With that, she follows Drake out the front door, leaving me alone with the husband. I stare at him for a long moment, sorting out my thoughts. It’s hard enough for me not to punch the living shit out of him.
I hate cheaters. It's why I don’t like being with Donna, but I feel stuck in the fucking relationship. I turn sharply on my heel and follow my partner out before I can do something that lands me back on desk duty. After the last I punched a guy, I spent three months sitting behind a fucking desk. I was told to be grateful I wasn’t fired. It was worth it. I was also told to get my temper in check and see somebody about it. I didn’t consider it then, but now I’m thinking maybe it was a good idea. Because I’ve been feeling angry a lot lately. I can’t tell if it’s because of Donna, Gracie, my job, or whatever else. But everything makes me angry anymore. Maybe it would be a good idea to talk with somebody.
Not now, though. I’ll deal with it later.
I watch as Lisa gets into the back, unrestricted, with her bags. I look up and wave to the neighbors still mingling about. I’m pretty sure they will start gossiping once she’s gone, but maybe it’s a good thing. The woman who her husband had cheated with was living right next door, telling me this wasn’t a good neighborhood to be sticking around in anyway.
I get into the passenger seat and pull the door closed behind me.
“Where to, Lisa?” Drake asks.
“My mom’s, and thanks, by the way. I’m pretty sure even if I could take the car, you wouldn’t let me with still being drunk and all.”
I glance at her in the back. “We wouldn’t dare let you. Where does your mom live?”
She gives us the address and then falls silent, sinking into her drunken thoughts. I can’t help but stare at her, thinking about Gracie. Except this chick isn’t handcuffed and slurring her words, raving on about – well, I don’t know what. Half the time, she never even made sense.
“Everything will work out,” I tell Lisa, defeated. I don’t want to think about Gracie right now. “You deserve someone better than that asshole.”
She smiles and nods, wiping at her eyes. I turn back to look out the windshield, pushing away all thought of Gracie yet again. I know I have to stop thinking of her, it’s only going to hurt me more in the end, but it just happens. I think it’s why I’m so angry a lot. It’s stupid and so dumb that I can’t make myself stop. I did, for a while, when she wasn’t around. Now I have to live with her for a little while longer. Hopefully, I can return to an empty mind when I move back in with my parents – after I talk to them first.
Chapter20
Gracie
Isquirm between Donna and Kate, feeling the pressure of being sandwhiched by them. Donna smells of her usual perfume, citrus, which reminds me of oranges and makes me want to barf for it. She wears way too much, and our arms pressed together doesn’t help the matter. If anything, it makes it worse. Kate’s perfume is subtle, jasmine, but mixed with the orange stench, it makes me want to throw up even more. It’s too pungent, and I still don’t understand why I’m sitting between them.
I should’ve just asked Colton to come with me, but I haven’t talked to him since the night of our first date. I’m not sure who did or didn’t win that game, and I don’t really want to find out. Marcy hasn’t even talked to me either, but that’s on her. I texted her a few times, but her lack of response tells me she’s still mad. Or upset. I’m not sure which, but I do want to know. I want to make things better with her.
I hope I see her at this family BBQ. I want to talk to her, to make things better with her. I want my best friend back. I’ll do anything, and I have to tell her that.
Until we get there, though, I’m stuck in the middle of Devon and Owen’s girlfriends. The two women on this planet I hate the most, and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual between the three of us.
“Will you quit moving around?” Donna snaps, strands of her hair slapping my face as she jerks her head around to face me. “It isn’t our fault you have such a fat ass,Gracie.So, quit moving.”
I huff through my nostrils, gripping the fabric of my leggings. Devon and Owen are always automatic invites, being as much part of the family as Marcy. No matter the relationship between the men and me, they’re always welcomed at my parents’ home. If I dared to deny either of their women access, though, trouble would be stirred because it was my family home. They are the guy’s guests, no matter how much I dislike them. I have to treat them the way I was raised to treat guests. As long as they are on my parent’s property, that is. Rules fucking suck.
