Page 8 of Bourbon & Blood

“What?”

“Don’t yuck my yum,” she complained. “It’s a total guilty pleasure. They make my family seem tame by comparison.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Mm, your family’s not that bad,” I told her.

She twisted her lips back and forth and said, “Not as bad as yours, fine, sure, I’ll give you that – but they still suck in their own way.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Your dad gave you the apartment…” I looked around us and she rolled her eyes at me again.

“Yeah, only to keep me out of his hair.”

I snorted. “Your dad’s bald.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes at me. “You know what I mean.” She let out an exasperated sigh.

“Yeah.” I nodded in agreement. “I know.”

I scraped my bottom lip between my teeth and twisted my fingers around the spot where my great-grandmother’s ring was supposed to be on my finger. Only a thin tan line remained, and I was still pretty heartbroken about it. It was the only thing I had left of her.

Maya sighed and said, “I’m sure it’ll turn up…” But it sounded halfhearted at best. I nodded and forced a smile.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

I’d lost it in the move, and honestly? I didn’t have a hope or a prayer of seeing it again. I mean, I never took it off, and it’d slipped off my finger somehow. It could be anywhere. I didn’t think it was in a box in storage and I’d torn througheverythingthat’d come here. I thought it was gone, gone… and that hurt.

The only bright spot in my childhood had been going to visit Gramma Mimi – no, that wasn’t her name, it was Sarah, but I couldn’t call her Gramma Gramma when it had been my grandma that took me to visit in the first place.

I didn’t have the happiest of origin stories. My mother had me when she was sixteen. She didn’t want me, but my grandma wouldn’t hear of her getting an abortion. At the same time, my grandmother didn’t want me either but guess what? Mom abandoned ship as soon as she was able and I honestly only remember meeting her once.

I was seven.

She’d come to my grandmother’s to ask for money and I’d heard the whole fight. I didn’t know what “rape” was, but my mother had flung the word at my grandmother like some sort of ice javelin and had screamed how she’d never wanted me in the first place. Likewise, my grandmother – a deeply Christian woman for all she never went to church on Sundays – had screamed back some shit about it being God’s will and had demanded of my mother, “You think I want her? You think I want to do this shit all over again? It was bad enough with you!”

Let me tell you, that scars a kid and kidsknow. At least, I did. I mean, I never wanted for food, clothes, or a roof over my head and my grandmother did that single mom thing. She was sixty something now, and let me tell you what – she took a chainsaw to those apron strings.

Like, as soon as I was eighteen! I got home with her and Gramma-Gramma from my graduation to a load of packed bags and a “good luck.”

I was lucky I had the savings I did and my grandma grandma? I hadneverseen her swear or say a single unkind word oranythinguntil that day. She lost it on my grandmother and had blasted her into next week.

Iwasn’tkicked out that night – but whew, that battle raged. I swore as soon as I could get out, I would be out, andas soon as I couldwas the very next week. I pulled up stakes and never looked back. Still, I think the whole thing broke my grandma grandma’s heart. She went back to her assisted-living facility and a few weeks later, she had a stroke.

She didn’t make it much longer past that. A little under a year? Still, she did accomplish one thing. She had completely written both my grandmother and my mother out of her will and left what meager money and possessions she had left to me.

I got the ring and her books. That was it. My grandmother took everything else anyway, and I didn’t know how to fight it at all, so I just let it go. The only reason I got the ring was because my great-grandma had given it to me on one of my last visits before she died. Unable to speak, just looking at me beseechingly to take it as she pressed it into my hands with her gnarled ones.

I’d not taken it off since.

It’d fit perfectly for the longest time until I’d gotten involved with Patrick. I swallowed hard. Just one more reason to hate him. He’d stressed me out so much with his lies and his gaslighting me, making me feel crazy when I knew,I knew I wasn’t! I’d lost so much weight, the ring became loose and had slipped off.

The only person I hated more than Patrick for that was myself forlettinghim get to me that way.

“Hey.” Maya broke me out of my reverie and I looked up and smiled at her.

“What?” I asked.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, shaking her head resolutely. “Don’t do that.”

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