Page 44 of Losing Faith

I let out a defeated breath as I shut my phone off. “I meet with her once a month,” I remind him. “I’ll talk to her next week.”

He watches me carefully before putting his hands up in surrender. Rising to my feet, I go find Isabelle. She’s still sleeping but I decide to lay with her.

Chapter Fourteen

Lisette

“You’redrunk,”Baydeadpans.

“I’m tipsy. Very different,” I counter but her eyes only narrow. “Let’s talk about you. How’s the post-abortion depression going?” I smile over at her as I sit up on the couch.

“No, Lis.” Her eyes drown in understanding, forcing me to look back at my wine glass. “We’re talking about you right now. Why did you feel like you couldn’t call me or your brother before making this choice?”

I lay back on the couch, biting my cheek as I try to find the right words.

“We can sit here in silence all day, babe,” she nearly whispers.

I pull in a deep breath before turning to her. “Sire is just going to tell me to stop hanging out with Harmony or to limit our time together and eliminate all talk about her mom because of how it makes me feel, but I can’t do that to her.”

“Oh.” Bay nods in understanding. “So instead, you’ve been sipping on wine all week, letting her mom be the reason you throw away six hard-earned months of sobriety?” Sarcasm drips from her tone as she whips her dark curls over her shoulder.

I look up at her, giving her a knowing look.

“Do you think I’m wrong?” she asks and it doesn’t sound rhetorical; it’s as if she really wants to know.

“Yeah.” I shrug. “Those six months don’t—” I cut myself off as I try to find the right word. “I’m aware that theymatter.I’m glad that I was clean. It just doesn’t feel like it’s worth anything.”

My eyes meet hers. “Like… in the grand scheme of things, six-months sober compared to eleven years of addiction doesn’t seem like an accomplishment.” I shrug. “It makes me feel dirty thinking about it.”

“Like you hate yourself,” Bay voices my exact thoughts before sitting beside me. “You’re not dirty, though. It’s not six-months clean compared to eleven years of addiction. You were six-months soberperiod. When we go to a meeting we don’t say ‘Hi, I’m Bay and I’m six years sober but I’ve been an addict for nine years, so fuck me, I’m worthless’ do we?” She shoves my shoulder with hers.

I look over at those deep blue eyes and her pretty smile. “No…”

“Exactly.” She shrugs. “You’re not dirty. The world thinks we suck for having shitty genes and generational trauma, but screw the world. You definitely need to wash your hair and trim your ends, but you’re not dirty.”

I stifle a laugh as I shove her away but she goes on, more serious.

“I know you think you deserve to feel like this. You think you deserved being abandoned as a child, so you’re letting yourself soak in all this hurt but you don’t deserve this shit.”

I swallow the bitter taste in my mouth as I look forward and I almost reach for my glass until it hits me that maybe she’s right. I think a part of me deserves this, but I use every bit of my strength to think of the part of me that doesn’t deserve this.

The me who makes my siblings laugh. The me that Isabelle loves being around. The me that Jackson trusts around his kid. The me that Bay isn’t tired of yet, even after eight years of friendship.

I look over at her again and her eyes are on the wine glass. When I met Bay my freshman year of college, she shocked me with how much I ended up liking her. At the tour they, told us we’ll find our lifelong friends on campus and I didn’t believe them for a second.

I was never good at keeping friends. I became friends with Sire because we were neighbors and hated being home, so we sat outside together for hours on end. Then we met the twins because of him, but with Bay, I did that all on my own.

She sat with me during lunch at orientation and I thought I made it clear that I wanted to sit alone, but she either lacked social clues or outright ignored my glare because she sat right next to me with her big smile and frizzy curls.

It was way too hot to wear long pants that day, but while everyone took one glance at my scars and stayed away, Bay sat with me. When someone was staring at my leg and she cursed them out, I knew I’d be trying to keep her around for a while. All these years I’ve been waiting for her to wake up and be done with me, but the day never came.

She pulls in a deep breath, dragging me out of my thoughts. “The post-abortion depression is still depressing.” She rests her head on my lap.

I pat her head. “Want a glass of wine? No baby means you can drink.”

She stifles a laugh before it slowly fades. “Do you think I could’ve raised a baby?”

“Absolutely not.” I tap her head again. “Didn’t you just learn that newborns can’t drink water?”

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