As my gaze flickers upward, a pair of hazel eyes in the rearview mirror captures it. It's only for a flash of a moment, though then Owen turns his head without a word spoken to me. He isn’t going to stick up for me. No surprise there, honestly. I know if he dares speak out, Donna will just have one of her infamous fits and, like always, toy with his emotions. I’ve seen enough from her to know what a manipulator she truly is. But I have to keep my mouth zipped shut because Owen will get pissy if I don’t. Mostly because Donna is his girlfriend, it’s his duty to stand up for her. He has way too good of a heart to openly admit what a ratchet bitch she is.
My parents’ home, my childhood home, welcomes us as it looms overhead when we finally pull up to it and park behind my brother-in-law’s car. I had grown up being watched by my older siblings enough to know which car belonged to who. I stagger out, and my legs feel like jelly from the cramped position I had been in as I shake myself free. What’s normally a two-hour drive stretched into what felt like ten, and I was the one who’d been blamed for the suffocating backseat throughout the entire ordeal. Stretching my arms over my head, my eyes trace up the two-story home I had grown up in. By the time I was born, it had only been my folks and me, so the five bedrooms, attic, and basement had all been nearly empty. Such a big house for the remaining child out of four and was a lonesome thing indeed. But my parents had scrimped for so long before being able to straight out buy it that letting it go just because their three oldest were practically out of the house when number four was born had been out of the question.
My heart clenches in my chest at the sight, and nostalgia washes over me in waves, homesickness prickling me like needles upon my skin. Exactly what always happens when I return home.
The brush of an arm pulls my eyes away from the bedroom window right above the front door, and I watch as the guys follow their girlfriends like lap dogs. I drag my feet behind them, feeling the emptiness beside me all over again. Frustration sweeps through me. A small part of me had thought I would get my love life back on track by getting sober. It was a mess before, obviously. I didn’t have good relationships outside of Devon or Owen. Now, however, I didn’t have anyone.
I shake my head. I know being single isn’t the best thing in the world, but it’s better not to get my head wrapped around something potentially dangerous for me and my sobriety at the moment. I have to keep a clear head and a tight grip on my sobriety.
Then again, I technically do have somebody. I’ve got Colton. He’s around. Though, I really don’t know what we are or if we’re anything after that disaster of a first date. Would he even consider going on number two with me?
As I push through the eight-foot wooden gate, I come to a stop. All four of my siblings, their spouses, and all their kids are mingling about. Trish and her husband have five kids. Ryleigh and her husband also have five. Wyatt and his wife have four. Then, there’s the fact that Trish and her husband were just made grandparents with their oldest having gotten knocked up, and I easily spot the stroller next to them. Ryleigh’s second oldest also popped out a kid. Twenty-two family members altogether. That doesn’t account for Marcy, who I spot standing next to Landon, her back to me. Or for Devon and Owen and their girlfriends, and it doesn’t account for my parents and me. It’s a huge giant-ass affair, and I can feel the pressure against me. There are too many people. It’s the first family BBQ I’ve attended actually sober, and I’m sorely reminded just how big of a family I have. I feel even lonelier than before. Not having somebody by my side makes my chest ache.
No wait, that’s actual pain. Am I having a heart attack? No, I can’t be. I’m only twenty-three, dammit. I’m not having a fucking heart attack. But I can’t breathe, my breath becoming labored as the world tilts around me, closing in. Everybody is growing tighter around me, pressing against me. It’s like in one of those movies where a trip wire in a dungeon or on an abandoned boat or whatever is activated, and the walls just start closing in. It’s like that, except it’s the fence around us closing and pressing the entire family together and closer. The baby screams, loud in my ears and blocks the murmuring voices out.
I can’t take it. I have to get out before I break. I cover my ears and turn, hurling myself back out the gate and collapse to the ground, drawing my knees up before dropping my forehead to them.
A hand on my back jolts me, and I look up through a blurry vision to see Marcy’s distorted shape standing above me.
“What do you want? I thought you hated me,” I croak out.