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Considering how successful that night had gone so far, I probably should've seen the lit upstairs window from our apartment coming when I finally arrived home sometime after two, thankfully at least remembering to dispose of the beer possible tucked in the passenger seat before I pulled up to the curb and stared up at the golden light emanating from our living room through the windshield wipers. I walked through the threshold with mascara smudges darkening my under-eyes, splotches of dried beer on the shoulder of my cardigan, and my hair barely contained in its claw clip anymore, now just tugging painfully at the back of my head, cautiously lifting my gaze to my mom in our adjoining kitchen.
She was still in her pajamas, arms crossed over her chest, with a toothpaste stain on the collar as coffee brewed in the corner, with only the gurgling from the Keurig machine filling the silence as I stood there, waiting for her to say something. Her eyes were weary and narrow as she took me in, undoubtedly smelling the beer on me that I didn't drink, before she stared at my face for at least a minute, still quiet. Then, with a somewhat reluctant sigh, she told me to go take a shower and then go to bed, turning around to open a cupboard door and grasp a mug without another word.
It didn't matter the next morning when I told her that I didn't have anything to drink other than a water the night before, explaining to her how Blane Harding had dropped his beer bottle on my head when we accidentally bumped into each other—leaving out the part when he basically insinuated, twice, that I was fat—sneaking out was enough for her to take my phone away and ground me for the week, not to mention the hour long lecture I received over breakfast about how inconsiderate it was of me to take off with the car in the middle of the night to go to a party without telling her. She even added for some extra guilt about how if I had told her about the party, we could've discussed my curfew.
I didn't even protest when she held out her hand for my phone across the table, knowing I was probably only going to use it to stalk their Instagram pages anyway, especially Bridgette's. I imagined that she probably would've posted about the party that night before with some caption that was both witty and appropriate, with maybe even a few Instastories to remind me of how easily she could move on. She was probably having brunch with her real friends, snapshots documenting her weekend as she did things like go to the movies or the mall, maybe another party or out to dinner with Blane, reiterating how it was me stuck in one place, not her. Still stuck with our argument in my head, still stuck in my apartment, still stuck on the idea that we were friends that must have been so laughable to her this past week. The thought was enough to turn my cereal milk sour.
I spent the weekend helping my mom with the bookstore, clipping a magnetic name tag to my shirt and walking customers to the right shelves for genres like historical fiction and romance, laughing awkwardly at the jokes some made about the shirtless men on the covers and nodding politely when an older man recommended that I read a book about the creation of American currency before I was thankfully saved by a child riding a stuffed caterpillar with a sign around its neck specifically saying not to ride it.
