Peppermint #2, Sour Grape #1, Strawberry Banana #28
Author: winebabe
Title: In the Cold Light of Morning
Story: The Gemini Occurrence ( Poverty Club 'Verse)
Rating: PG-13 (significantly less swearing than usual)
Flavor(s): Peppermint #2: bandanna; Sour Grape #1: nothing can stop me now; Strawberry Banana #28: procrastination;
Word Count: 2,754
Summary: October 2020. It's just an average day in the Eastman house.
Notes: Previous: Rum & Coke. Ruby Eastman, Mona Lively, Victor Eastman, Casey Calhoun, Gina Damiano, Clarence Eastman, Cheyenne Williams.
Ruby starts on breakfast, whipping eggs and milk together in a bowl while Mona sits at the table, sipping her coffee. It's a little surprising to see a new face in the house, because it's been Vic and Casey and Gina for so long now, but she seems like a sweet enough girl. Besides, her brother is the one people tell their kids to stay away from; she doesn't have the right or the ability to tell him how to choose his friends. "So," she asks Mona, looking back over her shoulder at her as she continues whisking the eggs, "where'd you come from?"
"Uh, Baltimore," Mona replies, staring down into her coffee mug. "I'm living with my aunt right now."
"Does that make you Olivia Meadows's niece?" Ruby smiles. "She used to be a regular at my diner when I still had the day shift. Always talking about her sister's kids."
"What'd she say about us?" It's pretty clear how uncomfortable Mona is, tracing her fingertip along the rim of the mug, unable to meet Ruby's eyes.
"I heard a lot about your brother," she chooses to say, carefully pouring the egg mixture into the pan. "Last I heard, he was graduating with his Masters or something?"
"He's working at a nice college upstate," Mona tells her. "The only Lively to make something of himself."
"Hey, your aunt spoke really highly of you, too," Ruby says. She knows she can't put it into context; Olivia was in no way oblivious to how damaged her sister and the kids were, so a lot of what she'd heard had been framed in the context of "smart for a girl with two shitty parents." "Went on and on about some kind of writing competition you won?"
Mona tips her head up just enough for Ruby to see her roll her eyes. "That was in sixth grade. She's still talking about that?"
"Guess she's still proud," Ruby smiles. "Hey, she doesn't have kids of her own. Let her take pride in you and your brother, even if it's for stuff that happened years ago."
"I know," Mona sighs. She turns in her chair so she can face Ruby, holding the coffee mug in both hands. "She's wanted me to come live with her since I was a kid, you know? I don't think she wanted Devyn so much, but she was always calling my mom, trying to get her to hand me over. And now she got what she wanted." She takes a sip of her coffee and smiles. "Hope she can take the disappointment."
"Is that what you want? For her to be disappointed?" Ruby asks. She grabs a fork from the drawer next to the stove and begins fluffing the eggs.
"It's not what I want, it's just what's going to happen," Mona replies, and Ruby almost laughs. She wants to slap her a little, just to bring her back to her senses. Just so she doesn't have to deal with one more down-on-their-luck poor kid who's going to waste their life, just because they think somehow being miserable is their destiny.
She doesn't, though, and instead sets another mug down on the table. "Go bring Gina some coffee, hm? Sugar and creamer. I gotta wake up the boys."
"Sure," Mona says and reaches for the coffee pot.
Ruby heads off down the hall, towards Vic's room, and passes by her father's door. He's snoring loudly, so she doesn't bother checking on him. As long as he's alive, that's enough.
Outside Vic's room, she gently pushes the door open, and sure enough, the two boys are lying in bed together, Casey's arm draped over Vic's neck, Vic's arm wrapped around Casey's waist. They look so peaceful she hates to wake them, but she'd hate it even more if she had to stay home all day with the two lovebirds. Vic still doesn't know she knows, though, so Ruby shuts the door first and then begins pounding on it. "Wake up, boys!" she shouts, and can hear the muffled groaning from the other side of the door. "I've got coffee and I'm making eggs, but you better hurry the hell up! You're gonna be late."
