13. Penelope

13

PENELOPE

I ’m stiff and sore when I wake up in bed alone from the punishment of Linc’s strong body. I can still smell him on me. I look down and see I’m in his t-shirt from last night.

A simple dark blue tee with white letters spelling out “Nope.” It’s distinctly Linc.

I vaguely remember him slipping it on over my head after I fell asleep. I also remember his lips pressing to my forehead before he exited my room, obviously thinking I was completely out of it.

Because Linc is only nice when he thinks no one is watching.

I close my eyes and try to force myself to breathe deep.

Colt’s birthday without him, the first day in a long time that was too much for me to handle.

I miss him with every single breath I take.

But last night with Linc, I was able to briefly escape.

He helped me reach my goal of making the world stop for a second, but now the harsh reality of the morning after is here, and I feel like shit.

My eyes open as my head swivels to the side and look out at the water.

“I’m sorry, Colt.”

My apology is whispered into the air as I look up at the ceiling, hating who I’ve become but also who I was.

How can I face his mother tomorrow?

I look at the clock and see it’s already late afternoon.

I pull the comforter over my eyes and again try to breathe, but it only comes out in short, shaky sputters because the thought of facing Nora, a woman I’ve always looked up to, is too much to bear.

I know she’s going to want to know how I am. She’ll want to see that I’m okay, to hear that I love school and that I’m making lots of new friends. That I’m moving on. Because that’s who Nora is, she wants the best for the people she loves, and she truly loves me.

She gave me nothing but love and look what I did to her.

I destroyed her entire family.

My own mother was a lunatic. She was crazy, from what I remember and by what I was told. I don’t have many memories of her, but the ones I do have are all bad. She was on drugs and an alcoholic. But she had a fun little nickname for me, the name is burned into my brain. The memory of the last time I saw her always stays in the back of my mind. With stringy black hair and dead blue eyes, she looked directly at the police officer and said, “Take her. She’s my tragedy, and that’s all she’ll ever bring.”

Her tragedy.

Has a nice, homey kind of ring to it, right?

I lower the comforter and drag my body out of bed, walking down the hall. But she wasn’t wrong, was she?

I looked up the definition when I was old enough. According to Dictionary.com, a tragedy is “a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair, calamity, a disaster.”

That’s all I’ve brought.

Pain, anguish, disasters.

Can’t be too angry at my dear old mom, huh?

I walk into the living room and look around. No Linc.

I go to the kitchen and don’t see him there either. Of course, he doesn’t want to face me today.

I move to the freezer, pull out a bottle of vodka, and walk back to my room.

I sit cross-legged on my bed and stare out at the lake as I twist off the lid and take a drink.

Linc was good last night, but nothing can bring me back from the depths of hell I’m in.