Poppy said I should spend some time in the hot tub. That seems like a better idea than getting dragged into more Tash-style crap tonight.

I step out onto the back patio. The pool is covered to keep it warm, as I haven’t emptied it yet. The weather has stayed nice longer than it usually does. I set the bottle and the glass on the bar out back and flip the lid off the hot tub. Steam billows out, fogging the air briefly. I haven’t had a party in a while, so I know it’s clean. I strip down to nothing—there’s no one here, and my neighbors can’t see me—grab my drink and the bottle, and climb into the tub. Sinking down, I close my eyes. The heat feels good, but the silence is hard to take. It makes it difficult to drown out all the shit in my head.

I keep thinking this thing with Tash is going to end—that she’ll get tired of screwing me around. But every time she’s in town, she sends me messages, and every time I give in and the same stupid shit happens.

It’s a lot like how my mum used to be with me. There were good moments, times when I thought she gave a shit about more than the bottom line, more than status and prestige. But after Quinn died, everything changed.

She’d always been a live wire of a woman. She had cycles. I didn’t understand them as a kid, but as I got older I learned they were medication based. When my mum was on her meds, she was almost sweet. She didn’t yell as much, didn’t get angry, didn’t start fights with my dad. But when she was off them, she was out of control. Any little thing could send her reeling.

Quinn had been the easy kid. He listened, did what he was asked, didn’t push buttons. I wasn’t the same. And then she blamed me for his death, understandably. If I hadn’t taken the shortcut, he’d still be alive.

Once he was gone, my dad worked longer and longer hours, and my mum couldn’t cope. Most of her family had moved to the States, and so we did too. It was supposed to be a fresh start. My dad stayed four weeks and went home—not to Scotland, but to Italy. He filed for divorce as soon as he was gone. So he became another thing I’d taken away from her.

After that I focused on hockey, and my mum focused on my failures.

After practice, in front of all the coaches and other parents, she’d tell me I’d tried hard and done a good job, and I could do better next time. But the second we got to the car, the real her would come out. She was all fangs and rage. And even that was nothing compared to what I’d endure once we were home and there weren’t any witnesses. My failures gave her license to use me as an outlet for her anger.

Tash knew all of that. For some ridiculous reason I believed I could share it with her. I told her all about how messed up my childhood was, about my brother, about the abuse, and about how I deserved all of it. She’d listened quietly, and then used it against me.

She keeps doing it even now, probably because her childhood was equally messed up, maybe even more. But I’ll never know, because Tash is good at telling me what I want to hear, or what she thinks I want to hear—or maybe what she wants me to hear. She never said the most important thing: that I was enough for her. Just me. Because I wasn’t.

Maybe that’s why I keep showing up when she calls. She affirms what I already know: that I’m not worth giving a shit about. What they say about victims is true when it comes to me. I don’t know how to exist without the chaos, and I seek it because it confirms the message beaten into me as a kid: I deserve to be a victim, because my little brother was mine.

I down the glass of vodka in three long swallows and pour a refill. I polish off the second glass, hoping it will stop the turmoil that swirls around and around in my head.

I close my eyes, wishing for a way to shut down my mind for a while. Flashes of Tash with Erin make my stomach roll. I can’t keep those images from pushing their way to the front—the look on Tash’s face when I denied her, my satisfaction at making her mad, my anger over falling for her bullshit again.

I try to think about Poppy instead, about her softness, about how her touching me wasn’t something I immediately hated, and had eventually liked. I want that feeling again.

But I can’t hold on to any good thought, because Tash overrides everything.

I try a different tactic and consider what Miller said about Poppy having been at my house before. As hard as I try, I can’t find any memories of her, even though she feels familiar.

I shouldn’t have asked for her number tonight. I should focus on keeping things as professional and straightforward as possible, if I want her to have me as a client again. It’s obvious she recognized me. Something must’ve gone down—probably something I should feel bad about. But I don’t feel capable of letting it go. I want to know what I did, or said. And if it was bad, I want to fix it.

I sift through all the parties I’ve thrown since I moved into this house a year and a half ago. There’ve been so many, and I’m not great at moderation when it comes to drinking. It’s either one beer or a lot of hard liquor. And when I throw a party, it’s all about the booze and the bunnies and the fucking. Or at least it has been. But I was never as bad as the rumors made me out to be. Until Tash made them a constant reality.

Ever since things fell apart with Tash, I’ve been looking at my choices and where they’ve gotten me. It’s not anywhere good.

I have to stop fighting to remember Poppy because it’s giving me a headache. All I keep getting are flashes of parties from high school, which isn’t even remotely helpful.