Isaac's room is empty, the door swung wide open, the floor its usual mess of clothing and half-drunk bottles of soda. The kid's only 14 but he's spending nights at his girlfriend's house--Mrs. McLaughlin thinks she's doing them a favor and Ruby just lets her keep believing that. As long as Isaac behaves himself, she can't complain, and she can't blame him for wanting to spend time away from their house.
Some nights, Clarence comes home and there's hell to pay. He always has a reason, it seems, even if he's so drunk he's incoherent, and Isaac would rather leave the target on Vic's back. Vic'll take it, too, like he's designated himself the punching bag. It's more than Ruby can stand, sometimes, but Vic hates her getting in the middle of things. He's full-up with all this crap about 'being a man.'
"Hey," Vic says from his doorway, and Ruby turns around. They both look tired, with the same heavily-lidded eyes even though Ruby's are dark and Vic's are bright blue. "Can Casey take a shower?"
"Tell him it's all his," she replies, "but you're gonna wanna hurry. Egg wraps?"
Vic nods and slips back into his room, shutting the door behind him. Ruby sighs heavily and heads back to the kitchen to finish off breakfast.
Mona and Gina are sitting together at the table, their hair messed up, their skin pale and shadowed under their eyes. "You look like hell, girls," Ruby says and they don't respond. "I'm not your mother, but Jesus, if I was?" That gets a laugh out of Mona, and Ruby smiles.
"If you were, what?"
"I'd tell you that no man is gonna want you with those bags under your eyes, looking like zombies. Party girls are only pretty until the lights come on, honey." Ruby uses the fork to scrape eggs onto two plates for the girls, and sets out two pieces of bread for the boys. "If you want toast, you make it yourself, okay?"
"Do you do this every morning?" Mona asks, getting up from her place at the table to grab the two plates. "Make breakfast, play house?"
Ruby smiles and rolls her eyes. "Kinda. Vic wouldn't wake up on his own if I didn't go do it, and more often than not there's at least one non-Eastman in the house. Besides, I'm already awake so I might as well do something useful for the few hours before I go to sleep."
"Ruby's insane," Gina says to Mona. "If my mom left, and I had brothers and sisters, they'd be on their own. I couldn't do all that."
"If you had to, you'd do it," Ruby replies. She scrapes out the rest of the eggs onto the two pieces of bread, squirts some ketchup on top of Vic’s wrap, and folds them up enough to fit them inside a couple sandwich bags. The girls go back to silently eating their breakfasts and Ruby stays standing at the kitchen counter, drinking from her own mug of coffee. As infuriating as it sometimes is, providing for at least two extra mouths in the morning, and at night, and whenever Vic decides to bring his posse home with him, she's happy he has friends. It's better than she's doing in that department.
The kitchen remains silent until Vic finally walks in with Casey behind him, his hair wet, dressed in what Ruby recognizes are Vic’s clothes. The girls are both wearing the same clothes from the day before, and if she wasn’t worried about outing her brother, she would make a comment about whether or not it’s fair that he just shares with Casey.
“You know where Isaac’s at?” Ruby asks as Vic moves to grab his breakfast.
“Girlfriend’s house, probably,” he says and takes a bite into his egg wrap. “Never came home yesterday. That’s where he always is.”
“Yeah,” Ruby sighs, “just checkin’. You need to get going, I’m not writing excuses for all four of you being late this morning.”
“Coffee?” Vic asks, holding out his hand, and Ruby hands over a thermos. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, anytime.” She stands with her back against the counter, her arms folded across her chest, as she watches the girls get up from the table and follow the boys outside. Vic’s car roars to life with all the ferocity of an angry dragon, and his music starts pumping out soon after. It’s the same routine every day, and it’s not until he gets to the stop sign at the end of the street that the noise fades away.
