whispered, too low for Blakely to hear but loud enough for me to shiver with shame.
I didn’t respond, because what could I say? Yeah. I had it bad. But there was nothing I could do about it.
18
Blakely
Since the incident at the bar a few weeks ago, a lot of nothing had happened. Rose moved me to the hostess stand, which meant no tips. I wasn’t necessarily complaining. I felt safer at the front of the bar as it was near security. But still, I hated how shaken up I was. The bruise from my accidental attack had faded, but I still could feel the hit. It wasn’t his fists my memory kept conjuring up, it was Mama’s ex-boyfriends.
Decker went back to being nothing. I was starting to feel like that phrase was getting redundant. Even though we lived under the same roof, ate the same food, and participated in the same damn classroom, we only shared broken sentences and remorse between us. Even when Lance went to New Mexico for a weekend, we kept to ourselves, leaving the room if the other entered and disappearing into our seclusion for the sake of avoiding the awkward tension still simmering between us.
I still hadn’t met Sean. I wasn’t sure if it was because something happened during the funeral to make Lance wary or if he was embarrassed by me. Either way, Lance made an excellent effort to spend time with me, but every other night, he would disappear and not show up until the next morning. He planned nights with Sean around my work schedule, but I still felt lonely all the same. I wasn’t upset with him, and I probably wouldn’t even care if it weren’t for the awkwardness between Decker and me.
And today I didn’t want to feel lonely.
I slammed my locker door shut just as Maximillian walked up to stand beside me. “Hey, Bae,” he said in a cheeky tone. He’d started calling me that a week ago, and it made me cringe every time. We hadn’t been on a date or even hung out outside of school, but he was persistently flirtatious. “How are you?” I wasn’t sure what to make of him. Sometimes, I caught myself staring; other times, I wished he would tone it down some. Feelings were fickle like that.
“I’m feeling anxious,” I replied. One of the great things about Maximillian was that I could be frank with him and he didn’t take me seriously. It was like leaving breadcrumbs, but geese kept snapping them up off the floor.
Maximillian ran his porn-worthy veiny hand through his blond hair. (What? I have a thing for hands.) “Anxious, eh? How come?”
“Today is what would have been Mama’s birthday. I feel like I’m supposed to be counting pennies for a cake or planning a surprise party she pretends not to know about.”
Mama was big on birthdays—specifically hers. She would celebrate the entire month, blow our money on cakes and presents. It felt odd to be doing nothing today. I didn’t want to be celebrating her. I had a lifetime of bending over backwards to make her birthday seem special, which was always odd because she never did that for me.
I guess in many ways, it was a routine—cell memory. My soul expected to be stretched thin for the whims of a self-indulgent woman, and I didn’t know how to handle the nothingness that came after her death.
Maximillian’s face dipped into a sad expression that looked like pity and disappointment. Pity probably because he felt bad for me, and disappointment because it was hard to casually flirt with girls that were supposed to be grieving their dead mother.
“Do you want to do anything?” he asked on a stutter.
I pondered his question for a moment. Did I want to do anything?
Yes. Yes, I did.
I wanted today to be about me.
“I want to skip class. Maybe drink some beer. Dance on a table or some shit.” It was precisely the sort of thing Mama would have done. I guess, in some ways, I could pay homage to her while stealing some selfishness for myself.
Maximillian’s mouth dropped open in shock, but he quickly mastered his expression before leaning against my locker. “I’ve invited you out countless times, but now you want to get wild? On a Wednesday?” he clarified.
It was true. He’d invited me to a few parties on the weekend and dates during the week. I always had excuses or pretended to be too depressed to leave the house. I enjoyed