CHAPTER HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO

MOONA POV

The sleeping bag at Raul stinks of weed like the rest of the place. I know they say it’s nature’s herb and all that, but it always smelled like crap to me. It’s only ever made me sick and giggly. I don’t really do giggly things, so I’m better off without the shitty stuff.

  Raul says it will chill me fucking out, but I do chilled even less than I do giggly. He stays up late with the TV on loud. The room is full of the stench, and when I hunker down under my grotty covers that’s when I come to realise everything smells of it here.

      I probably smell like it here.

He has a couple of cats that he doesn’t let out. Their litter tray stinks even worse than the weed. Some random ex-girlfriend left them here, he told me once. He hardly feeds them, so I share my ham sandwich with them, loving the way they purr as they settle down under the covers with me.

 Maybe I can take them on the road with me, but they’ll probably run away.

      I wouldn’t blame them.

      I’d run away from here too if I didn’t need to stay warm for the night.

 Raul isn’t coming on the road with me, not like he promised. We talked about it earlier, but he’d already been snorting his white stash by then. He told me he wasn’t ditching this place for a crappy fucking gig in a caravan somewhere. He told me he doesn’t love me, either. I already knew that. I already knew all of it.

 He says I’m going to have to pay my keep before I leave here, that food doesn’t come cheap even though I’ve only had a couple of slices of bread and I had to tear the crusts off because they were mouldy. It just reinforces everything I already know.

 People are dicks, and nobody gives a fuck. Not Nick and Amie, and not Raul either.

 I’d leave tonight if the memory of my ice-block feet this morning wasn’t still fresh. I’d wait until he passed out and slip past him, maybe try to find some cash to take with me on the way. Cash or drugs to sell. I’m sure I could get a decent price for them, just to set me up.

“Ain’t you gonna watch this with me?” he grunts, and I curse that he knows I’m still awake.

      “I’m fucking tired. Walked all last fucking night.”

      “Yeah, well, you’ll be walking all through this fucking one if you keep speaking to me like I’m a soft fucking asshole.”

      It stings to bite my tongue.

 “Kale’s coming over,” he tells me, and I cringe inside. “He’s looking forward to seeing you.”

      “He can go fuck himself.”

  Raul laughs. “He’s hoping you’ll do that for him. Says he’ll give you a tenner towards your caravan fund.”

 Kale Lugard was a mistake of mine. A stupid idiot who told me I was special.

 Like I said, I’ve never been anywhere near a real man. Kale Lugard is nothing but a joke. A druggie joke who thinks he’s a hard man. He’s not. I punch harder than he does.

      Still, how it ended between us is all the incentive I need to get myself up and out of there. I move the cats and climb out of the sleeping bag. I head to Raul’s grotty bathroom and put on another couple of layers under my clothes.

 He doesn’t even look at me when I head back through and pick up my backpack.

“Where do you think you’re fucking going?”

      “I’m gonna make a move,” I say. 

“Gonna head down south. See if I can get to the coast.”

      He laughs, points to the armchair. 

“Sit your skinny ass back down.”

      I head for the front door regardless, hissing under my breath as he catches me. He moves fast for a stoner. That’ll be the coke. His breath is hot and fucking gross. I give him the finger even as he pins against the wall.

      “Fuck off,” I hiss. “I’m fucking leaving.”

      “You always were a snotty fucking bitch,” he says. “I told you. Kale’s coming. He wants to see you.”

      “And I don’t want to fucking see him.”

      “Tough fucking shit,” he says and then his eyes soften, just a bit.

      For that moment he’s the Raul I always knew. The boy who could convince me to do anything, just with a smile, even though I knew I’d get all the blame for it.

  “There’s some pasta in the cupboard. Why don’t you make yourself a proper dinner?”

      I glare at him. “I can’t pay you for it.”

      He shrugs. “We’re friends. We help each other.”

      Friends.

     

That’s a fucking joke.

 But I’m hungry, even after a crappy sandwich. I know it’s cold outside and I don’t want to walk through those alleys on my own, not right now when I’m already tired enough to drop.

      “Alright,” I say and he smiles.

      “That’s my cute little sis.”

      He ruffles my hair and I cringe.

      I’m not his sister and I never have been.

      He lets me go and I drop my backpack. I head through to the kitchen with a sigh and he takes his TV show off pause.

      “Make me some as well while you’re at it,” he says. “I’m fucking starving.”

 I was only pretending when I spat in Amie’s, I’m not tonight.