*****

Dawn blinked sluggishly, her eyes struggling to focus on the wall in front of her. She was fucked up. This was some good shit.

The rain had finally stopped. She took a swallow of her drink.

Ryan would be disappointed in her. He had always helped her get a job and he would try and hide money from her so she wouldn't spend it all on liquor or drugs. He never understood why she needed something else. He never tried to understand.

Ryan didn't need the extra lift the needle gave her. She needed it to remind her what normal people felt like. She just needed the rush, the influx of goodness and anything that made her feel this good couldn't be wrong. Ryan, he didn't need anything. She used to offer him a drink when he'd come home all down. That kid could mope. He'd come in, bruised up and wouldn't answer her when she'd try and talk to him. She'd offer him a drink, just to loosen up and he'd just walk away. He was ungrateful. Didn't he understand that there was nothing besides the liquor that could make it better? Didn't he realize that life was nothing but pain and hurt?

Her hand fell limply against the paper with her baby's phone number on it. He wouldn't want her to call. Why start a habit she couldn't keep? Hah, he'd think that was funny. She had so many habits. Smoking, drinking, junk, whatever. Keeping in touch with her kids, that wasn't a habit.

She wasn't a bad mother. She just had a bad teacher. Her ma, well, she was never really a ma. She died when Dawn was twenty and Dawn hadn't really cared. Her ma never had anything good to say to her, she only bitched at her about the bad choices she was making and all the fuck-ups she made. Dawn was a better mother than that woman was. Dawn took care of her kids.

She didn't realize that she was crying. Dammit, she never cried. This was some really good shit. It had to be the junk, she never fucking cried.

She wondered if he was glad that the rain had stopped. She wondered if he was happy. Sometimes, it had seemed like he was happy in Chino. That brunette she caught in his bedroom, she had made her baby smile. Dawn had liked her. She knew that the girl had taken care of him and Dawn had been glad that she could make him smile. She wondered who was making him smile now. Did he ever smile when his new parents talked to him? Was he happy there?

"Dawn? What the fuck are you doing?"

Jake was a bastard sometimes. She stumbled to her feet and leaned against the door to their bedroom. "What the fuck do you want, Jakey?"

"Come to bed, Dawn…are you fucking crying?"

"I'm not crying…I was thinking about Ryan…" She said as she sat down on the rumpled bed beside him.

"Who?" He asked.

She shoved him. "Ryan. My baby, you remember…"

"Oh yeah, your kid. What's the matter? He call you or something?"

"Nah…I just…I miss him," Dawn said.

Jake wrapped his arms around her. He smelled like whiskey and nicotine. "Don't cry, baby, Jakey's here for you…"

She sighed and let him hold her. He started kissing her neck and her face and she just closed her eyes again. Jakey would take care of her.

*****