Sweetest Thing (gxg)

3. Million Years ఌ

Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Chandler, Arizona
***

"Fuck," Yoaly nervously muttered to herself.

She was home now, sitting in one of the chairs at the dining room table, alone, as she waited for her father to come home. Her mother was in the living room, on the phone with her father as she told him about her excursion back in L.A., and also about the vape pen she found after searching through her bag.

She begged Sofia not to tell him the entire ride to the airport, through TSA and boarding, and the whole hour and a half flight from Los Angeles back to Phoenix International Airport. None of that mattered though, because Sofia called him the second they got home and got settled in. Yoaly was glad that it was her aunt, Sofia's sister, who came to pick them up from the airport and not their father. It gave her a little bit more time before all hell broke loose. But still, he would be back home later that night, and a conversation she did not want to have in the slightest was sure to follow.

Yoaly nervously tapped her long acrylic fingernails against the dark-colored wood of the dining room table. She already knew exactly how this conversation with her father would go, but that didn't make it any less nerve-racking. Her mother was still in the living room on the phone with her father, and it didn't sound too great from the side of the conversation she could hear.

"She doesn't listen to me!" She heard her mom say a little louder than everything else she had said so far. "She's become so rebellious and I don't know what to do with her anymore!"

That wasn't entirely true though, and Yoaly couldn't do anything but roll her eyes when she heard that. She's not rebellious— not really anyway. She's always been a good child. She's always done extremely well in school. She's always been helpful, respectful, and well-mannered. She's always been the exact embodiment of what a perfect child looks, speaks, and acts like. That didn't change until very recently. In the last nine months, she's grown to not care so much about rules and religion. Truthfully, she doesn't care about much of anything anymore. That's when she started smoking and drinking. Weed, cigarettes, hookah, vapes. Anything that would give her a high and make each passing day just a little bit easier to get through.

And it doesn't help that everyone just expects her to be okay and move on as if nothing happened. As if her best friend, the only one person in this world she felt she could really be herself around, hadn't ended his own life in one of the vilest ways possible.

"Victor will be home in about twenty minutes," Sofia came and sat down across from Yoaly when she was done with her phone conversation.

"Okay," she responded because she wasn't sure what else to say to that.

"He's disappointed in you."

"What else is new?" She answered with a bit of an attitude in her voice.

"Where's your ring?" Sofia asked when she noticed Yoaly's right ring finger was bare of the gold ring she's been wearing since her thirteenth birthday.

She hates that ring with every fiber of her being. She hates what it stands for, yet she wears it anyway. Why? She's not really sure anymore.

"It's in my room."

"You had it on earlier. Why did you take it off?"

"Because I don't wanna wear it anymore. Like... at all."

"Yoaly, I want you to look me in the eyes when I ask you this," Sofia leaned across the table, getting as close to her as she could with the large piece of wooden furniture standing between them. "Are you having sex?"