Ruby revels in the peace and quiet for just a moment, finishing off her own mug of coffee. It’s not that peace is uncommon in their house--if Clarence is home during the day, he’s sleeping, and Isaac is already so much of a loner that if he’s around, he’s locked himself away in his bedroom. Vic is the only one who disturbs the quiet, and Ruby doesn’t mind too much. It’s nice to have someone else around. She knows she’d hate it if she was stuck there, alone.
The kitchen is a mess, partially from that morning, but there are leftover mugs from days earlier sitting on the table and all she’s done is move the liquor bottles from the living room into the kitchen. The empty beer bottles are taking up a counter of their own, and she can see the sheen of whatever’s been spilled within the last week glistening on the countertop nearest the fridge. “Disgusting,” she mutters, but it’s nothing new.
Ruby pulls the red bandanna out of the back pocket of her jeans and uses it to pull her long hair back from her face. She tugs her rubber gloves on and steps back from the sink, standing in the center of the kitchen to assess the damage. The dishes will take her an hour at least, and then there’s the matter of cleaning up the living room. Thankfully, the kids haven’t been drinking too much lately, and no one has vomited on the floor in at least a month. “Small victories,” Ruby mutters and steps up to the sink.
It takes a good hour and a half to clean up, and normally, cleaning the house wears Ruby out enough that she can jump into bed and pass out until she has to get up and get ready for her next shift, but that morning, for some reason, she’s still wide awake. Clarence is passed out in his bedroom, completely undisturbed by the noise from the kitchen, and besides him Ruby is all alone. The house isn’t large by any means, just a ranch with four small bedrooms and the other necessities packed into the most compact square-footage possible, but it feels empty without her brothers and their friends around.
There’s nothing to watch on TV, and she quickly tires of losing at Vic’s shooting games, so Ruby throws a coat on over her hoodie and jeans ensemble and heads outside to make the walk up the hill to Cheyenne’s house.
The morning air is brisk and smells of fall--decaying leaves, bonfires, the crisp smell that cold weather seems to add to the air. All the trees have begun to lose their leaves, and the neighborhood looks brown and desaturated. It’s not beautiful, and no one from the area would kid themselves by pretending it could be. The lake is mucky and questionable; it doesn’t even add to the property value by much. The Ditch is worse off than the Sunny Dayz trailer park up the street, and the whole town knows it.
Cheyenne lives in a nicer house than theirs, closer to the road leading back into town. She has a nice porch they like to sit on in the summer, drinking and watching the neighbors. Her driveway isn’t made of gravel, and her yard actually looks nice most of the time because she doesn’t have three men in the house who only mow the lawn when they feel like it.
Cheyenne’s circumstances are better than Ruby’s, too, and they both know it. Neither of them grew up with much money, but Cheyenne’s older and has had more time to work and save. She has a live-in boyfriend who has a job, too, and he brings in money for the things that Ruby would consider extraneous expenses (desserts, new clothes, air conditioning in the summer).
Ruby shoves her hands into her pockets and leans into the incline as she trudges up the crumbling street. It’s not that she’s jealous; she loves her best friend, and thinks Cheyenne deserves so much more than what she has. It’s the situation that makes her jealous--having friends from high school away at college, some of them married and starting families of their own instead of caring for drunken fathers and troublemaking teenage brothers. She wouldn’t want kids, not now and maybe not ever, and she’d never had any intention of attending college, but sometimes, Ruby wishes she grew up into a normal adult. Sometimes she wishes she wasn’t thrust into the position of “mom” at such a young age and then stuck there, with no end in sight.
Isaac will be 18 in a little less than 4 years, but Vic is already 18 and Ruby’s still caring for him. And Clarence--she’d love nothing more than to just throw him out onto the street, and she knows Vic would wholeheartedly support her, but for some reason, Isaac still has a soft spot for his alcoholic dad. There’s no way she’ll ever be able to fully break free of the family; if she leaves, it’ll be destroying her relationship with her brothers for good, and so she stays.
Family matters. Family will always matter, even if sometimes everyone in her family sucks.
