SO COLD (18+) currently editing

Chapter 20

CHARACTER VIEWS DO NOT REPRESENT MY OWN. Please be civil in the comment section.

"Gone where?"

Jade shrugged after her small, hysterical fit. Blood slid down her arm from where she had smashed a wine glass. I had checked Seth's bedroom and he wasn't there. Trying to keep a calm head was difficult especially since Jade was now ignoring me. She went to the fridge, uncapped a half-empty bottle of vodka and drank it like it was water. "Where has he gone, Jade? Answer me for fuck sake."

"It would've been nice to hear from you while you were away on your trip," she said slowly, viciously adding, "I wonder what your Dad would think about you running away with your boyfriends. He would have a heart attack if he knew he'd raised a slut."

"Pot calling the kettle black." I said. I challenged her stare with one of my own. "Could you please just tell me where he is? Out with his friends? At the cinema? You can't say 'gone' and then swallow your tongue."

"What do you care?" she flung, slamming the bottle down. "You dump us and leave. This isn't a hotel. You can't decide to leave and come whenever you like. I have rules. If you want to live under my roof, you'll abide them."

I didn't know where the hell this was coming from. She was acting like a total bitch, like she hated my guts. She glared frostily. I sat down on the kitchen stool and then held out my hands to her. "Fine. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone but you're worrying me. Stop drinking. Where is Seth?"

"First rule: don't tell me what to do," she dabbed at her dry mouth, leaned forward on the kitchen worktop, and said, "Day you left I was with Dylan, at his place. Came back in the morning and Seth wasn't here. That's the story."

"That was three days ago." I expected more than a shitty handful of water.

"Your point being?" she glanced down at her grubby fingernails, engrossed with her chewed cuticles.

"Three fucking days ago! Have you tried his phone? Called the police? He's been gone for three days and you didn't think to call me?" I was shaking with rage, and marched around the kitchen towards her. She gave an unthinking shrug, obnoxiously taking a swipe at her drink, swallowing loudly, smacking her lips together. The sound bounced around in my head, and my contained fury slipped from my grasp. Snatching the bottle from her grip, I smashed it against the edge of the worktop. I was tempted to shove the jagged edges through her neck. And quickly pushed the dark thought out of my mind, abandoning ownership, stunned at where I had gone. "What did you do that for?" she shouted, leaning towards me. She smelt of sick, like days old of sick that she vomited onto her body and hastily covered up with layers of clothes instead of dealing with the shame. For some odd reason, I could imagine her doing exactly that. "What do you want me to say? I'm not your Mum!"

"Thank God for that, it's a good thing you're infertile. You would've made a shit Mum." I said. The meanness must've lingered because I continued: "You're pathetic, a sad, lonely, desperate excuse for a woman, grow up!" 

She whacked me sharply, and my cheek seared with hot pain and the meanness I had felt inside of me disappeared, and Jade regarded me with cold eyes for the longest time. Her lips quivered, tremoring from hate and from the tears she was blinking back, furiously determined to not cry in front of me. I couldn't speak, too stunned at her assault: I've never been hit before. "Out. Get out."

"Jade, I–" I tried to explain.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" she screeched, slapping herself hysterically on the sides of her head as if I was a demon inside of her head. She was utterly nuts: a tangible mess of flying limbs and globs of wet spit.