Page 34 of One More Shot
Chapter TwelveELIOTT
I’m a masochist.
That’s the only logical explanation I can come up with as to why I’m leaving the supermarket with Dane’s number saved in my phone. Clearly I’m someone who thrives on pain.
Because Dane and I absolutely do not need to be friends. I meant what I said to Sasha.
Dane is off the table.
As much as I can tell he’s hoping otherwise, I’m not planning on reneging on my rule. It’s in place for a reason. To stop people – people like Dane – from using me like a toy they’ll inevitably get bored of once they realise they’re not going to get the result they’re hoping for.
SASHA
Lolllllll
So why’d you give him your number then?
I’m parked outside Nan’s house, glaring at my phone. I don’t have a rebuttal for Sasha, and I refuse to admit that she has a point.
WhydidI give him my number?
Ah yes. I’m a masochist.
I shove my phone into my pocket without responding and start hefting Nan’s shopping bags out of the car.
Stepping into Nan’s house always feels like coming home. Josh and I practically grew up here after our dad dipped out of the picture and Mum realised she needed help raising two young kids.
I never thought twice about it – the extended periods of time Josh and I spent sleeping head to feet in Nan’s tiny spare bedroom, blocking out the muffled sounds of Mum, Nan and Grandad arguing about things I was too young to understand.
It was our safe space. Where we’d come when things with Mum’s latest boyfriend didn’t work out and we had nowhere left to go.
‘Just for a few weeks,’ Mum would always say when we’d turn up on their doorstep with hurriedly packed bags missing most of our things.
I started making a list after the third time it happened.
Josh’s favourite teddy bear.
Mum’s EpiPen.
Our passports.
Money.
Anything that could make our lives a hundred times harder if we forgot them inside the home of a man who no longer wanted anything to do with us.
I was seven.
I think two years was the longest time we spent away from Nan and Grandad – when Mum met Leanne’s dad and we played happy families for long enough that I thought it might finally be it. Gavin was always nice enough, butnicewasn’tenoughfor Mum. She got bored.
Restless.
She’s a free spirit and can’t be tied down for long, and it turned out that two years was her limit, anyway.
Nan and Grandad kept us after that. It was Nan and Mum’s biggest argument yet and, at twelve, I was old enough to understand most of it. Mum was free to come and go as she pleased, but there’d be no more new boyfriends for me and Josh.
We both lived here until we went off to university, with Leanne visiting on sporadic weekends, since she lived primarily with her dad. Mum would flit between Nan’s house and whatever boyfriend she had at the time.
She’s finally got her own place – now that all her kids have grown up and flown the nest – but it’s never felt like home to me. I’m always a guest in her house, no matter how many times I’ve visited.