Ruby can see Cheyenne, leaning over the railing of her porch with a cigarette between her fingers. “Hey, Chey!” she calls, waving a hand high in the air, and Cheyenne turns to face her with a big grin.
“Hey, girl! Got all the kids off to school?”
“Yeah!” Ruby shouts back, breaking into a jog so she can reach the house quicker. Cheyenne watches from the porch, an amused smile on her face as she smokes her cigarette. When Ruby gets close enough, Cheyenne walks down the stairs and holds open the gate for her. “Vic brought home another girl last night, if you’ll believe that. I don’t know where he finds these people but apparently the kid can make friends.”
“Girl friends but not girlfriends, right?” Cheyenne asks, raising her eyebrows.
“‘Course. He and Casey are still a thing. Opened the door this morning and they were passed out, all tangled up around each other. It’s cute, you know? I didn’t think Vic would be cut out for an actual relationship.”
Cheyenne just shrugs, pulling the pack of cigarettes from her hoodie pocket and offering it up to Ruby. “You think he’s gonna come out soon?”
“Nah,” Ruby says, shaking her head. She borrows Cheyenne’s lighter to light her cigarette, cupping her hand around the end to keep the flame from flickering out, and then tosses the lighter back. “Not while Clarence is still in the house. If he knew, he’d beat Vic to a pulp.”
“And you said you found ‘em sleeping together this morning? Shit, he better be more careful than that. What if Clarence accidentally walks into the wrong bedroom while he’s drunk?” Cheyenne pops her cigarette back into her mouth and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Vic is a moron.”
“Yeah,” she replies, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “I know. They can’t go to Casey’s house though because his dad is sober, aware, and might even be angrier than Clarence. From what I’ve heard while eavesdropping, at least.”
“It’s sad. Just let the boy live.”
“I know.” Ruby sucks in another lungful of smoke and stares wistfully off into the distance, focusing on the roof of her house. Clarence is still inside, likely fast asleep, and she dreads the thought of heading back there to head to bed herself. “Hey, can I sleep here today?”
Cheyenne rolls her eyes but smiles, hooking her arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “Of course, honey. What are friends for?”
Title: In the Cold Light of Morning
Story: The Gemini Occurrence ( Poverty Club 'Verse)
Rating: PG-13 (significantly less swearing than usual)
Flavor(s): Peppermint #2: bandanna; Sour Grape #1: nothing can stop me now; Strawberry Banana #28: procrastination;
Word Count: 2,754
Summary: October 2020. It's just an average day in the Eastman house.
Notes: Previous: Rum & Coke. Ruby Eastman, Mona Lively, Victor Eastman, Casey Calhoun, Gina Damiano, Clarence Eastman, Cheyenne Williams.
Ruby starts on breakfast, whipping eggs and milk together in a bowl while Mona sits at the table, sipping her coffee. It's a little surprising to see a new face in the house, because it's been Vic and Casey and Gina for so long now, but she seems like a sweet enough girl. Besides, her brother is the one people tell their kids to stay away from; she doesn't have the right or the ability to tell him how to choose his friends. "So," she asks Mona, looking back over her shoulder at her as she continues whisking the eggs, "where'd you come from?"
"Uh, Baltimore," Mona replies, staring down into her coffee mug. "I'm living with my aunt right now."
"Does that make you Olivia Meadows's niece?" Ruby smiles. "She used to be a regular at my diner when I still had the day shift. Always talking about her sister's kids."
"What'd she say about us?" It's pretty clear how uncomfortable Mona is, tracing her fingertip along the rim of the mug, unable to meet Ruby's eyes.
"I heard a lot about your brother," she chooses to say, carefully pouring the egg mixture into the pan. "Last I heard, he was graduating with his Masters or something?"
"He's working at a nice college upstate," Mona tells her. "The only Lively to make something of himself."
"Hey, your aunt spoke really highly of you, too," Ruby says. She knows she can't put it into context; Olivia was in no way oblivious to how damaged her sister and the kids were, so a lot of what she'd heard had been framed in the context of "smart for a girl with two shitty parents." "Went on and on about some kind of writing competition you won?"
