Saving Myself For You by Teresa Hill

Author:Teresa Hill [Hill, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Teresa Hill
Published: 2015-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Seven

Peter

I get home the next day after school and working a few hours, and Zach and Julie are in the living room waiting for me. They want to talk, and I think … Shit. Is this about Mom or the thing last night with the cop? How bad is it going to be? I worked today after school with Dana’s dad pissed at me every time he saw my busted lip, and now this?

I take a seat in the recliner across from them, and it feels like the bottom drops out of my world. Like there’s nothing beneath my body but air. I’m falling, and it’s so far down. I keep thinking about what it will feel like to hit bottom, how bad it’s going to be.

But I have a plan, I remind myself, trying to calm down. I have some money saved, a little more than four grand, and I can probably keep working with Sam and Dana’s dad. I used to be the one who tried to juggle the bills when I lived with my mom and dad, trying to keep the lights on and food in the house. I figure it’ll be easier without my parents around to mess things up. Plus I’m older. I can earn more money.

And maybe -- just maybe -- Sam will let me live with him and Rachel. They’ve always been great to me, and it’s just the two of them in that big house. I can be quiet¸ help around the house. Even pay rent. I won’t ask for a handout. They’re my first back-up plan, along with the money I saved. I can do this, I tell myself.

“Peter?” Zach says, and I realize he’s been talking, and I haven’t been listening at all. Shit.

“Sorry,” I say. I have to get myself together somehow.

“So, three weeks,” he says.

And I think, I have three weeks to be out of here? I turn to Julie, and it looks like she hates this, absolutely hates it. So, that’s something I guess. She doesn’t want me to go. Zach doesn’t even look mad when he says it. He looks … like he’s trying to make this easier.

Easier?

Nothing about this is easy. Yell at me. Throw my stuff on the fucking lawn. Asking me nicely to get the hell out doesn’t make it any easier.

“Okay,” I manage to say. “Three weeks.”

I’ve gotten soft, I realize. I’ve actually started trusting that I’d get to keep this nice, easy life. When the hell did that happen? I haven’t really trusted anyone for years. I know better. Shit. I can barely breathe for a minute.

Vaguely, I hear Zach going on. “… thought I’d save the two of you the trouble of having to talk to her yourselves to find out what she’s going to do. She doesn’t seem to have any plans, except to come back here, and she said she wants to see you both.”

Julie shoots me a look, a shared misery kind of thing.

Wait … what?

It sounds like he’s talking about Mom.

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