Free The Awesome by Eva Darrows

printed ivy pattern as it twisted its way toward the ceiling. She poked and squeezed, I cringed and swallowed my whimpers. I was tough, damn it, even if my nerve endings demanded I curl in a corner and thrash like I’d diddled an electrical socket.
    Eventually, something cold touched my skin followed by a flat, steady pressure as Mom put her palm against my back to hold the skin together.
    “Promise me something?”
    “What?”
    “You’ll go on that date tomorrow, and before you get all pissy-pants over the suggestion, listen to me, Margaret Jane.” She pulled away her hand to sit on the edge of the tub, peering at me from beneath her too-plucked eyebrows. I sniffled, wiping my runny nose against my shoulder. “I’m not telling you that so you’ll throw your panties at your date. I tell you that because life goes on despite our jobs. It’s too short not to have fun while we can. Sitting at home with guns and silver expecting the worst is no way to live. Trust me on that. I know.”
    The sweatshirt worked its way down my front, and I shifted to wrap an arm across my chest so my boobs didn’t join the conversation. Moving strained my cut some, but not enough to rip me open. Whatever Mom did back there helped. “Listen to you, being all Mom-like and crap.”
    She flinched. “Cut me some slack, will you?”
    “What? You aren’t offended by that. Come on.”
    She shrugged, though it wasn’t an easy, fluid thing like she didn’t care. It was more like she cared too much and didn’t want to show it. “I know I’m a fuck-up. I wasn’t raised normal, and I sure in Hell didn’t know how to raise a kid, so I had to wing it. It’s not a lot, but I’m trying over here.”
    “It’s enough, Mom. Seriously.” She stood, escaping the bathroom with a stack of bloody towels. “Mom, it’s enough,” I called after her, feeling like a jackass. Sometimes, I wished I did that thing where I thought before I spoke. Unfortunately for me and everyone else, I had a perpetual case of diarrhea of the mouth.
    “Wait.” I left my toilet perch to follow her, catching her as she was about to descend into the pit of our basement to do laundry. “Please wait?”
    “What?”
    “... I’ll go on the date.”
    She forced a smile, taking the basement steps two at a time to get away from me.
     
     
    H AVE I MENTIONED that I’m a dink? Because if not, let me say it here: I’m a dink. Some girls get the butterflies-in-stomach thing over important stuff like their prom or their first boyfriend. I got them over seeing a guy I’d already pseudo-banged, and screw the stomach butterflies, these were stomach pterodactyls. This felt like an execution, not a dinner date.
    I picked a black shirt in case my cut split open—visibly bleeding to death would slash my appeal factor in half—a pair of jeans, and a pair of sandals I borrowed from my mom. The best part was when Mom insisted on painting my toenails the same color as the turquoise beads along the sides of the sandals. I couldn’t bend, so she did it for me. They looked cute in a dorky way, and her offer to give me a pedicure meant that the tension from earlier was officially off the map.
    “You look great,” Mom said from the couch, her bare feet propped on the coffee table. She had a bowl of popcorn perched on her lap. I watched as she threw a fistful at her face, catching more kernels than not, though a few fluffy pieces peppered her pink hair.
    “Thanks.”
    “Do I get to meet him? Or are you hiding me away like your dirty secret?”
    I checked my face in the hallway mirror, ensuring my makeup hadn’t smeared to make me look like a KISS groupie reject. “If he comes in you can, but he seems shy. I’m not dragging him out of his car if he beeps.”
    “I’d pay twenty bucks to see you dragging your date into the house by his hair. It’d be reverse Tarzan and Jane.”
    “Whatever.” I grabbed my purse right as a silver BMW pulled in my driveway. I didn’t know if Ian