The Art of Starting Over

Chapter 45 - The Other Side

"Sosa, what is all this?" I asked as she walked into the store with three large suitcases and a duffel bag.

It was ten to nine in the morning and I was already tired. I was running on three hours of sleep after yesterday's shift behind the bar. There was a group of particularly rowdy drinkers who really did not want to go back home to their wives. Keith was already sound asleep when I got home, probably passed out from his own drinking gig with his mates. 

"My stuff. I'm moving out."

She looked at me with a fearful, almost manic expression in her dark brown eyes. Her face was glistening with sweat and panic.

"What do you mean you're moving out?" I asked, bewildered.

"He found out!" she said, her lips quivering. "Derek found out about me and Shaun! Shaun just called. He and Derek had a fight and he beat him up pretty badly from what I can gather."

"He what? How did he find out?"

"I don't know!"

I reached for her fidgeting hands and sat her down on the stool. "Is he okay? Shaun? Go to him, I'll cover for you."

"What? No way! That will just provoke Derek even more! I can't let him find me, Ally, he'll kill me!"

"You can't leave home, it's the safest place for you," I said, trying to calm her down. "Derek won't risk coming over with your dad around."

"My dad hasn't been home for days! He's been sleeping over at that woman's place... Eileen something. He only comes home to dump his dirty clothes in the laundry and then disappears. And Derek knows this, Ally! I bet he's camping outside my door as we speak!"

"So, what are you going to do? You can't live here!"

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head desperately. Clearly, she hadn't thought this through. She looked lost and scared, and even in my state of constant paralysis, I realised she was right. She was on her own and she was in danger. 

"Come stay with us," I blurted out, knowing, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, that this was a mistake. But it didn't matter. We didn't have a choice. "At least until things calm down with Derek. We'll figure out the rest as we go along."

Sosa looked up at me, teary-eyed. Her whole body was shaking. "Really?" she said with a trembling voice.

My heart throbbed. My one friend in the whole world, the fearless girl who wouldn't stop at anything to get what she wanted, was terrified.

"Yes," I said, determined. "Sosa, I need this just as much as you do. Things aren;t exactly going good for me right now and you're right, we're on our own. We need to get a good hold of our lives once and for all."

***

I stood my ground in front of Keith's furious face, secretly thanking God that I had the sense to ask Sosa to wait in the car while I broke the news to him. I wasn't backing down. She was my friend. She was staying.

"You should have asked me first. It's my freaking house, Ally!" he spat.

"What do you want me to do? Leave her out in the streets?" 

"I don't know! Have you ever heard of hotels?"

"I am not sending her to a hotel! Derek is out looking for her!"

"No shit, he's looking for her," he shouted, pushing his scrunched-up locks out of his face. "She's fucking his mate behind his back! Or do you think that's okay? Huh? Do you think it's okay to cheat, Ally?"