Katie McGarry - Red At Night

I take the box, but I’ve lost my appetite. She tosses a few flakes into her mouth and when she’s done crunching she looks at me. “If I don’t find another guy to hold my hand when your dad shows, he and I will end up in the exact same position as before and I don’t think that’s a good place to be.”

Meaning they’ll fall completely tangled together in that twin bed and then she’ll end up in there alone crying her eyes out when he leaves again. Joss is in her late twenties and Dad’s in his mid-thirties, but together they add up to a mess.

My throat constricts. “Do you want me to leave?”

Because if I’m gone, he won’t stay here. He’ll find me...and a new girlfriend to con. But the scary part is, if Joss kicks me out, I’ll have run out of suitable ex-girlfriends. They’d probably let me crash if I showed, but I value my life and some of those places have the ingredients for the headlining story on the eleven o’clock news. My only hope for a stable home lies in Joss’s stubborn feelings for my deadbeat dad.

Lines form on Joss’s forehead. “No. I want him to come back. Maybe this time he’ll stay.”

He won’t. He never has, but I keep that to myself.

Joss’s brown eyes stare straight into mine. “Don’t become me, Stella. Don’t you dare ever hope for more. There’s no such thing as living happily ever after or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The world is how it is and there always has to be bottom-feeders. People like you and me, we’re it, and the world might want us to believe we can have more, but the moment we try to break out of the water they’ll shove us down into the mud. It’s better to know the truth. It hurts less if you accept society’s crappy rules.”

I start school tomorrow. Graduate in the spring. Joss may be older than me, but I’ve lived this type of life longer. Yet even with all the years of experience, deep down inside, I’ve hoped to become more. “Sounds a little pessimistic.”

“No, not pessimistic. Realistic.”

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