“You sound like you know me or something,” she teases with a grin as she shuts off the faucet.

“Are you saying that I don’t?” I retort, picking up my beer again as I kick my bare feet up on the table.

She pauses, wiping her hands off on a paper towel. “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“So you’re saying I know you.”

“As much as I know you.”

“I don’t think I know you completely,” I say, peeling off the label of the beer. “Not yet anyway.”

She stacks some plates in the dishwasher. “You know a lot of the important parts.”

I toss the damp label onto the coffee table. “I know I do.”

“And you’re still here.” She looks down as she says it, like she could care less about my reaction, but the nervousness of her tone suggests otherwise.

“Of course I’m still here,” I joke in a light tone because I know it’ll make her feel better. “I don’t want to go back to being homeless again. Beside, where else do I get to sleep with a girl who purposely pushes her ass against my cock every night.”

She looks up at me with feigned annoyance in her eyes. “I did that once and it was because I was having a weird dream.”

“A weird dream about me fucking you?”

She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t argue as she collects some dirty glasses out of the sink. “I’m surprised that you still want to sleep with me at all,” she says. “I thought you’d be sick of my crazy gasping ritual.”

I tip my head back and gulp my beer. Every morning Violet wakes up the same way she woke up in my dorm room, gasping for air. It scared the living daylights out of me for the first week, but now I just want to know what’s causing it. All she’ll tell me is that it’s a nightmare, I’m guessing about her parents, but she won’t talk about it. “What can I say, I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“I guess so,” she muses, setting the glasses upside down inside the dishwasher. “You know, I feel like the maid around here. It always seems like I’m the only one who does the dishes.”

“Hey, I clean a lot,” I protest, putting the empty beer bottle onto the table. “It’s Seth and Greyson who don’t do anything.”

“Greyson at least cooks,” she remarks. “All Seth does is leave Kit Kat wrappers and energy cans all over the place.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to argue with that,” I say as I watch her ass stick out of the bottom of her shorts as she bends over to load plates into the bottom rack of the dishwasher. “You know,” I continue, “I think if you’re the one who’s going to do the cleaning, we should get you a naughty maid costume.”

She stands back up, straightening her shoulders. “Why bother with the maid costume, when I could just do it naked?”

I shake my head, biting on my lip so hard I nearly draw blood. “One of these days when you say something like that to me, I’m going to take the situation and make you follow through with what you said.”

She relaxes back against the counter, folding her arms. “Oh, I wish you would.”

My body burns with a controlling urge to touch her. I’ve felt it a lot of the last few weeks and Jesus she knows how to push my buttons and make it worse.

“You think I’m kidding.” She moves forward to scrub the dishes in the sink, facing my direction. “But I’m not.”

I watch her as she turns the water on and begins rising off a pan. She’s smiling to herself and I start to get to my feet, ready to finally give in to my needs or hers—it’s becoming hard to tell anymore. I’ll take her back to the room and give her what she keeps teasing me about. But then my phone starts to ring.

“Saved by the bell,” she singsongs with a grin on her face.

“Oh, this isn’t over,” I assure her, retrieving my phone from the pocket of my jeans. “I’m starting this right back…” I frown as my dad’s name appears on the glowing screen. He’s been trying to reach me a lot recently, probably because the wedding’s getting nearer.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Violet asks, putting the pan in the dishwasher and then bumping the door shut with her hip.

“I guess,” I mutter, hating that getting a simple call can ruin the entire vibe of the night. I hit talk, putting the receiver up to my ear. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” my father says, sounding desperately cheerful. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“That’s because I’ve been ignoring them,” I say with honesty as the rumble of the dishwasher fills the apartment. Violet leaves the kitchen and goes into the bathroom, shutting the door, taking her cute ass with her, along with the good and lightness in me.

He pauses, struggling for words. “Look, Luke, I’m so sorry about my reaction when you asked if you could move in with us,” he says. “Sometimes I don’t know how to be a father and I just say stuff, not really thinking beforehand. But I should have said you could move in with us. I’ll even give you my bed.”

“I’m good.” I pick up the beer, needing the taste of it. I take a large guzzle, but it’s not enough. Too mellow and weak. Too sober and unstable. Switching to beer was such a bad idea.

“Luke, I’m really trying here,” he says. “I know I wasn’t part of your life for a while, but I want to be now.”

“You’re really trying.” I laugh harshly in the phone as something snaps inside me, the last fourteen years shoving me down farther and farther and I’m too sober and can feel it all. “Trying would have been calling me up more than ten times over the last fourteen years. Trying would have been not leaving me and Amy with Mom and her craziness.”

“You’re mother’s not crazy.” He sighs. “She just struggles with stuff.”

“No, she’s fucking crazy and you’re fucking crazy for thinking she’s not.” I snap. Literally snap. All the stuff I’ve been holding inside me spills out as rage flares through me until all I see is white.

“Luke you will not talk about your mother that way,” he says. “Yes, she has problems but we all do.”

“You’re seriously defending her and you don’t even get it.”

“Then explain it to me. Please.”

“Do you have any idea things that she did—made me do? Do you have any idea at all the stuff that I went through… she made me shoot her up, you know. Inject heroin into her veins,” I hiss, balling my hands into fist, wanting—needing the silencing burn of Jack or tequila, but instead I settle for ramming my fist against the coffee table. A few of my knuckles pop and the wood scrapes a layer of skin off. It hurts, but not as much as thinking about the past. “When I was eight, she made me crush up her cocaine, made me let her hold me while she passed out. She made me do everything with her like I was a pet. She never let me breathe. She ignored Amy.” I breathe furiously, fighting to get oxygen as I throw the empty beer bottle across the room and it shatters against the wall. “She didn’t give a shit when Amy died. She fucking screwed up my life so God damn badly that I have to control everything just so I won’t remember how much she controlled me…” I trail off as Violet walks in front of me, standing between the television and the coffee table. Everything gets silent as she takes in the glass around her feet.

“Luke, oh my God, I didn’t—” my dad starts to say.

I press end, hanging up on him. He calls right back and I shut off my phone, tossing it onto the table, my eyes never leaving Violet. As usual, I can’t tell what she’s thinking which means I’m going to have to ask.

“How much did you hear?” My hand is shaking but my voice comes out even. I know she already knew some of the stuff, but she pretty much heard a replay of my entire sad, stupid, worthless life. Now she knows just how pathetic I really am.

“Everything.” There’s an unreadable look in her eyes as she takes a deep breath. She contemplates something and I can’t take her silence. I feel like I’m about to explode.

“Violet, just say something,” I say, sounding panicked and pathetic. “Please.”