(Love, Sex, Lies - Part 5) Bang by Jessica Watkins

Author:Jessica Watkins [Watkins, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, African American, Romance, Urban, Genre Fiction
ISBN: 1492275328
Amazon: B00A8MNGBA
Published: 2012-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

LYRIC

This 312 number was calling me for the sixth time that day. Since I had been successfully dodging James’ calls for the last few weeks, I was cautious to answer.

“Hello?”

“Lyric?”

I hadn’t heard the voice in years, but I knew it all too well. “Auntie Candy?”

Auntie Candy was my father’s sister. The older I got, the more I distanced myself from my parents. If my father wasn’t stealing from me to support a heroin addiction, my mother was pissing me off with her ability to give less than a fuck. Soon, she became addicted to her own substances, and I was so disgusted with them that I washed my hands of them completely. Between having sisters and brothers with their own addictions or siblings that didn’t fuck with them for the same reasons, by default, I lost touch with the few uncles and aunts that I had as well.

“Hey, niece. How are you?”

“Fine,” I simply answered. I wasn’t about to get into a fake reunion conversation with her. She was calling me for a reason, and I knew it. “So what’s wrong with my father?’

“Nothing, actually,” she answered.

“So what’s the phone call for?”

“You don’t miss them, Lyric?”

“Them?”

“Your mother and father have been staying with me for the last year.”

She wanted me to care. She wanted me to be this loving daughter that missed her parents and ran to them. That wasn’t me, though.

“Just as easily as you called me, they can too.”

“They’re ashamed.”

“They should be.”

“But they are getting better.”

I rolled my eyes into the back of my head as I sat on the couch. “I heard that one before.”

My house was dark, as it had been since I locked James out. I still felt like shit and missed him with all of my very heavy heart. I wanted to call him, but anger and hurt feelings had my hands tied.

“Seriously, Lyric,” my aunt promised me.

“Are they clean?”

“Your mother hasn’t had a drink in months. Your father, well, he…”

I interrupted her sarcastically. “Right.”

“He’s trying though, Lyric.”

“That’s good for him.”

“So you don’t want to speak to your mother?”

“Does she want to speak to me?! Seriously, that woman is in her fifties; old enough to call her own gawd damn daughter. You shouldn’t have to play referee for her.”

My aunt sighed sadly. I felt ashamed that I gave her anger that didn’t belong to her, but she chose to take those blows by getting in the middle of this.

“So, you’ll let them die without speaking to them?”

“Are they dying?” I knew the answer before she answered me. My parents had been dying for years. If the drugs weren’t killing them, they were suffering from ailments caused by years of substance abuse that had been threatening their lives for a very long time.

“Not officially. But with their health issues, you never know, Lyric.”

She continued on, encouraging me to be the bigger person, and I continued to look into the darkness, blaming absent parents for what I had become.

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