LIE TO ME | sex education ✓

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻.

She would rather feel the pain of a thousand breakups than feel nothing at all.

Unfortunately, like everything else in her life, that wasn't going her way. As soon as she got out of bed seven days earlier she wanted to go to the shops to buy anything alcoholic but Carmen had refused to let her out of the apartment, going as far as staying there during the day when they weren't working and even nights in fear of Alice doing something dumb. If Alice could call Kyle for anything she would've but her phone was broken.

Alice couldn't do anything with Carmen there whenever they weren't working. She felt like she had eyes on her at all times. The only time she felt free from it was a few hours during days and when she was in the bathroom. As much as Alice cared for Carmen, she was starting to get annoyed with their constant presence.

That's why Alice was waiting until Carmen was working before leaving the apartment. She didn't have a destination in mind, she was planning on figuring it out as she walked.

Alice used the exit that didn't go through Maria's bakery. She loved the older woman but she didn't wish to explain what she was doing because, honestly, Alice didn't have a clue. Plus, Carmen was working and going past them was a death wish for Alice. 

Alice knew Carmen would be worried when returning to an empty apartment but she couldn't bring herself to care. She would just use another lie, another excuse, so that Carmen would get off her back. Alice had gotten used to lying over the past week, it wouldn't be hard to think of another one.

Alice should've felt relieved when the fresh air hit her skin but she didn't. She didn't feel anything with the crisp wind hitting her skin. Not the coldness, not with the weather blistering against her exposed neck and face. Nothing at all.

She couldn't stop thinking of what Jean said to her the day she left that damned house. Jean had told Alice she would never be happy and would be a mess her whole life. Nothing she tries to do to distract that and anyone who cares will abandon her when they see it. Jean had ended up being right about that.  The person she cared about most abandoned her because of her mistakes. Because of the mistakes that she was trying to change. 

Jean was right when she said that Alice didn't deserve love but it was Jean who started that insecurity. It was Jean's lack of love and comfort that made Alice believe she wasn't deserving of love. It was Jean's treatment towards her that was one of the reasons that Alice turned to cocaine in the first place; people that she cut off once she came back to her senses thanks to Johnny and Stella.

Speaking of her friends, Alice hadn't talked to the two in two weeks. Her phone was broken and she didn't want to. She had begged Carmen to tell them because she didn't need more people invading her personal space. 

Alice had doubted that her breakup hadn't gotten back to Jean yet. It'd been two weeks, it was sure to be the talk of the school. That means Otis was aware of it and, knowing the bond he and Jean had, she knew of it now. Jean was probably gloating knowing that she was right.

Alice had to talk to her as soon as she could.

That was where Alice was going to go. She wanted to know why Jean treated her horribly when she was growing up. She wanted to know why Jean couldn't love, why she hated her. There had to be a reason for that. Alice wanted to know why Jean didn't want Alice in her life when Alice was her daughter, her biological daughter that she was supposed to love but couldn't.

What was so wrong with Alice that even before she was an addict her own mother couldn't love her?

She was doomed to become a disaster before she became an addict because of how she was treated at home. Her parents gave her too many issues for her to unpack that would always haunt her no matter how many years passed. Alice was doomed to fuck up because she wasn't taught otherwise.