Apples and Tim Tams

Chapter 14

I watched, my mouth falling open in surprise, as my mother pushed her way through to get to me. Before I could even move she slapped me as hard as she could. My head snapped back from the force but, my main feeling was embarrassment at this happening here, in front of so many people.

"You think it's funny being questioned by the cops about our life, Emma? I was humiliated to go through that all because you couldn't take a little punishment without crying like a baby. I'm not going to let this happen again. You'll come home and live where I can keep control of you." She was so red in the face, as she spat these words at me, that I was worried she was going to stroke out.

And then what she said sunk in.

"What the fuck? I'm not ever living with you again, are you crazy? Delusional? Seriously, what the ever loving fuck, Mum?" I shook my head in disbelief at her. "You need to leave. This is a private party and you were definitely not invited."

"Oh, see that's where you're wrong. I was invited." Mum smiled nastily. "You can thank your little boyfriend for that."

I turned to look at Travis who, like everyone else nearby was staring in shock at the crazy, fucked up person who called herself my mother.

"Really, Travis? You invited her?"

"No! Fuck no. Jesus, Em, I don't know what she's talking about." Travis's voice was filled with anger.

I couldn't blame him for being angry. This was his night, his party and my drama was wrecking it. I could feel tears threatening to fall but blinked them away. I knew this would be a bad idea, I knew it. But I let myself believe that even someone like me could be happy for once. More fool me.

"Hey look, I'm going to go. I'm sorry about this." I gestured towards my mother. "Maybe she'll leave if I go."

"No. Emma, don't go. I'm going to get her to leave. Please stay." Travis grabbed my hand and held tight. "I don't know why she's here but she doesn't matter. You matter."

"Oh isn't that just so sweet. What do you think, Amber?" Mum drawled.

Amber? What?

We looked up to see the two people who hated me standing together smiling. Next to them stood Jed but he looked slightly horrified by what was going.

"You see, Travis, on the invitation it had a plus 1, so I thought I'd bring my good friend Erin. You know Erin, don't you, Emma?" Amber's voice was filled with a sickly sweet poison that made my stomach curdle. How did she know my mother?

"Emma, I think you need to call the police. Didn't you get a restraining order out for your mum?" Evan whispered in my ear.

At that moment Jed saw Evan and started to move toward her. "Evan, can we talk?"

"Oh hell, no. You had your chance and blew it. Why would you think I would even want to talk to you?" Evan stood with her hands on her hips and glared at Jed. Abby, West, Derek and I all stood beside or behind her forming a tight group of fairly pissed off friends.

"Who the fuck is he?" Jed growled, looking at Derek.

"I'm her boyfriend. And you are?" Derek replied in a bored tone.

I snort laughed at his words but that just brought my mothers attention back to me. Damn it.

She reached out and wrapped her hand around my upper arm making sure to dig her impossibly long fingernails in to my flesh.

"You are coming with me. Now. You've got away with not paying your dues to me for too long and it's time for that to stop." Her breath washed over my face as she leaned in to whisper. "I will make your life so miserable if you don't."

At that I snort laughed again. It was this threat that made me finally realise that this woman held no power over me anymore. I wouldn't let her take any space up in my life from now on. I really looked at her and saw that she had aged in the time I had been away from her and her face was starting to show the effects of her love of alcohol. She had become a caricature of the evil witch in fairy tales and this thought made me laugh again. Her face became even more enraged and she pulled her hand back to slap at me again, only this time the group of fairly pissed off friends rounded on her and she was suddenly faced with the towering anger of West, Abby and Evan. These three had been my back up, my support, my lifelines in my darkest moments and they were now ready to unleash their anger on the person who caused those moments. Mums face filled with the kind of fear I remember feeling as a kid and part of me rejoiced at that. But, unfortunately, my brain kicked in and I stopped the girls before they did something they would get in trouble for.

"It's okay, girls. Erin was just leaving, weren't you?" I smiled at her and gestured for her to start walking. "You think you can make my life miserable but the truth is, I make your life miserable just by existing and I always have, so I think in the long run, I win. Every single time you look at me, think of me, I win. You mean nothing to me now but for some reason, I mean something to you. If the thought ever enters your head to try and attack me again, remember that I do have a restraining order against you, I will keep renewing it and I will make sure the police know if you break it. As for you little friend Amber?" At this, I looked over at the girl as she tried to get Travis to talk to her. "I'll take care of her too."

I deliberately turned my back on her and my past and made my way over to my future. As I walked away I could feel my friends walking with me and knew that no matter what, I would be okay. But first, Amber.

A/N Well, Emma finally seems to be getting her life together concerning her mother. Now there's just Amber to go and I have a feeling that she's not going to make this as easy as Emma would like. I  also feel like maybe Travis needs to have a chapter just for him before the book ends. What do you all think?I hope you're still liking the story and remember you can leave me comments if you like!