Page 85 of Ecstasy
A lump forms in my throat at the sound of her voice. I shrug out of her grip and take a step back, lowering the bottle by my side before I turn to face her.
Her eyes are bleary, tinged with red, some of that fucking excessive eyeliner she wears smeared all over her face. She’s dressed in the same clothes she wore last night, not my clothes. She’s even got her shoes on.
“You can’t leave,” I tell her, confused. “You can’t leave right now.”
She glances at the bottle in my hand, her eyes going to the shards of glass behind me, at the sliding glass door. “I’ve got to go,” she says, clutching her phone in her hand. “What…happened?”
I curl my fingers tighter around the bottle, half-expecting it to burst into pieces. But I’m not that strong. If I was, I’d have found a way to tell Mom before she found out the hard way.
I slam the bottle on the counter, grip the edge of it with both hands, hanging my head. I was out of bed before Zara, which is no surprise. She sleeps a fuck load in the morning after she tosses and turns all night.
I slipped out of bed and intended to come down and clean up. To cook breakfast. To have a nice fucking day. But I got the email from Dad to his congregation, just like everyone else. I didn’t even get my own email, nor did he have the decency to warn me beforehand. Instead, he let me read it in his blubbering, half-assed apology, proclaiming that it wasn’t what it looked like.
Zara’s hand rubbing my back brings me back to the present. “Alex,” she says softly, “what’s wrong?”
“It’s my fucking Dad.” She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know how I saw him. How I caught him the first time, before people started paying attention. Before Pastor Cardi became a local celebrity and a big fucking dumbass at the same time. Before he started being more brazen about his mistresses, seemingly uncaring that everyone in Grove Beach has a fucking cellphone and could snap a photo at any time.
Zara doesn’t know all of it. She and my father already dislike each other. I didn’t want to add more fuel to the fire.
But she knows enough.
Her hand stills on my back. I wonder if she’s thinking of saying something snarky. I wonder if she’s about to piss me off even more.
But surprising me, all she says is, “I’m sorry.”
I glance over my shoulder and meet her blue-green eyes. I think of my mother’s own deep chestnut eyes. I think of her curled up under the sheets of her fucking oversized bed. I think of coming home from school to a silent home. Of tiptoeing up to her bedroom. Of watching her slight form move up and down under the sheets confirming that she was still alive. The relief I felt knowing the prescription bottle that dwindled far too quickly every day on the nightstand hadn’t yet killed her.
I think of her trying to fake it every Sunday, smiling and standing beside my father in the church that looks more like a mall than a house of God.
I would never do that. I would never fucking do that to Zara, and yet all this bullshit started because Rihanna fucking Martinson kissed me on the cheek after practice one day, and Zara is immature and childish.
She’s already doped up on pills half the time she’s awake and she doesn’t even have shit to deal with like my mom does.
I want to step out of her touch. I want to scream at her too. But I don’t yell at her, because I don’t want to push her away. Not really. I just want her to wake the fuck up and realize that, just like my mother, she’s on a collision course to an early grave.
I straighten and she drops her hand.
For a moment, I feel guilty. For the video that’s going around, and the pool shit and all of it. For a moment, I feel fucking bad about that and everything else I’ve done to fuck with the women in my life.
But the moment passes. Quickly.
I was drunk then. It’s not an excuse, but I was drunk, and…
It doesn’t fucking matter.
“Where are you going?” I ask her instead. “Where do you need to be?”
She twirls a lock of hair between her fingers, shaking her head and looking at the floor. “It doesn’t matter. I was going to…I was going to walk anyway. I’m sorry about your dad and—”
I run my hand through my hair again. “Just fucking answer me. Where do you need to—”
“Her mom’s engagement party,” Eli says, coming up behind her and brushing past us both without sparing a glance at the glass all over the floor. He walks over to the fridge, opens it up.
Her mouth falls open.
I turn to stare at Eli. He’s not wearing a shirt, his black hair is disheveled and he’s just staring into the fridge like something is going to float out and pour down his throat.
“What—” I start to say.
