Page 12
Chapter
Twelve
PIPER
Dread rolls in my stomach as the week passes, thinking about possible pregnancy. I mean, it’s so very highly unlikely, but he never asked me. And I refuse to take hormones.
I just won’t have sex with Adon again. It’s that simple.
No pricks.
No dicks.
No fuss.
Only muff.
That could be my new motto.
A firm knock on my door startles me from the mess I’ve made organizing my record albums strewn about the living space. My broken mattress frame lays on the floor underneath me at a crooked angle. I tried to fix it, but it’s hopeless. So I’ll just have to set the thing out at some point.
The delicate sundress I’m wearing covers my ass, so I feel okay checking the door in it and my fuzzy slippers. My heart beats harder as I think about this being Adon showing up again for another round and how I’ll tell him to get lost. I totally will. Won’t even open the door.
Instead, it’s a few men with a large couch, acting as if I’m wasting their time.
“Uh, hello?” I call through the door.
“Delivery for Piper Hendricks. Got your sofa sleeper.”
Lowering my brow, I try to remember a wine drunk night of online shopping recently. It’s definitely something I’d do, but I really don’t think I did that this week.
“I didn’t order a couch.”
“Uh, Adon Griffin did. Lady, look. This is heavy. Can we place this or not?”
Adon ordered me a sleeper sofa ? Well, I guess that’s right, considering he broke mine. I slip open the locks and throw the door open. “Yeah, but there’s barely room with the old one.”
The guy at the door shrugs and points to the broken pieces on the floor. One of the others drops his end of the new sofa and heaves the old one out of the way. In record time, the crew sets up my new couch and carries the old one downstairs. I hurry to my purse and give him some money as a tip before they leave.
It’s very formal looking, the arms rolled and puffy. Definitely not my style. But I’ll take it. Especially when I pull out the bed and flop onto the mattress. “Perfect!”
Freckles abounds from the bathroom and plops on my head with a stretch of his belly. “You must like it, too. Maybe having a sugar daddy isn’t so bad. If I get knocked up, perhaps we’d get a bigger apartment out of him.”
The next week, nothing much happens, except for that building dread. Sometimes I think it’s nausea and get concerned enough to panic in the library bathroom on the gross floor tiles, hugging my legs to my chest and trying not to think about my box cutter at home.
When I’m not ill from anxiety, I’m raging with anger that Adon seems to have ghosted me. No work visits or alleyway rendezvous. Even when they opened the cafe back up, he hadn’t shown his face.
Have I reached out to him? No way.
No pricks, no dicks, no fuss. Unfortunately, no muff, either, but I haven’t been out much. The creepy crawlies in my guts keep me home to read more smut than ever before.
By the third weekend after Adon left, I’m consumed with worry enough to purchase a pregnancy test. As I pace with Freckles in my arms outside of the bathroom, the clock ticks on my phone, the screen just visible from the corner of the pedestal sink. I must squeeze him too tight because Freckles squirms out of my embrace and hides under the dining table.
A text notification sounds, and I jump while screaming like someone just broke inside my place. Taking a slow, deep breath, I meander over and glance at the screen as if the vision may scar me for life.
And it kind of does. My sister’s message reminds me to stop over tonight to plan Thanksgiving dinner with her and my mother. Groaning, I slip on some jeans and comb through my hair just as the timer goes off.
It’s no big deal, Piper. You can do this. No matter what the answer is, you can handle it.
My mouth gets dry as I reach for the stick laying on the back of the sink. I close my eyes for only a moment, lifting the test up to face my future.
Negative.
“Oh, thank fuck!” With a resounding hoot, I leap and punch the air in a victory dance. “No babies!”
Freckles startles as I snatch my coat from the chair and say, “I live to fuck another day, Frecklepuss.”
On the way to my mother’s, my beater of a car rattles and groans, giving me another hint that it’s on its last days. It’s never sounded so loud before and the steering feels a bit off, as well. I guess that’s what I get for being in the house for two days and not driving it anywhere.
Squeals and shudders emanate from the engine when I finally stop in the driveway of Cora Hendrick’s brick colonial. I don’t call it the house I was raised in because my parents never did any raising. I hate the place, and I haven’t set foot in my old bedroom since I moved out. The place where everything happened.
Since the last time I was over, there are more shudders hanging on tilt and peeling paint clinging to the porch. My mother owns a spa and salon, and even though she pretends it’s doing so well in her ads plastered on the bus stops, I know she’s barely making ends meet. Hence, another reason she hates my father, whom she feels owes her for cheating on her repeatedly.
