Tess and I talked on the phone as often as we could manage. First for hours each day, but she had to excuse herself more and more often because she was tired. And I believed her because, as time went on, she sounded more and more listless and exhausted. I had read up on stories from people caring for sick family members, and accredited her exhaustion to the emotional burden of caring for a sick loved one while knowing that, in the end, there is shit all you can do but hope. I was determined to support her in any way she allowed me to, and to be there for her when the inevitable would happen.
Outside the office, I stayed by myself and avoided the family (and especially Aunt Danielle, who had heard about Tess leaving from Bill) like the plague. Which honestly wasn’t hard, considering I never got out of the office before 7:30 PM and then got something to eat before going home, so the house was usually dark by the time I stepped through the front door.
The guys at work were awesome and did everything they could think of to lift my spirits. They even snuck me into a strip joint one day. When I told Tess about it, she thought it was a great idea and even encouraged the guys to do that more often. It only helped marginally, though. I still missed her. She also started talking about girlfriends my own age again and, on half our calls, she made me promise I would “keep going and hang on” again. For some reason, though, it no longer sounded like she just wanted my promise to “keep going and hang on
When Golden Boy left for college about six weeks later, I didn’t bother to make an appearance at his farewell party. The prick was moving to the next town over, for Christ’s sake. And, apparently, they got him a nice new Mustang GT Fastback, so he could make the drive home whenever he wanted. No need to get sentimental about it just because they couldn’t sneak into his bed every single night anymore. They’d make up for it on the weekends, I was sure about that. Though I couldn’t be certain, because I would have rather spent the weekends living in my car than staying in that house while he was there.
It also didn’t help that Claire had, apparently, rediscovered their access to my bank account. Each month I would check the balance after my salary was deposited, just to find a transfer of a few hundred dollars to Logan’s account. When she had transferred a whopping eight-hundred dollars one month, the desire to stay clear of them lost out to the need to confront her.
When she told me that Logan needed some extra cash for “college stuff”, and Aaron didn’t see any problem with using my hard earned savings for it, I almost went postal on them both. On Claire, for simply giving my money to her Golden Boy. On Aaron, for happily going along with it after not only ridiculing the way I earned it, but also not having spent a damn dime on me for almost two years. Bear in mind, despite barely spending time in that house before Tess left, I was still diligently paying my three-hundred dollars rent each month, in addition to paying for my own food, phone bills, car insurance, and gas. Somehow, they still felt the need to take more.
That was the day I finally decided that I really needed to get the hell out of there. On the days I didn’t have to interact with the family, I was just ... better. As long as I could just spend time with Tess, and had her apartment as some kind of sanctuary, I was able to deal with all the shit. But with her gone now, and with none of the direct family members even thinking of inquiring about the reasons for my mood, I had to step up my apartment-hunting.
Going by what Tess had paid for her apartment, it would cost me at least three times of what I was paying Aaron per month if I wanted something in driving distance to work and school, but I would get two or three times more space in addition to my own bathroom! And once I turned seventeen, the police wouldn’t force me to go home anymore, even if the family decided to call them as yet another way to mess with me.
Now, strictly legally speaking, minors can enter into legal contracts. The problem is, however, that the only ones actually bound by those contracts would be the legally adults. Landlords indeed can rent apartments out to minors, but as long as I wasn’t emancipated I could just skip on the rent and leave the place devastated. The landlord could be left sitting on the losses. To get emancipated, I would either have to wait until I turned seventeen, or prove that I was already living alone while managing my own finances. Even after I turned seventeen it was still a long shot to get emancipated, as long as I wasn’t physically abused or orphaned. So, I decided to simply make myself look as good and dependable as possible for landlords.