Mona tips her head up just enough for Ruby to see her roll her eyes. "That was in sixth grade. She's still talking about that?"
"Guess she's still proud," Ruby smiles. "Hey, she doesn't have kids of her own. Let her take pride in you and your brother, even if it's for stuff that happened years ago."
"I know," Mona sighs. She turns in her chair so she can face Ruby, holding the coffee mug in both hands. "She's wanted me to come live with her since I was a kid, you know? I don't think she wanted Devyn so much, but she was always calling my mom, trying to get her to hand me over. And now she got what she wanted." She takes a sip of her coffee and smiles. "Hope she can take the disappointment."
"Is that what you want? For her to be disappointed?" Ruby asks. She grabs a fork from the drawer next to the stove and begins fluffing the eggs.
"It's not what I want, it's just what's going to happen," Mona replies, and Ruby almost laughs. She wants to slap her a little, just to bring her back to her senses. Just so she doesn't have to deal with one more down-on-their-luck poor kid who's going to waste their life, just because they think somehow being miserable is their destiny.
She doesn't, though, and instead sets another mug down on the table. "Go bring Gina some coffee, hm? Sugar and creamer. I gotta wake up the boys."
"Sure," Mona says and reaches for the coffee pot.
Ruby heads off down the hall, towards Vic's room, and passes by her father's door. He's snoring loudly, so she doesn't bother checking on him. As long as he's alive, that's enough.
Outside Vic's room, she gently pushes the door open, and sure enough, the two boys are lying in bed together, Casey's arm draped over Vic's neck, Vic's arm wrapped around Casey's waist. They look so peaceful she hates to wake them, but she'd hate it even more if she had to stay home all day with the two lovebirds. Vic still doesn't know she knows, though, so Ruby shuts the door first and then begins pounding on it. "Wake up, boys!" she shouts, and can hear the muffled groaning from the other side of the door. "I've got coffee and I'm making eggs, but you better hurry the hell up! You're gonna be late."
Isaac's room is empty, the door swung wide open, the floor its usual mess of clothing and half-drunk bottles of soda. The kid's only 14 but he's spending nights at his girlfriend's house--Mrs. McLaughlin thinks she's doing them a favor and Ruby just lets her keep believing that. As long as Isaac behaves himself, she can't complain, and she can't blame him for wanting to spend time away from their house.
Some nights, Clarence comes home and there's hell to pay. He always has a reason, it seems, even if he's so drunk he's incoherent, and Isaac would rather leave the target on Vic's back. Vic'll take it, too, like he's designated himself the punching bag. It's more than Ruby can stand, sometimes, but Vic hates her getting in the middle of things. He's full-up with all this crap about 'being a man.'
"Hey," Vic says from his doorway, and Ruby turns around. They both look tired, with the same heavily-lidded eyes even though Ruby's are dark and Vic's are bright blue. "Can Casey take a shower?"
"Tell him it's all his," she replies, "but you're gonna wanna hurry. Egg wraps?"
Vic nods and slips back into his room, shutting the door behind him. Ruby sighs heavily and heads back to the kitchen to finish off breakfast.
Mona and Gina are sitting together at the table, their hair messed up, their skin pale and shadowed under their eyes. "You look like hell, girls," Ruby says and they don't respond. "I'm not your mother, but Jesus, if I was?" That gets a laugh out of Mona, and Ruby smiles.
"If you were, what?"
"I'd tell you that no man is gonna want you with those bags under your eyes, looking like zombies. Party girls are only pretty until the lights come on, honey." Ruby uses the fork to scrape eggs onto two plates for the girls, and sets out two pieces of bread for the boys. "If you want toast, you make it yourself, okay?"
"Do you do this every morning?" Mona asks, getting up from her place at the table to grab the two plates. "Make breakfast, play house?"
Ruby smiles and rolls her eyes. "Kinda. Vic wouldn't wake up on his own if I didn't go do it, and more often than not there's at least one non-Eastman in the house. Besides, I'm already awake so I might as well do something useful for the few hours before I go to sleep."