Perfumed air assaults my nose when I enter and head to the kitchen in the back, where my sister and mother are talking over mugs of tea at the kitchen island.
“Finally. You’re late,” my sister says with an eye roll. She dressed as casually as I’ve seen her, in jeans and her pink ONE T-shirt with her hair in a slick ponytail. She wears her shoes in the house, and I don’t know why, but it really bothers me.
Sliding onto the barstool next to her, I grab a mug and pour myself a cup as my mother eyes me scrupulously. “Piper…please dye your hair back to your beautiful blonde. Please ? Do it for me?”
I try to think of anything to change the topic, anything so they don’t focus on how I look. The newspaper catches my eye with its headline article about Rainy Day’s grand re-opening. “Any word about that woman who died? Sean’s stepmom?”
My mother’s green eyes lock with my sister’s and the two exchange a meaningful look that I don’t understand. It’s like they’re careful to talk because I’m too young and dumb to know stuff.
“Sean hated her. He doesn’t even consider her a stepmom , you know?”
With a snorting laugh, my mother spits out, “That’s because she was cheating, the little hooker.”
“Cheating? Who was she cheating with?” The vision at the table that morning comes back to me. My father was there first with his co-worker. Employee? It seemed innocent enough, but they were talking pretty in depth to each other.
A dramatic sigh is the answer my sister gives as my mother snaps, “Your father, of course.”
Tilting my head, I try to reserve the irritation in my voice. “You always think he was cheating with everyone.”
My sister sips the last of her drink and smiles around the rim of the mug. “Maybe she got what she deserved.”
I scoff. “Are you serious? You think the woman deserved to die because she may have been having an affair with someone?”
“Oh, you don’t believe me, Piper? I’m not the one who tells lies around here,” my mother says pointedly.
Maeve chimes in with a shake of her head. “For real. So dramatic.”
Vitriol, rage, and hate bubble in my stomach. “Fuck you. Fuck you both. I never lied.”
The stool rattles to the floor as I push away from the island, then sprint up the stairs to my old room. With a scream, I throw open the door. I can’t even see straight. The blood pounding through my arteries causes momentary blurs before my eyes. I grab the standing mirror and toss it with a primal roar. Rip the curtains from the windows. Pick up my dancing figurines and launch them against the wall one at a time as they shatter into a trillion pieces.
Then, I face the bed.
I lunge on top of it and kick and punch and cry until I’m worn out, heaving sobs crashing through my tight chest. But I slither to the floor, taking every piece of fabric with me, trying to shred it with my hands. Instead, I end up in a blubbering mess and wipe away the dripping tears on my cheeks with the horrific memories of my youth.
My mother and sister watch me with terror on their faces from the door. “How dare you! Clean this mess up!”
“Piper, what did you do?”
Maeve acts shocked, but I brush past them as my mother yells, “Do you need to go back to the hospital?”
My sister mumbles, “She may hurt herself again.”
I fling open the front door with my shoes dangling from my fingers and wander to my piece of shit car. How many times have my mother or father asked to get me a new one? I don’t remember. But I won’t take anything from them. Screw them.
Tossing my purse and shoes into the passenger seat, I turn on the engine. The grinding of metal on metal is a foreboding sound, but I squeal away from the curb without issue.
My chest heaves with wails, leftover pain that I always avoid whenever I visit that place. But it lingers inside like a demon of discomfort, waiting to attack me with despair.
Am I slipping back into that place? The pit of darkness where there’s no escape?
As I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, I blink a few times to clear the tears so I can see enough to make it home. Home, where I can hide under my own patchouli-scented blanket with Freckles and escape in a book. Live in someone else’s problem for a few hours.
And not cut.
They want me to, I know. To show how they were right all along. To prove that all of this is my problem and not theirs. But I won’t let them win. I refuse.
“Oh my god!” I scream as I approach a red light and pump the brake, but nothing happens. Trying with all my might, I slam down the pedal, but the car keeps moving at a rapid pace. Cars whiz by the busy intersection as I careen straight for them.
Think, think !
My hand grabs at the emergency brake in the center, and I jerk it up until the car spins in a rapid circle, tires burning into the pavement as their dusty smoke fills the cabin inside. When I stop, my clunker faces the opposite traffic, but is enough to the side that people can get by me. I put my emergency lights on and do the only thing I know.
With a shaking hand, I text Essa, telling her it’s a car emergency. Once she gives me the info, I swallow back my tears and call the person I need most at this moment. My hero.
“Adon? I need help.”