Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 32

I hear her before I see her.

Light footsteps, soft and absent from it is its usual confidence. The fast paced clacking of confident heels reduced to bare feet and ballerina toes.

"Where were you last night?"

"Working," I mumble without looking at her and shoving clothes into a travelling bag

She doesn't say anything but I know that she knows I lied. I pause half way in my actions, my socks in one hand and a white crumpled T-shirt in the other. I slowly breathe out and turn around to look at her for the first time since I had pushed past her and into the stormy night.

She doesn't look good. There are dark patches haunting the undersides of her eyes barely concealed by the concealer, her cheek muscles look as though they have been digested from the inside and her lips have thinned into a forlorn, hesitant, shy smile.

"I slept at Lyra's,"

She raises an eyebrow and a lock of hair unravels from being tightly wound around her bun and it falls to the side of her neck.

"Is she okay?"

"Why don't you ask her?" I ask crossing my elbows

Shaking her head she rubs small hands over her arms shuddering as she speaks,

"I don't think she wants to see me right now,"

She's not wrong.

Slinging the oddly shaped travelling bag with watches jutting out and digging into my skin after being chaotically packed in the most disparaged fashion, I turn to look at her. I open my mouth but I find my mouth empty. The echoing hollowness stretches the chasm between us now. Silence settles in, comfortable and here to stay.

"Breakfast?"

"Not hungry," I lie

We still stand there. And it's not like I've not packed up and left the house before. But I always came back: for the job or Christmas or a birthday; I always came back. This feels different. This feels as though, I am clearing out, forever. Irreversible, permanent. It feels like a freedom I thought I didn't want. It's the kind of freedom I hadn't allowed my mind to imagine.

My eyes fall to my sneakers cleaned in mud and a sheen of dust. Hair fall mercifully in front of my eyes and I mumble,

"Excuse me,"

She moves to the side and I move past her.

Entering the living room, I am taken aback by the number of eyes staring back at me. Wide and worried. Their eyes simultaneously skip from my bag, to my face and over my shoulder at Mother. Their gazes growing darker and darker by what they see.

"What's going on?" Duchess asks from a small corner on the couch with a smaller voice

"Nothing," I rush and I notice Mother's eyes move cautiously to me, "I'm just going to move out,"

And it wasn't the first time I've said those words, it isn't the first time they are hearing it but it's probably the way my voice betrays the nonchalance that starts a soft murmur that goes around the room.

Prince, Ace, Duchess and Cindy are beginning to squirm in their seats, exchanging glances with the each other and trying to interpret the others' careful, perceptive stares.

I try not to look at Missy and Sandy who are standing next to each other with pursed lips and hard gazes. They pick upon the tension in the room and it's laid on so thick that the sound of Missy's pointed heels against the wooden floor is muffled.

She slings and arm over my shoulders and kisses me on the cheek and despite the circumstances, I instinctively grumble distastefully.

"Why are y'all so ansty?" she drawls and I notice the pink chewing gum rolling around in her tongue, "Our Capo is a busy man. He's got a lot of important, boring stuff to do."

Everyone is hesitant to give away to the smiles Missy is throwing and it's hard for me to smile in turn because her nails are digging into my skin insistently. Sandy laughs, obnoxiously loudly, from the other corner of the room,

"We'll probably have to wait in line to see him again."

Scattered laughter disperses across the crowd and I chuckle ruffling Missy's hair,

"Y'all are terrible, terrible people," I inform them and Cindy puckers her lips and makes kissy noises at me

"We'll talk later." Missy promises through gritted smiling teeth and glinting eyes