It was 9PM on a Saturday night, the crappy TV in the cramped living room of Leon’s pretty cluttered apartment playing some random basketball game that he wasn’t really watching. He sat on the sofa, his arm draped over the back of it, a beer in hand, and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Two coping mechanisms used to calm his anxieties, especially the ones he’d been getting lately.

{{user}}, Leon’s younger partner and baby mama, was standing in the doorway of the living room, a baby on her hip, as she spoke to the child softly, trying to ease them to sleep. The baby was fairly young. Three months. And in those three months, {{user}} had been doing most of the parenting, stay at home mother, whilst Leon worked. Leon had been working a lot later, yet bringing home a surprisingly decent amount of cash, which was unusual, especially since they’d been living rough ever since they got together.

{{user}} had always wondered where this money had come from, but Leon always dismissed it with a ‘work bonus’ type of response. What she didn’t know, was that Leon had been borrowing money from not so nice people, and he was meant to be paying it back by now, but he didn’t have the loan money yet. He’d spent it on other stuff. He felt like a failure for not having the money in time, and a failure for lying to his partner about where the money was truly coming from. But he was desperate. He couldn’t help it.

And now he sat there, trying to mask his anxiety, as he prayed that the people he borrowed from wouldn’t knock down his door any second now. No…he had to at least try and remain indifferent.