Disarm / Rafe Cameron

06. Please, Please, Please

Please, Please, Please
chapter vi
warnings: domestic violence,
partying, mention of
weight loss

THE MORNING CAME FASTER than Layne had anticipated—she woke up feeling sick to her stomach, a hand over her head, and sweat filming her skin. The humidity of the Outer Banks was one way to make her so unbelievably hot, but the other was that she was coming down from a one day long coke bender. Layne felt gross even admitting to it. Her head felt heavy, like she was out in space, and her underwear were missing under her shorts. She forgot, for a moment, why didn't have them on. Rafe didn't come to her mind right away and she tried to move out of bed but just slumped to the floor. She felt like she was stuck in snow. You cannot breathe beneath snow. You cannot move beneath snow. Layne could not move because Rafe was not there to pick her up.

Her phone was under her bed, and she wasn't sure how it got there. It was half dead and there were multiple missed texts and calls from Marian, Claudia and Kiara. She even saw a text from Pope. If she was honest, she didn't even realize Pope had her number. She pulled her hair up, off her neck, and changed into new new clothes to go out into the living room. Her mom was making coffee in the kitchen and her dad was still asleep on the reclining chair in the living room. He was snoring while the ten o'clock news played. Layne knew her dad tended to come out in the living room in the middle of the night to avoid her mother's snoring.

"Hey baby," her mother greeted her by running a hand over her head. Layne was too tired to answer. She tried to cover up her hickeys by pulling up her shirt, but Rory spotted them. Layne felt sorry for her mother in that moment—she had been so rude to her within the last few days, and scaring the shit out of her multiple times, yet Rory was so understanding and moved on so quickly. Layne wondered if her mother got any sleep when she wasn't home.

"Did you sleep okay?"

Layne almost didn't want to answer because she would vomit from guilt. Every time she looked at her mother she saw Rafe on top of her, and she didn't know why. She couldn't even look her mother in the eyes. "Layne, you're scaring me."

Layne pushed her mom's hand off her arm. "Mom, I'm fine." She pulled out the carton of milk and took a swig without pouring it into the glass. Sometimes she believed she was the only one who drank the milk in the first place. "Are you going to tell me about this Rafe kid you've been seeing?" Layne always wondered why her mom cared so much. Her friend's mothers didn't pry. They didn't care about their daughter's love lives. They wore masks and melted into the cookie cutter lives that their daughters baked for them. They didn't care if their kids were out until late hours of the night—if anything, they encouraged it, by doing it themselves. Layne questioned whether or not she was living a normal teenage life too many times.

Her face went red at the mention of Rafe. She wasn't sure why she acted as though she didn't know that her mother knew. "Mom . . . he's nothing. I mean—he's not nothing, but nothings happening between us. I think. I don't know—"

"I miss when we would have girl talk. Why don't we go out today and talk about college and stuff? Have a girls day. Like we used to,"

Layne bit into a strawberry and shrugged. "I don't know. I just—I'm gonna go to the marina today. Talk to Alberto and see if he forgives me for being a heathen." she joked, although she wasn't entirely joking. Alberto would probably want to crucify her for wanting to work anywhere else other than the marina. Maybe he would pay her better this year. There were a lot of maybes going through her head at the moment, but she knew she couldn't be home any longer to deal with her mother's grueling questions. So, she got into the shower, scrubbed her skin until it was raw and pink, lathering up her skin with lotion because she couldn't handle touching her own flesh.