Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

I’ll lie and tell her I’m just experimenting. I mean, maybe I am.
I could tell her Liv means nothing and we don’t date, but I like what she
does to my body and it’s nothing to worry about. But I catch sight of my
brother’s picture hanging on the rearview mirror, and I close my mouth
again.
One kid dead. Another who’s… Not normal.
Yeah, her whole world will fall apart. She’s hanging on by a thread as it
is. My family is hanging on by a thread. I don’t want to put something out
there that I can’t take back.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I whisper. “Just go.”
She stares at me.
“I’m not going to get pregnant,” I blurt out. “I promise.”
I know she’s hurt I won’t talk to her, but if she knew, she’d wish she
didn’t.
After a moment, she sits back in her seat and pulls away from the curb,
driving us to my grandmother’s.
My mother won’t eat after five o’clock, so these dinners with my
grandmother happen early in the afternoon and every week now, given that
I’m so close to the ball and getting my ducks in a row for college. Mimi likes
to be kept abreast of everything.
Tucker opens the front door before my mother has a chance to and steps
aside for us to enter. I swipe my phone from my school bag before he has a
chance to take it for me, and then I follow my mom into the foyer.
“Good afternoon,” I hear Mimi say.
My mom embraces her, their lips not quite touching each other’s skin as I
shiver in the cold marble room. I look around, inhaling the scent of talcum
powder and lavender that always pervaded this house, like my grandmother
was ninety when she’s only sixty-five.
The white walls are only discernible from the white floors by the streaks
of gray in the stone under my feet. I like white, but this house is like 1980s
white—white wood with gold fixtures, splashes of yellow, and beveled
mirrors where the frames are also mirrors. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to
look art deco, but it just looks stupid.
“Hi, Mimi.” I smile, mimicking my mother and embracing her with a
kissing sound.
“Oh, you’re getting so pretty,” she coos.
She says that every time. Getting pretty. Not quite there, but getting there.