"Ruby's insane," Gina says to Mona. "If my mom left, and I had brothers and sisters, they'd be on their own. I couldn't do all that."
"If you had to, you'd do it," Ruby replies. She scrapes out the rest of the eggs onto the two pieces of bread, squirts some ketchup on top of Vic’s wrap, and folds them up enough to fit them inside a couple sandwich bags. The girls go back to silently eating their breakfasts and Ruby stays standing at the kitchen counter, drinking from her own mug of coffee. As infuriating as it sometimes is, providing for at least two extra mouths in the morning, and at night, and whenever Vic decides to bring his posse home with him, she's happy he has friends. It's better than she's doing in that department.
The kitchen remains silent until Vic finally walks in with Casey behind him, his hair wet, dressed in what Ruby recognizes are Vic’s clothes. The girls are both wearing the same clothes from the day before, and if she wasn’t worried about outing her brother, she would make a comment about whether or not it’s fair that he just shares with Casey.
“You know where Isaac’s at?” Ruby asks as Vic moves to grab his breakfast.
“Girlfriend’s house, probably,” he says and takes a bite into his egg wrap. “Never came home yesterday. That’s where he always is.”
“Yeah,” Ruby sighs, “just checkin’. You need to get going, I’m not writing excuses for all four of you being late this morning.”
“Coffee?” Vic asks, holding out his hand, and Ruby hands over a thermos. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, anytime.” She stands with her back against the counter, her arms folded across her chest, as she watches the girls get up from the table and follow the boys outside. Vic’s car roars to life with all the ferocity of an angry dragon, and his music starts pumping out soon after. It’s the same routine every day, and it’s not until he gets to the stop sign at the end of the street that the noise fades away.
Ruby revels in the peace and quiet for just a moment, finishing off her own mug of coffee. It’s not that peace is uncommon in their house--if Clarence is home during the day, he’s sleeping, and Isaac is already so much of a loner that if he’s around, he’s locked himself away in his bedroom. Vic is the only one who disturbs the quiet, and Ruby doesn’t mind too much. It’s nice to have someone else around. She knows she’d hate it if she was stuck there, alone.
The kitchen is a mess, partially from that morning, but there are leftover mugs from days earlier sitting on the table and all she’s done is move the liquor bottles from the living room into the kitchen. The empty beer bottles are taking up a counter of their own, and she can see the sheen of whatever’s been spilled within the last week glistening on the countertop nearest the fridge. “Disgusting,” she mutters, but it’s nothing new.
Ruby pulls the red bandanna out of the back pocket of her jeans and uses it to pull her long hair back from her face. She tugs her rubber gloves on and steps back from the sink, standing in the center of the kitchen to assess the damage. The dishes will take her an hour at least, and then there’s the matter of cleaning up the living room. Thankfully, the kids haven’t been drinking too much lately, and no one has vomited on the floor in at least a month. “Small victories,” Ruby mutters and steps up to the sink.
It takes a good hour and a half to clean up, and normally, cleaning the house wears Ruby out enough that she can jump into bed and pass out until she has to get up and get ready for her next shift, but that morning, for some reason, she’s still wide awake. Clarence is passed out in his bedroom, completely undisturbed by the noise from the kitchen, and besides him Ruby is all alone. The house isn’t large by any means, just a ranch with four small bedrooms and the other necessities packed into the most compact square-footage possible, but it feels empty without her brothers and their friends around.
There’s nothing to watch on TV, and she quickly tires of losing at Vic’s shooting games, so Ruby throws a coat on over her hoodie and jeans ensemble and heads outside to make the walk up the hill to Cheyenne’s house.
The morning air is brisk and smells of fall--decaying leaves, bonfires, the crisp smell that cold weather seems to add to the air. All the trees have begun to lose their leaves, and the neighborhood looks brown and desaturated. It’s not beautiful, and no one from the area would kid themselves by pretending it could be. The lake is mucky and questionable; it doesn’t even add to the property value by much. The Ditch is worse off than the Sunny Dayz trailer park up the street, and the whole town knows it.
