Bitter Heart √

Thirty One

Compared to the chic blazer my mom was wearing, yeah, I could see how improper I looked. No one could look at us and say I was her daughter.

"It's a nice orange." Dad looked up from the newspaper in his hands.

I tried passing him a smile but it really was too early for me to be doing that. Also, the hangover, remember?

"I don't care if you hate how I look, Mom." I shrugged. "You're gonna hate me anyway, with or without this skirt."

Okay, I did not know why I said that.

I suppose Mom wasn't expecting it either since her brows rose a plenty amount. "Of course, I don't hate you, Skylar. I wasn't even talking about that skirt. I bought it for you myself."

Right, I thought. How had I forgotten that?

"Well then, what do you hate so much about my outfit, mother?" I crossed my arms and faced her.

Morning me plus a hangover was not the nicest way to have an argument with my mom.

Mom sighed and shook her head at me, before continuing to fold her black coat. "There's a tear at the edge."

She was, I realised as I glanced down, a hundred per cent right. My skirt was torn a little from the side, just above my ankle, which was probably all Chicken's doing. That also meant I had no point left to argue with anymore.

Dad huffed a laugh when he must've seen me going all red in the face, probably done with the number of arguments both Mom and I had every time we were around each other, and placed his newspaper down.

I got to the point.

"So you guys are here."

"About that," Dad glanced up at me. "Do you want to tell us something about last night?"

Holy fuckity fuck, I thought. They know. How did they know that I had gone partying last night?

"Um, what about last night?" I cleared my throat and leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Mom spoke up this time. "The alarm system went up. Someone other than you got in and I'm assuming they didn't know the code for about half a minute before it got punched in and the alarms shut down."

I stared at her, then at Dad.

"It was me." I lied, then laughed nervously. "Obviously."

It wasn't me. I didn't even remember half of the things that happened last night.

It must've been Alex. He'd been there with me at the party. He was the only ride I had.

"What were you doing outside at midnight?" Dad asked.

"There's no one ever in the house to set me a curfew, Dad. Come on."

"We thought you were being safe, Sky." Mom shook her head again and walked towards the couch before sitting down beside Dad. "We thought we'd made sure to you that safety is important."

I couldn't believe this.

"Yeah." I scoffed. "'Course it is. My safety is so important to you guys that you don't even care if someone breaks in twice and literally tries to kill me."

"Twice?" Dad frowned.

I gritted my teeth and straightened up. I needed aspirin and some coffee. I didn't think I had it in me to go through this day without some.