “I can see how worried you are, but just say your prayers and He’ll make her well for you.”
Tears glistened in her blue-gray eyes and she smiled sadly.
CJ nodded, only realizing the moisture in his own eyes when she thumbed his cheeks. Evading her touch, he turned back to the glass. “I’m fine, bae.”
