Page 35 of Caged Heart
Carmen sniffled. “Sarge showed up.”
“Sarge?” I asked because I wasn’t too sure who that was. Was that her mother’s druggie boyfriend?
“I can’t do this on the phone. I’ll wait in Monica’s car for you.”
“Okay, where’s Monica?”
“I’m right here, Wolf.” Monica never called me that nickname unless something shook her or startled her… that Sarge bastard had better not have hurt either of them or else I’ll kill him with my bare hands.
“Okay.”
Even though I heard Monica say everything was okay, I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes.
Another call came in and it was Mars, and I picked it up before I changed my mind.
“You better be with the girls or else I’m adding another reason as to why I’ll fuck you up, big brother.”
“It’s about mom…” Mars stated.
“What about her?” I asked.
“She’s dead.”
An eerie calmness came over me.
“Good.”
After a moment of silence, Mars sighed. He knew that I didn’t care.
“Ares, did you hear me?” He repeated.
“Yep. The old hag croaked and hopefully, she drank herself to death.”
“She was sick.”
“Huh, she had a heart after all.” I stretched out the last words for emphasis.
“I guess.” His tone brooked no argument. “The funeral will be soon and we have to be present. Whether we like it or not. There’s only you and me left.”
“I gotta go.” I said when I pulled up close to the Telfer building. “I’ll miss our mother.”
I let my forehead touch the steering wheel because I didn’t know why I was reacting to her death. She was cruel to me and she meant nothing more to me. Was that what dad was trying to tell us? That the old witch was sick and wanted to see us before she croaked out and died or? There’s no way to feel right now. The deep understanding of death never really clicked for me. Not even when Artemis died, I should have reacted especially since we saw her body hanging there, but nothing. There was nothing there.
“Fuck!”
Chapter23
Carmen
When I called Ares, after the encounter with Sarge, I didn’t know why I did it. It just felt like something I should’ve done and that’s what I did.
It scared me to depend on someone else or rather lean on them. This didn’t make sense since he would get sick and tired of me soon enough. I wasn’t insecure, but I wasn’t secure in thinking that us testing this out for 30 days would get me a man who wanted to try this out longer.
Problems such as mom and Sarge were the main reasons why.
When Ares drove up, he checked on Monica and me to see if we were physically okay. After that, I exited Monica’s car to climb into his and he followed Monica back to her apartment first. Through the whole drive, I knew something was up and wrong. He said his pleasantries when I climbed in and we drove in silence. I thought he was going to ask about what happened to me but he didn’t and I didn’t dare to tell him that my mom’s boyfriend had found me right outside of my class and had embarrassed me.
Sarge yelled in my face calling me ungrateful, a bitch, a whore, every name in the book and even insinuating that the reason I was icing out mom was because I wanted him for myself. This wasn’t the first time they did this to me so I wasn’t shocked per se but embarrassed.
