Page 21 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

She stood, took two slow steps toward me, and before she said a word, she raised her hand and slapped me across the face. The sting came instantly. The imprint of her fingers burned against my cheek, carrying the stale smell of cigarette smoke.

“Gianni was with Oliver last night?” she asked. Only then did I notice her eyes were red and glassy with tears.

“Yes,” I said quietly, my hand rising to my cheek.

Another slap cracked across my face, harder this time, knocking me back a step.

“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” she shouted.

She lunged at me, grabbed my hair, and yanked me to the floor. Pain shot through my scalp, ripping a scream from my throat.

My lungs filled with shallow breaths as she brought her fists down on my back, blow after blow. My eyes burned with tears, my vision blurring as one thought kept circling in my head.What had she found out?

She never cried without a reason. The last time I’d seen her like this was in 1997. when Gianni showed up on our doorstep, high and wrecked from using.

“No,” I whispered.

“Stop!” I shouted.

I pushed the hair out of my face and tilted my head up to look at her, but she only slapped me harder. The cigarette between her fingers grazed my neck, and heat bit into my skin.

I screamed. The veins in my neck stood out, my face burned, and tears spilled down my cheeks.

“Harry fired me,” she said, nodding as she slapped me again. “He said I can’t work for them because my own son stole his yacht worth two million fucking pounds.” Her voice cracked into a scream. “And you covered for him.”

The room tilted. The kitchen darkened at the edges until it blurred into black. My chest rose and fell in frantic breaths while her lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear a word. A sharp ringing swallowed every sound. I dragged in another breath, yet my lungs still felt empty.

I wanted to ask,What did I do?But I couldn’t force the words out.

Black spots crowded my vision until they swallowed everything. The spinning pulled me under, dragging me back to 1997.

It was the first time I’d seen Gianni like that.

He came home with his eyes half open, barely able to keep himself upright. His black T-shirt was stained with vomit, his black jeans torn and soaked with urine. By then we knew something was wrong, that he was taking something. We just didn’t know what. I never understood why there were so many needle marks on his arm. At first, he hid them under long sleeves. I caught a glimpse once, but after a while he stopped hiding them.

Mother noticed him in a heartbeat after I did.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she rushed across the room, slapping him hard across the face.

“You will be the death of me,” she shouted as he laughed, while she was the one crying. “Do you hate me this much?” she asked, cupping his face.

I took a step forward, wanting to pull them apart and drag him upstairs to clean him up. But before I could reach them, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Not you, I hate me!” he shouted. “Me. I hate me.” His voice broke into sobs. “I hate myself so much because I’m useless, because I can’t do shit.”

He let her go.

“It would be easier for all of us if I just disappeared.”

“Where did I fail in raising you?” she whispered, reaching for him as he pushed past her.

“Mom, he has a problem.” My lower lip trembled. “Can’t you see he’s destroying himself?”

I caught up to him and slipped his arm over my shoulders. The stench of urine and vomit made my nose wrinkle. I wiped away my tears, lifted my head, and carried him upstairs, shutting out everything but the desperate need to bring him back to himself.

I could hear her crying downstairs. Her screams tore through the apartment, followed by the sharp sound of something breaking.

Gianni’s eyes closed shut, then slowly opened again.