"I was 15 when I last saw my father, and my mother has been in prison since I was eight." We were resting on the hood of my car out by some bridge just listening to the noises around us as she finally began to open up.
"My dad, he's a nice guy, he just doesn't do nice things." She scrunched her nose. "He's a drug lord." She said gravely and my blood went cold. "To everyone else he's this big macho guy who could end your life in a second but to me, he's just a big ole' softy." She smiled.
"My parents met because my mother was one of his "clients" she was a major druggie, but my dad said that when he saw her she was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and I never understood why he would say that, I mean all of my memories were of her lifeless eyes, her oily hair and cracked lips. But finally I saw a picture from their younger years and he was right." Florence scooted closer to me. "She was a bombshell beauty, she put Megan Fox to shame." She laughed. "My dad said that she didn't look the same when they had met, but he said that he had to coax the beauty he saw inside to come out and when he did, those were the happiest moments of their life." Reaching for her back pocket she pulled a squished cigarette out.
"But then the babies started to pop out, of course my dad had a bastard child from a previous affair, who is my sister. Then out popped my bother, Jason, then two years later came me. My dads business was getting busier and my mom was stuck at home with mouths to feed, one of them wasn't even from her own womb, so I guess I could understand why she had begun to slip. I remember the first instance I realized something was going wrong, me and my siblings were all on the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons, and usually by this time mom would be finishing up breakfast but when she hadn't been out by noon I knew something was up." Florence kept having to reignite her lighter because the wind kept blowing it out and when she had finally lit it she took a long drag, passing it off to me as she exhaled a big cloud of smoke. "She was crumbled on the floor by her bed, unconscious. Her face crusted with drool and blood from her nose and the white powder." She shook her head, trying to get the image out and I put my arm around her.
"I'm sorry." It was all I really could say.
"Don't be. It's just the way things happened to be." She shrugged. "Some people just have to live crummy lives, and other people get to live lavishly, either way there's ups and downs, and lessons to be learned and people to love." She took the cigarette back from me. "No sense on bitching about it."
"What's one thing you would've done differently?" I asked quietly. And I saw Florences shoulders slump forward.
"I would've tried to get adopted when I was in foster care." She out of the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe, watching as the ambers from it float away. "I almost got adopted by this really nice couple, God only knows why they'd want someone like me in their home. We had a trial night where I spent that day at their house, but I was so fucking stupid that I ran away as soon as they went to sleep that night."
"Do you want to see your parents again?"
She shrugged, sliding off of the car and I sat up to get a better look at her. "My dad, maybe, but not so much my mother. I still keep in contact with my siblings, I have a nephew just like yours." She smiled towards me and I smiled back holding my arms out to her and she sheepishly accepted my hug. "There's just something about you that makes me want to spill my guts Romeo." She patted my chest. "Now enough emotional vomit, lets go home."
Home.
The word, it wrapped around us in a tight cocoon or some shit like that, it made me feel all warm and fluffy and embarrassingly enough I loved the feeling.
It was hot, too damn hot in the car was I drove us home. Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis was blasting at full volume as Florence was leaned against the window, the fading dark blue of the sky stood in contrast against her auburn hair.
The more and more I realized my difficulty with keeping my eyes on the road, the hotter and more uncomfortable I felt.
It was pissing me off.
I didn't have the balls to say anything, and reluctantly I had finally come to terms with the fact that this firecracker of a woman was turning my world upside down and inside out. I was a goner.
Fuck my life.
••••
AWR is almost finished, so not too long until this will have frequent updates.
Don't look back in anger by Oasis :)
