𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐲 𝐇𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬

thirty-seven.

I switched to dark roast after Dua dropped me off.

I sat on the floor in the kitchen.

The last square footage Anaca had to lay flooring.

I wasn't completely alone as I sat in the dark with a small orange fluff winding around my ankle.

Tigger had been curled into a ball on the porch when I walked up. I take it Auden was too smashed to notice him missing.

I can't become fond of this kitten.

I can't become attached to anything here.

It's all temporary.

As temporary as an ember with no oxygen.

I sip on the coffee while the pads of my fingers rub together. Almost as if I was rolling a cigarette between them.

I peer around the reconfigured kitchen, imaging it to be as it once was. Remembering as I dug through the cabinet to find her stash, plucking the first one from the box and I put it back before ultimately taking it.

Feels like yesterday, when she sat at that rackety table as she handed me the enrollment papers on my sixteenth birthday.

I wonder if she already knew then.

If the poison had seeped into her blood yet.

Willow was so angry when we got our letters. Letters that were post marked for the day before she died. I suppose there's no right way to learn of a death, but somehow a letter from your dying mother hits pretty hard. She chose to do it on her own, refusing us the opportunity to truly say goodbye to her.

My way of being resentful was not going back.

Going home and her not being there...

I couldn't do it.

Not so soon after losing Anaca too.

I didn't have the strength.

But Willow did.

My big sister, now a mother herself, had the ability to do what I couldn't.

I imagine her letting out her grief and anger while she was here because when she came back, she picked up her daughter and she chose to tell Raine every good memory of our mother. Willow's eyes shimmer when she talks about our mother now.

I was so angry with her for making me go.

Even angrier that the first time she could have truly let me in... she sent me away instead.

Tigger sits at my feet, now cleaning his front paw as dawn starts to blush over the night.

"Ever miss your mom?" I murmur to the kitten.

Tigger's eyes slowly open and close as he switches paws.

"Strained relationship? My mom kicked me out too."

He purrs, retuning to all fours as he walks up my leg. He rubs the top of his head against my stomach as I toy with his tail.

This was her house.

My house.

But now it's just a house.

And my mother lives in my memories of her.

In Willow.

Even in Raine.

Being angry with her won't change that.

Being angry at all won't change much.

Ian won't apologize.

Anaca won't love me back.

Willow did what she thought was right.

A dull weight in my belly so badly wants to cross this house and slip under the covers. To pretend I fell asleep and leaving Casey hanging.

That boulder Dua gave more weight too tonight when she all by encouraged me to try harder at ruining a relationship.

My nerve-endings fester a little just at the thought of it.

That's what I like, isn't it?

I like doing things I shouldn't be.

Something that tests the morals that should restrain me.

I can accept that the idea would be like a speck of coke, not nearly enough to satisfy.

There is only one thing in this world that could truly satisfy the monster inside me.

Teasing it with half-measures might unleash more havoc than I can control.

So I'll live off synthetics.

The first that is only a few feet from knocking on my door right now.

"I'm sorry about that," Casey's cheeks flush across the table. "First time I've taken a girl on a date on made her ride in the backseat."

"First time for everything," I shrug, reaching for the steaming mug in front of me.

"Will you let me take you on a proper date?" he loosens a button on his shirt, given that he's now off duty.

"I'm not really a proper kind of girl, Casey."

He ticks a suggestive brow.

We order, a stack of cakes with strawberries for me and a hearty scramble for the officer.

"I expected you to leave with your friends earlier," he notes.

"Still spying?"

He chuckles. "I was heading on a call when I saw the three of them and a guy walk out. He was practically carrying one of them."

"His girlfriend," I confirm.

"If they aren't your friends, how do you know them?"

"Him," I say. "The boyfriend is my neighbor, has been for a long time."

Casey nods, deciding it makes sense.

"Dua is my friend."

"The bartender?" he guesses. "She's a hard one to forget."

"You have no idea."

Small talk has never interested me, but I'd become a bit of an expert in it. That was the dance Anaca and I played for a long time.

Small talk.

Neighborly.

Casey laughed as I requested more strawberry sauce to dip my pancake in.

I laughed as he proceeded to inhale his entire plate in a fourth of the time I did.

"Do you always eat so fast?"

"No," he wipes his lips with a napkin. "Sometimes."

My eyes fall heavy as we pay for our meal.

I wanted to follow through with my plan, but the way the both of us are rubbing our eyes, it was clearly not going to happen.

"I do want your number," Casey insists, pulling open the back door for me.

"One stack of pancakes and you think you deserve my number?"

He maintains a smug look across his sleepy face. "You're going to give it to me."

I was, but I don't tell him that as I slide across the seat.