Mess You Made

28.*

Malibu.

"Please, Albie?" I ask through the phone, "You can't help us out here?"

I hold a beer in my other hand and the stress starts to eat at me so much that I'm debating picking up one of the Newport cigarettes sat in front of me on the table and start chain smoking. It's late and I'm sat cross-legged on the couch. The dim light of the TV is the only thing enlightening me in the dark of the living room.

"Look, I'm sorry Malibu but—"

"We have the money." I urge, "I'll pay the water bill by morning, I swear."

I forgot that I was supposed to head to the DEP to give the cash this morning. It completely slipped my mind and now the water's been turned off. It's only happened a couple times before, and we always managed to pay within time constraints but this time's my fault. Cristian gave me the money for the cash. I just had to go to the office and guilt now gnaws at my insides.

"Pay it as soon as you can." He says through the phone, "But it might take up to two or three days for them to turn the water back on once you've payed."

I swallow, dropping my head. A few curls from the messy bun atop my head flow down the side of my face, "Albie, I have a baby. I need water—"

"There's nothing else I can do. I'm sorry, Malibu."

I swallow down the tight feeling in my throat.

I take a sip of some of the beer, as disgusting as it is, and nod, "Thank you, anyways."

"No problem. Give Cris our respect, yeah?"

"Yeah."

I hang up the phone then and for a moment, I want to fucking throw it at the television. I release a frustrated noise instead and toss it atop the couch, letting my head drop. Cristian won't be mad, he never is about things like this but Marci's going to need to shower and bathe and we'll have to go to Sierra's house for it.

He's not home yet.

Miss him, a bit — if he was here, I could argue with him for no reason and he'd know that it's a senseless argument and I just need a reason to be annoyed and he'd let me. I miss him. Miss my dad. Miss everyone, all the time.

I let my body sag back against the couch. Tip my head back against the back of it and cradle the beer in my lap in the quiet. Marci's asleep in the moses basket in Cris's room, and I was trying to count the tips I gained from my shifts at the bar to see if we can save up for some sort of crib or bed for her. The basket's been fine thus far, it's all we had but she's growing. She needs more room.

I don't have nearly enough as I glance to the bills scattered on the table. She needs water, needs a bed and I'm failing at it.

I stop looking at them, look back to the ceiling instead.

I've done the math of eight years. 96 months. 2922 days.

70080.

There was this crippling realisation of eight years when papai went. I'll be twenty five when he gets out. He would miss so much. Growing up was difficult, but my father's absence wasn't a thought that ever crossed my mind, for all the other perils we had to face. He would have never dared left us willingly.

I loathed being looked after, it had always felt askew and wrong with anyone else except my dad. I could be young around him. I'd let him hold me to his chest and make me breakfast, he was my dad. There was something inside me capable of salvation when papai was around. There's a tenderness that a father brings out in his daughter.