Only One I Call Home

Chapter 9 - "A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't..."

Chapter 9

“A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.”

-       Marilyn Monroe

One Year Later, January 2013:

“Hey Mads, another letter came for you yesterday.” Tully smirked as she threw me a tea towel.

I was still getting used to people calling me Mads and it had almost been a whole year.

I rolled my eyes and continued to scrub down the third of many dishes. “I wish they would stop, I’m sort of sick of it.”

She scoffed and adjusted her nametag, ready to walk out with an armful of food. “Please, you’re still in love with this kid no matter how many times you deny it. Why don’t you go and visit him?”

“Because.” I said.

“Because why?” She arched an eyebrow. “You’re chicken.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have the money and also, I’m happy here. I don’t want to get his hopes up. What’s the point? It’s been a year. I’ve stopped replying to them.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Nope, I saw you post one two weeks ago.”

I nodded once. “Yep, but that’s it. No more.”

She smirked and pushed the kitchen door open. “Whatever you say.”

I’d been working at this restaurant for eight months now and I still wasn’t used to how noisy it was. I wasn’t used to loud places and this was no exception. It wasn’t the most glamorous job in the world but the people were nice and they were generous to me as well. Tully was probably the closest friend I had, her auntie owned the place and she convinced her to let me use the restaurant as my personal address.

I was finally getting my life back on track. I’d just successfully completed year ten and I was moving on with my life. Things had been tough for the first two weeks away from the Pots’ house. I’d lived in my car for the majority of them but then I’d got a job here and met Tully and ever since things had been getting better.

She’d taken me under her wing and was letting me crash in the caravan she had out the back of her house and her mum was really accepting of me, it was nice to have a resemblance of a family.

She was going into year twelve next year and I had to admit I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t skip a grade. Over my first year back at school I’d completed a semester of year ten and a semester of year eleven and over the summer holidays I’d been doing the second semester of year eleven and I was surprisingly going pretty well at it. The teacher at the program said that if I passed the exams well then I’d probably be able to go straight to year twelve and still get reasonable grades as long as I passed math and English.

If I could take any advice from her it would be to choose the subjects I was good at, the ones I loved. She told me that is what would get me a higher end of year score. I only had two weeks before I had my exams and I was confident that I would go well with them, I only had four, which was a bonus, English, math, media and literature.

The only one I was worried about was math really. Tully had been trying to help me through it but she knew that I didn’t completely understand.

After work we all ate together, the staff of the hotel. It was probably the best thing about working there, the free dinners. Tully and I were sitting together with one of the other waiters, Adrian. He was a few years older than us but he didn’t seem to mind.