Cut & Blow (Cut & Blow #2) - Ashleigh Giannoccaro Page 0,1

showered and shaved at some point before six, but all I want to do is sleep. Eating the toast and drinking the tea slowly, my stomach seems to settle enough to allow it to stay down.

The hangover which never ends still pounds in my head, and a tiredness that is like no other makes me wish I could curl into a ball again and sleep forever, but the laundry needs to be done and I have to make food for my sisters.

Shaine will have homework and finals to study for when she gets in after work, and my mother hasn’t been home since Friday. Kylie will go to a friend’s after school and catch a bus home for dinner, knowing she won’t then be here all alone.

The small apartment is as bad as it looks from the street. It’s all we can afford and it’s a home for now, with electricity and water, which is more than we have had in the past.

Dragging my ass, I tidy up, wash the girls’ clothes and get them dried, folded, and squeezed into the small spaces we have to store our stuff. I have been their mother for as long as I can remember – our mother is a useless waste of oxygen.

We all have different fathers, but we are sisters. That binds us together. I would do anything, or more recently anyone for them.

Just a few more weeks and Shaine will graduate. Gran said she can take Kylie after that and then the two of us can have a break from being mom. My youngest sister will start the next school year across the country, in a shiny new life.

I found our mother’s family and explained the situation to them. While they want nothing to do with mom, they will help us give Kylie a fighting chance at life.

She’s bitter, twisted, and angry with us about it, but I know I’m doing the right thing. We can’t carry on like this. Shaine will start studying a trade as soon as she has graduated, so she can get a job. We can’t both work with an eleven year old depending on us.

My mind races constantly. It’s always ten decisions ahead because I have to take care of everything around here. It’s exhausting.

While washing the dishes, the thought of spending the night with Sal suddenly sounds like heaven. I can just pretend all this doesn’t exist for a while. I can pull an Ailee and live in denial for the night.

My friend has the amazing ability of pretending that things don’t exist. Like the bomb she just dropped about husbands and crime families; there’s no way I could stay cool about that for five fucking years.

Their house kind of unsettled me. We were always almost even. Yes, my apartment is a shit-pile, but hers wasn’t much better, but now I’m not sure. I feel like she betrayed me, like everything was a big fat lie; yet she’s still her. And I have so much going on that I can’t be a good friend, not right now, and that makes her being nice to me even worse.

I take a short shower and shave everywhere, so that I am ready to put on my best underwear and squeeze into something sexy. Not that I feel sexy. I’m still a little green around the gills, but at least I haven’t thrown up for a few hours.

With the music blaring I dress in a short blue affair I borrowed from Starla and never returned – it looks better on me anyway. I pack an overnight bag, just in case I change my mind and stay. I have to work tomorrow and it won’t look good if I arrive looking like I’ve been out all night when I’m ‘off sick’.

Everyone is already talking about Ailee being the boss. I don’t need them adding her having favorites to their bitch list, because I know she won’t shit on me for anything.

Salvestre pulls up at exactly six. He’s the most punctual person I have ever met. He is never late or early for anything. It’s annoying because I’m perpetually late.

He gets out of the car and opens the door for me. He’s like that. He is old and has old school manners to go with his gray hair and suave dress sense. Even in a t-shirt the man looks like he stepped out of the fashion magazines we keep at the salon.

He smells like money and the elite, all Gucci shoes