Rue

A weight seemed to settle onto my shoulders the second I set foot back into the apartment, as though it was haunted by a severely depressed ghost. I heated up some rice and beans and choked them down as I sat on the couch and did my best to lose myself in mindless TV.

I must have drifted off, because I woke up some time later to the sound of the front door opening. I kept my eyes shut, lay still, and pretended I was still asleep. I wasn’t scared, I just didn’t want to deal with my dad’s bullshit.

I heard the fridge door open and close, my dad’s approaching footsteps. The smack across my cheek didn’t come as a surprise.

Wincing, I didn’t even bother to put on a show of having actually been asleep as I sat up and rubbed my cheek.

“There’s no food,” my dad groused. He smelled faintly of beer. He usually did.

I lounged back down on the couch. “There’s rice and beans in the fridge.”

“I’m not eating that shit.”

“Then you’re going to have to buy groceries.”

“Why’s that my job? You get them.”

I checked the time on my phone, my jaw popping as I yawned. “It’s too late tonight, but if you leave money, I’ll grab some stuff tomorrow.”

“Yeah, nice try,” my dad said, looking down at me with his hands perched on his hips. “Last time I did that, you pocketed some of it. I know how much things cost.”

“Inflation’s crazy. Things are expensive now.”

My dad scoffed, unconvinced. Which was fair. I did keep some of that money for myself. The unfortunate thing about my dad was that he wasn’t stupid, just an asshole. 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said when he continued to loom.

He gave me a sharp smack to the top of my head, his fingers immediately returning to tug the short strands of my hair. “You need to shave this. It looks stupid.”

“Maybe after the bruise you just gave me goes away,” I said, shoving his hand. “Fuck off.”

He gave me another light smack to the head and then did just that, slamming his bedroom door shut behind him like a hormonal teenager. I wished I could do the same, but this was a one bedroom apartment. The couch was all I had.

I winced as I smoothed a hand through my hair, feeling out the shape of the new tender spot on my skull. My dad had never been the type to hand out a good and proper beating, but he could hit damn hard and he used violence like it was punctuation in a conversation. If I ever had anything to say about it, he’d just call me a pussy.

I’d been thinking about shaving my hair for a couple weeks now and I kept not doing it, even as the ends started to curl. I knew it’d make him mad, but maybe it was time he got the fuck over the fact that I’d inherited my mother’s curls. I’d never met the damn woman, unless you counted being born.

Maybe if I ever heard from Ethan again, I’d ask what he thought I should do with my hair.