“Indie?” I call, running after her.
What the fuck is happening?
I get to the bathroom just as she locks me out. “Indie?” I shout, knocking on the door. She’s retching. “Open up. You’re being sick!” I knock again but she ignores me. “Indie, babe, please open the door. I thought you were better.”
She throws up again. Jesus.
“Indie, please let me in.” I lean against the door, useless. It’s a couple of agonising minutes before she says anything.
“I’m fine,” she rasps.
“You’re not fine. You’re being sick.”
The toilet flushes, and I hear her open a cabinet.
“Indie?”
“Just rubbing toothpaste all over my teeth and mouth. Please go away.”
“I’m not going anywhere. What just happened?” I wait, and no reply comes. “Indie?”
The door unlocks. She rubs her forehead.
Her eyes are bloodshot. “I’m sorry. I thought I was over the bug. I hope you don’t catch it, too.”
I frown. “You’ve been fine for a while.”
“Mostly. It’s been on and off.”
There has to be more to it. No one has a sickness bug this long. My heart races. “Do you think you could be pregnant?”
“No. It’s not that at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I finished my period a couple days ago. It’s the time of year. There’s a sickness bug going around uni. I think we’re all passing it back and forth to each other.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t need to. It’s my own fault. I’m still trying to continue uni and work while being ill, and it’s not helping.”
Is she lying? Why would she lie about being unwell? And I’ve just witnessed her being sick.
“I should go and get an early night. I’ve not slept well.”
“Indie…”
“Spencer, I’m okay. Or I will be. Lesson learnt. I need to listen to my body when it tells me to slow down.”
“You’re going to take some some time off work and uni?”
She nods. “I don’t have another shift until after Christmas. The full-time staff don’t want time off then; the tips are too good. I’ll take the rest of the week off uni, though.”
“Let me come home with you.”
Her blink is heavy, like I’ve suggested something so outrageous, she needs a minute to consider whether or not I’m being serious.
I’m asking to take you home, not to be my accomplice while we do over a jeweller.
“Is that not okay?” I ask.
“Um, no, of course it is, Spence. But you shouldn’t stay. You might catch whatever it is.”
I can almost feel her panic. Her tongue has been in my mouth.
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. I want to enjoy Christmas with you, and we can’t do that if you spend weeks hugging the toilet. Come on, I’ll let you tuck me in. Then you can come home and… eat.”
She walks out of my house like she’s afraid of catching something in it. I drive us, for the very first time, to her house. She’s told me the road before, but I don’t know which house.
We park in her drive, in a tiny cul-de-sac, and she gets out. There are no cars here but there could be in the garage.
My pulse races as we walk to the front door.
Indie lets us in and flicks the light on.
It’s small, and the décor is a little outdated, but it’s clean, tidy, and smells like that Fresh Linen Zoflora my mum is obsessed with. Someone keeps the place spotless.
I look around like a kid at Disneyland, taking everything in and committing it to memory. I can’t believe she’s let me come in. This is huge.
“Where are your parents?” I ask.
She keeps walking towards the stairs. “They’re away.”
Away? “Anywhere nice?”
Shrugging, she leads me up to her room. “Visiting friends. If you say anything about the amount of pictures I have of you and us, I will kick you.”
She closes the door behind us, and I begin to snoop. With a wide smile, I check out every photo pinned to a sage-coloured board on her walls. Her room is modern, with a white wood bed, matching furniture, sage bedding, and an armchair. She has a laptop sitting on a desk, and vanity table beside it. The stuffed toys I’ve won her are at the end of the bed.
Indie has decorated her room but not the rest of the house. Not her responsibility, I suppose. I don’t know what she was embarrassed about. This place is nice.
But the aging décor probably isn’t the reason she’s never invited anyone in. I want to meet her parents before I go back to LA.
Thirty-Six
Indie
Spencer is standing in my room.
I rub the ache in my chest.
All I can think about is getting him out of it. He studies the pictures on my pinboard with a little too much interest.
It’s the one time my house has been safe to bring him back to. But I’m still lying to him, and I hate myself for it.
Dad will never come home.
I want to be honest, to open up and tell him everything. The words just won’t come out. No matter how much I understand that my parents drinking isn’t my fault, I still feel like I’m less because of it. I just want to continue being me to the people I love.
No one needs to know. I can’t see Mum wanting to tell strangers all about our past. If things work with Spencer, I can say that Mum and I are working on our relationship after never being close, and Dad died from liver failure. It’s not only alcoholics who are at risk from that.
Of course, he will ask when Dad died. He’ll be pissed that I didn’t tell him at the time. There is no way around that one, so I’ll just have to accept that he’s going to be annoyed.
“Indie,” he says, circling his arms almost all the way around me. Protecting and comforting, nothing is quite as bad when he is here. He’s my human shield. The protective bar on the rollercoaster’s carriage. “Are you feeling okay?”
I close my eyes and lean on him. “Tired.”
“Why