Cheyenne lives in a nicer house than theirs, closer to the road leading back into town. She has a nice porch they like to sit on in the summer, drinking and watching the neighbors. Her driveway isn’t made of gravel, and her yard actually looks nice most of the time because she doesn’t have three men in the house who only mow the lawn when they feel like it.
Cheyenne’s circumstances are better than Ruby’s, too, and they both know it. Neither of them grew up with much money, but Cheyenne’s older and has had more time to work and save. She has a live-in boyfriend who has a job, too, and he brings in money for the things that Ruby would consider extraneous expenses (desserts, new clothes, air conditioning in the summer).
Ruby shoves her hands into her pockets and leans into the incline as she trudges up the crumbling street. It’s not that she’s jealous; she loves her best friend, and thinks Cheyenne deserves so much more than what she has. It’s the situation that makes her jealous--having friends from high school away at college, some of them married and starting families of their own instead of caring for drunken fathers and troublemaking teenage brothers. She wouldn’t want kids, not now and maybe not ever, and she’d never had any intention of attending college, but sometimes, Ruby wishes she grew up into a normal adult. Sometimes she wishes she wasn’t thrust into the position of “mom” at such a young age and then stuck there, with no end in sight.
Isaac will be 18 in a little less than 4 years, but Vic is already 18 and Ruby’s still caring for him. And Clarence--she’d love nothing more than to just throw him out onto the street, and she knows Vic would wholeheartedly support her, but for some reason, Isaac still has a soft spot for his alcoholic dad. There’s no way she’ll ever be able to fully break free of the family; if she leaves, it’ll be destroying her relationship with her brothers for good, and so she stays.
Family matters. Family will always matter, even if sometimes everyone in her family sucks.
Ruby can see Cheyenne, leaning over the railing of her porch with a cigarette between her fingers. “Hey, Chey!” she calls, waving a hand high in the air, and Cheyenne turns to face her with a big grin.
“Hey, girl! Got all the kids off to school?”
“Yeah!” Ruby shouts back, breaking into a jog so she can reach the house quicker. Cheyenne watches from the porch, an amused smile on her face as she smokes her cigarette. When Ruby gets close enough, Cheyenne walks down the stairs and holds open the gate for her. “Vic brought home another girl last night, if you’ll believe that. I don’t know where he finds these people but apparently the kid can make friends.”
“Girl friends but not girlfriends, right?” Cheyenne asks, raising her eyebrows.
“‘Course. He and Casey are still a thing. Opened the door this morning and they were passed out, all tangled up around each other. It’s cute, you know? I didn’t think Vic would be cut out for an actual relationship.”
Cheyenne just shrugs, pulling the pack of cigarettes from her hoodie pocket and offering it up to Ruby. “You think he’s gonna come out soon?”
“Nah,” Ruby says, shaking her head. She borrows Cheyenne’s lighter to light her cigarette, cupping her hand around the end to keep the flame from flickering out, and then tosses the lighter back. “Not while Clarence is still in the house. If he knew, he’d beat Vic to a pulp.”
“And you said you found ‘em sleeping together this morning? Shit, he better be more careful than that. What if Clarence accidentally walks into the wrong bedroom while he’s drunk?” Cheyenne pops her cigarette back into her mouth and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Vic is a moron.”
“Yeah,” she replies, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “I know. They can’t go to Casey’s house though because his dad is sober, aware, and might even be angrier than Clarence. From what I’ve heard while eavesdropping, at least.”
“It’s sad. Just let the boy live.”
“I know.” Ruby sucks in another lungful of smoke and stares wistfully off into the distance, focusing on the roof of her house. Clarence is still inside, likely fast asleep, and she dreads the thought of heading back there to head to bed herself. “Hey, can I sleep here today?”
Cheyenne rolls her eyes but smiles, hooking her arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “Of course, honey. What are friends for?”