Dresses, tights, bras and underwear. Most of it should fit, though some was too big. I put on a sports bra, some clean underwear, a pair of yoga pants, and a tank top, and stared at myself in the floor-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
I looked like one of those girls with clean teeth and good families. One of those girls from the suburbs that drank Starbucks and laughed a lot and mostly worried about what boys she wanted to call and how cute she’d look on Instagram. I couldn’t remember the last time I wore yoga pants. Probably never.
I almost liked it. There was a moment where I could pretend I was someone else, like I was one of those girls, happy and free and whole, instead of broken and caged.
“Let me see you,” Cam called from the hallway.
I opened the door and tugged at the hem of my top. “I don’t know about this,” I said.
But his eyes narrowed and his lips parted, and I knew he liked it.
“Look at you,” he said softly. “God damn. You clean up good, Irene.”
“Shut up,” I said, smiling despite myself. “I’m not freaking modeling for you, okay?”
“I think you should,” he said. “There are some very revealing outfits in there. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”
I pushed past him and headed back out into the living room. “How about you just use your imagination and leave me out of it?” I said.
He laughed and followed me. I sat down on the couch, pulling my legs up underneath me. I didn’t know what to do with myself—it’d been so long since I had somewhere stable to stay, with a hot shower and clean clothes and actual food in the refrigerator. I felt weird, twitchy, like someone had wrapped ropes around my body and kept slowly tightening them, cinching me into pieces.
Maybe that was my problem. My first instinct was to run, and for the last two years, I’ve barely slowed down. I drifted from one spot to another, never sleeping in the same place for more than a few nights before moving on. It kept me safe and out of trouble and alive, but it wasn’t a real life.
Cam followed me back out. He had changed into jeans and a clean black shirt, minus blood splatter. I had to admit he looked good, even if I was still resentful of this whole situation.
“We should talk about what we’re going to do moving forward,” he said, sitting down on the chair next to the couch.
I shifted toward him with a shrug. “All right then,” I said. “What’s there to say? I figure I’ll crash here until things blow over with Ronan.”
His raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips. “When’s that gonna be, exactly?”
“Are you in a rush to kick me out?” I leaned toward him, grinning.
“Not at all,” he said. “Only, you should think about what you’re going to do once you leave.”
“I’ve got places to go,” I said and put my chin on my hands. “You worried about me now?”
“Yes,” he said, his face serious. “I really am. Why don’t you stay here for a while? I can get you back on your feet—”
“No, thanks,” I said sharply and pulled back.
I was waiting for this. Typical Cam, coming to the rescue, as if I needed his help.
“I’m not going to force you into anything,” he said, holding up his hands. “But you’ve been living rough for a while, haven’t you?”
“I’ve been making it work.”
“How?” he pressed. “Stealing?”
“Mostly,” I said. “It’s good work if you can get it.”
He snorted and didn’t admonish me for being a thief. Considering what he did for his job, that would be more than a little hypocritical.
Still, I felt a slight twinge of embarrassment. I never felt this way out there on the street, where the other people I surrounded myself with were also struggling in their own ways, with addiction or mental illness or were simply like me and wanted to disappear for a while. Out there, everyone stole and did whatever they had to do to survive. That was never meant to be me, though.
From a distance, my family wasn’t so bad. My dad worked at the docks doing something on computers, and my mother took waitressing shifts at a few different places. We were middle class, relatively comfortable, and I wasn’t going hungry or cold at night.
Get closer though, and that pretty picture fell apart. My father drank as soon as he got home from work, and I was pretty sure he drank during the day, too. My mother took more pills than was healthy, and sat around zonked out and high out of her brain most of the time. Dad had a temper, and his temper was almost always directed at me, and Mom barely ever gave a damn what happened to me, so long as she got her pills.