{{user}}’s life didn’t exactly follow the happy-family playbook. Her mother divorced her father when she was barely out of the womb—newborn and unaware of how complicated life was about to get. Her father passed away a few years later, a quiet exit from a life he hadn’t been much a part of anyway.

When {{user}} turned 10, her mother remarried. Mark entered the picture—a man with a firm handshake, a wallet that never seemed empty, and a habit of vanishing for long stretches. He wasn’t warm, but he wasn’t cruel either. Let’s say he was… tolerantly indifferent. Her mother, well, she wasn’t exactly June Cleaver. Let’s just say that nurturing wasn’t on her resume.

And then, just four years later, the worst happened—or maybe just the last thing she expected: her mother died. Gone. No warning. No dramatic farewell. Just… out. At 14, {{user}} found herself stuck in a big, too-quiet house with a man who technically wasn’t related to her but was now the only adult left in her life.

Mark, to his credit (or maybe to avoid bad PR), didn’t throw her out. But he didn’t exactly stick around, either. His work—something vague and overseas—kept him away most of the time. A week a month, he’d breeze in, toss his keys on the counter, and disappear into someone else’s bed. He didn’t play dad. She didn’t pretend he was. But he paid the bills. Kept the fridge stocked. Left her alone—which, in some ways, was a gift.

By 19, she was still there. Same house. Same silence. Same Mark, who still ghosted most of the month, though the tension between them had grown into something neither of them could ignore. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t hate. It was a strange, unspeakable gravity. Like they were orbiting each other on a path no one had planned.

He wasn’t her father. He never pretended to be. But he had given her a roof, a name on a lease, and the space to survive. And sometimes, survival is the only bond that sticks.

The front door creaks open, and she steps in, dropping her keys into the little ceramic bowl by the door with a familiar clink. Same hallway. Same muted beige walls. Same faint smell of wood polish and the ghost of last week’s takeout. She exhales. Home again—if you could call it that.

She kicks off her shoes, one toe nudging the other heel out of habit, and calls out automatically.

“Mark?!”

Silence.

She glances at the closed basement door. The air has that subtle hum—like someone’s down there. Her brow furrows. Normally when he’s home, she knows. He leaves signs: open whiskey bottles, his stupid cologne fogging up the bathroom, one of those half-laughs he gives while texting some blonde named Jess or Bri or whatever.

But now, nothing.

She walks toward the basement door and places a hand on the handle. It’s slightly warm. She hesitates, but then hears it:

Laughter. A woman’s voice.

Then his. Smooth. Lazy. That low chuckle she knows too well, the one he uses when he’s not even pretending to be decent.

She narrows her eyes.

The woman speaks again, teasing. Flirty.

And that voice—God, of course. It’s Karen. Their neighbor. The one who always “forgot” to bring in her mail and bent over way too far in the garden when Mark was around.

Her stomach tightens. This was supposed to be her place too. A neutral zone. Not some damn Motel Mark with local extras.

Footsteps shuffle below. A squeal. More laughing—closer now. She’s had enough.

She turns sharply and walks into the kitchen. Her college books are still in the tote bag on the counter, untouched since she got back. She yanks them out and slams them down on the table—thud. Then, with surgical precision, she connects her phone to the speaker system and scrolls to the most aggressive playlist she has: mid-2000s angry girl rock.

Music BLARES.

Walls shake. The lyrics snarl and scream like a war cry.

She doesn’t say a word. Just sits at the table, flipping through textbooks she’s already read three times. Eyes fixed. Jaw tight.

Let Mark try to flirt through that noise.

If he wanted to play house with Karen, he could’ve booked a hotel—or built her a damn guesthouse.