Page 14 of The Hellcat Barbies: Aubree
“You are not my father!”
“Thanks to you I’m not anybody’s father.”
“Let me out. Let me out right fucking now!”
“No.” My tone was calm and even while she yelled at the top of her lungs. Prior to me going to prison, Aubree and I never really argued. I felt that if soulmates were real, she was the closest that I’d ever get to one. There wasn’t a female that I met that I meshed well with the way I did with Aubree. But all that had changed. We pretty much couldn’t stand one another, and that didn’t feel good.
Aubree finished off the bottle of alcohol, rolled the window down, and tossed the bottle out of it.
“Have you lost your mind?” my head whipped in her direction. She just looked at me with a smirk.
My glower deepened. “You childish as fuck and need to grow the hell up.”
“Fuck you.”
She was pushing the hell out of my buttons. Gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white and gritting my teeth together did nothing to calm me down. I knew if I didn’t exert some type of self-control I’d say something that I’d end up regretting. The line between love and hate was thin indeed. My phone rang from its’ place in my lap. I gripped the steering wheel a little harder when I saw that it was Connie calling. The daybefore, she’d texted me about twenty long drawn out paragraphs saying how she knew I had to be having sex with someone else, and she knew I was going to come home and do her dirty.
Crazy thing was, I hadn’t had sex with anyone besides her. Every time I thought I was, Aubree pissed me off, and I didn’t even want to be bothered with a female. Connie was cool, and we could be cordial, but I didn’t want any more pussy from her and if that made me a bad guy then so be it. If anyone should be mad it should be me.
“That one of your hoes?”
It was my turn to smirk. “She’s not a hoe.”
I didn’t even have to look over at Aubree to know that she was probably grilling me with the evilest expression her face could form. “Look this tit for tat shit makes me feel gay as hell. All this isn’t necessary. We don’t have to be best friends, but all this arguing and shit is draining.”
Aubree didn’t respond. She simply turned her face toward the window and stared out of it. When I pulled into her driveway, she opened the door fast as hell before I could open mine, get out, and open the door for her. She was trying the hell out of me. I could have just left, but I wasn’t even going to do her like that. Chuckling, I pulled her keys from my pocket while she dug through her purse.
“Looking for these?”
Aubree snatched the keys from my hand and unlocked the door. After stepping over the threshold, she was about to slam the door in my face, but I pushed my way inside.
“You gonna chill the fuck out with the dumb shit,” I warned. “I have a right to be mad at you. You have a right to be mad at me. How I handled the situation before my trial was wrong and immature. You’re the only woman that I’ve ever been in love with, and I could have handled you better than that. My ass was scared. Scared that you’d start out holding me down then resentme and leave me halfway through my bid. So, I did what I felt was best for the both of us. You weren’t getting it though. You were adamant about the fact that you weren’t going to leave me while I was down, and I did some dumb shit. You’ll never know how much I regret it.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Aubree’s face crumpled. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
She closed her eyes and gripped the arm of the couch for a few seconds before getting up and bolting to the bathroom. I sat down as she threw up the contents of her stomach in the bathroom. She flushed the toilet then I heard water running. When she finally came back into the living room, she was carrying a Ginger Ale and peanut butter crackers. Aubree folded one leg underneath her bottom and sat down.
“Getting dumb drunk in the middle of the day was one dumb ass move. I feel like shit,” she sighed.
I didn’t respond as she opened the crackers and removed one from the pack. Placing it in her mouth, she chewed slowly while popping the tab on the canned drink. Aubree ate the cracker and washed it down with her drink. Leaning forward, she placed the can on the coffee table and removed her phone from her purse.
“You want to see pictures of her?”
Did I? I looked over at Aubree, but I didn’t speak.
“It’s okay if you don’t. I know it’s not easy. It wasn’t easy for me either. I regretted my decision every day. But she’s happy. And smart. And loved.”
“Yeah, I want to see.” My tone was low. Probably didn’t sound too sure.
Aubree unlocked her phone, went to her photo gallery, and then held the phone out so I could see. My heart slammed into my ribcage. The red hair. The brown skin. She looked just like me. My twin was out there somewhere, and I didn’t know her. Didn’t have access to her. Six years had cost me the woman Iwas in love with but got damn did it have to cost me a child too? Aubree swiped, and the next picture was of Brianna sleeping. That was all I could take.
Call me soft. Call me whatever, but that was it for me. I stood up and left the house without a word.
CHAPTER 7
AUBREE
I wasn’t even depressedafter I got shot, but after Brasi left my house the day he saw Brianna’s pictures, I shut down. I spent two days in bed. My phone was on DND, and I alternated between watching TV and sleeping. As much as I needed to be working, I just couldn’t. The past couldn’t be undone, so dwelling on it was pointless. But that didn’t stop me from sulking and feeling sorry for myself.
