Cait and I were visiting her mom and aunt one weekend. Her mom was doing okay by then. She hadn't started working again but kept saying she was going to soon. And she hadn't gotten her own place yet either. She said she was looking, but Cait and I both thought she was lying about that.
Whenever we were there, we slept in the bedroom that was supposed to be her mom's, and she would always say, “I'll just sleep on the floor in Jessica's room, I don't mind at all."
But it was obvious she never used her room.
One time, Cait even put some things under the top mattress, just before we left. You couldn't see them, but it would've been impossible to sleep on, and when we came back weeks later, the sheets were different but those things were still there.
I'm not saying Aunt Beth and her sister were fucking each other or anything, I don't think they did, really, because of the way she reacted when Cait told her about Lucy. But there was definitely something going on.
Anyway, that time, when we were visiting them, Cait and I had gone out on Saturday, and we ended up chatting with two guys, and then we went with them to a party.
I think they quickly realized they had no chance with us, and so, almost as soon as we got there, they disappeared. There were quite a few people there, but we didn't know anyone, of course, and so we decided to leave. But those guys had given us a bottle of beer each, and we went outside to the porch to finish them before we left.
There was a hammock there, and we sat there and talked for a while.
We were kissing a lot too, I guess, and then this woman came out to the porch to smoke.
She said, “Hi,” and Cait and I just nodded and smiled at her before we went back to talking and kissing. We noticed how the woman was staring at us the whole time, but we didn't care.
Suddenly, and like she was angry, she threw her cigarette on the floor and crushed it under her shoe, and then she shouted, “You girls should be ashamed of yourselves!” and then she went back inside.
We were stunned for a few seconds and stared wide-eyed at each other, and then we burst out laughing.
But ten minutes later the woman came back out to have another cigarette, and she just stood there without a word, staring at us again, so just to spite her, we kissed more, and Cait even took my hand and sucked on my fingers and she stroked my cheek and put her thumb in my mouth and let me suck on it as she kissed and licked my neck. And I moaned, louder than I had to really, and soon the woman threw her cigarette away and shook her finger at us and said, “How dare you!?” and then she stomped back inside.
Cait and I giggled, and I whispered, “Wow."
"Well, I thought she was kinda cute,” Cait said, and we laughed again, but this time the woman came back right away, and now she was carrying a glass of beer, and then suddenly she threw the beer at us.
Cait got most of it all over her and just a little bit splashed on me, and Cait jumped up and shouted, “What the fuck!”
The pullover she was wearing was one of her favorite ones, and now it was soaking wet and beer was dripping from her face, and the woman just suddenly looked really confused, and Cait shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
"I'm… I'm sorry,” the woman said, and then she ran away down the driveway. She stopped halfway and stood there with her back to us, and Cait actually clenched her fists and took a step towards her.
“Cait, don't," I said.
The woman turned around and came back, and said, “I'm so sorry, I don't know why I did that,” and I opened my mouth to say something, and I was probably going to shout at her too, but then she said, “Come home with me."
"What?" I said.
"Please come home with me," she said.
Cait said, “You're crazy, why would we…?”
“It's not far, it's just five minutes from here. Please."
“Of course not," I said. "Just go away.”
“Please,” the woman said.
“No!" Cait shouted. "Crazy bitch! Just go already.”
“Please,” she said again. “I don't know why I did that, I really don't. I'll pay for your sweater. And I'll give you something else to wear. Let me say I'm sorry.”
“You've said it,” Cait said, and she was calming down, wiping her face off with the back of her hands. “It's fine. Just go away.”
But now people were starting to come outside to see what was going on, and the woman looked at them and she looked almost terrified, and she walked backward off the porch.
“Please,” she said. “It's not far,” and now all I wanted was to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Cait clearly felt the same way, because she said, “Yeah okay, fine,” and she looked at me and I just nodded and so we went with her.
She had said five minutes, but walking there took almost twenty minutes, and she trotted a few feet in front of us the whole way. We had to hurry to keep up, and she only turned to us twice, saying, “I really am sorry,” and “We're almost there."
Then we arrived at an apartment building, and we followed her into her apartment. The first thing we noticed was all this stuff all over her living room floor. Toy cars, and crayons, and teddy bears and stuff, and Cait and I looked at each other.
The woman saw that and said, “He's at his father's,” and then she went into another room and left us standing there looking around.
I think we had been expecting something more like a padded cell with weird stuff written on the walls or something like that, but it was just a nice, normal living room, and then she came back with a black t-shirt that she gave to Cait.
"You can keep that,” she said, and Cait took her pullover off and put the t-shirt on, and the woman politely turned away when she did.
Then she walked over to a cupboard and found a metal box that was in it. She took some money out of it, and Cait said, “You don't have to do that. It's fine."
"But I have to.”
"No, really," Cait said. "It's fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
"But I really should…”
“No," Cait said. "It's fine.”
There was an awkward silence for a while, and she was just standing there looking at us, and then I said, “So, I think we should go now.”