"I know people hurt. Hell, I hurt a lot of days, but you know," she paused to drink from the plastic apple glass. "I figured out a long time ago to not use it as an excuse to fail. I saw people in high school that had it all: Cars, money, clothes--everything, usually always floated by their parents because they'd never worked a day in their lives. People get help from their folks, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but being stupid because you can get away with it is failure of itself. So when they did fail a class or couldn't stay on the football team because of missed practices or failing those classes, they blamed their parents." Naea was glad to have a bit of a sounding board tonight. Pierce, she was sure, had heard more bullshit and dealt with a lot and yet here he was, helping her. Listening to her. "And yet, there I was, on my own because my father couldn't keep his shit together, his family disowned me, working my ass off and passing all my classes but I had to drop out because I was on my own. Rent ain't cheap." She was starting to ramble. Damn you, blackberry brandy.
Damn you!!
Naea frowned at the chill surrounding them and did just what Pierce told her: She drank some more. Her brain was beginning to feel rather light, and she figured she should likely just keep it to one. "I wonder what the deal is. It was fine before Mary called me, and I was wondering whether or not to call David. Weird."
She chose to ignore the hair standing on the back of her neck.