Flashback – Blair Maddox, Age 12
I was twelve when I learned what abandonment tastes like.
It tasted like metal. Like pennies and blood and bile in the back of your throat. Like your name being yelled through a slammed door, then nothing. Just silence, heavy and ugly and final.
My dad didn't say goodbye.
He didn't kiss my forehead. He didn't look back.
One minute he was screaming at my mom, the next he was gone. Left the front door wide open. Left the living room lights on. Left me. Left us.
I stood there in my too-small pajamas, toes digging into the cheap carpet, staring at the empty space where his boots used to be. Where his scent—leather and bourbon—used to linger. It didn't smell like him anymore.
Now it just smelled like smoke.
And vodka.
And her.
My mom was already yelling at the TV, mascara down her cheeks, barefoot and spilling gin on the floor. She didn't even notice I was still awake. Didn't notice I'd stopped crying hours ago.
I went outside.
It was cold. Summer had just started, but I still felt like I was freezing.
There were half-smoked cigarettes in the rusted tray by the steps. My mom's. She always left them there, lipstick smeared on the filter like a kiss from a ghost.
I stared at them.
I wasn't thinking. I wasn't feeling.
I just—
Picked one up.
Put it to my lips.
Lit it with her red lighter—the one that said FUCK IT in cracked gold letters.
And I breathed in.
I choked so hard I thought my lungs would tear open. My eyes burned. My throat screamed.
But I did it again.
And again.
Until it didn't burn anymore. Until it felt like something else was hurting more than my chest.
I sat on the steps for hours, knees to my chest, watching the sky turn from black to purple to pink, and I smoked three of those cigarettes. My first. My second. My third.
And the whole time, all I could think was:
He didn't even take his jacket.
He just left.
That's the day I stopped waiting to be saved.
That's the day I learned how to burn before anyone else could.