Chapter 5

"monsters keeping me up at night make me tired in the morning"

Max

I look up to the annoying clock that –out of any dumb reason-needs to make a loud noise at every half and full hour. It strengthens the pulsing in my head and I take another Aspirin. Meanwhile I have put on sweat pants, but I still wear the wet shirt the girl did before, even though the wet cloth is not pleasent anymore, but just disturbing. My parents should've woke up about hours ago, or at least my mother, because poorly I can't pretend to be interested in Matt, so I don't know shit about what he does. But it's better like that. Better when they aren't awake yet, because in my condition I couldn't avoid them.

Just seconds after I ended my thoughts I hear voices from the first floor and I rub my nostrils with my index finger and thumb, because my mother and her husband even annoy me on a floor distance.

„You turned it off!", my mother shouts through the house and I'm sure she argues with my „father" again, who necessarily wants me to call him like this. Because we are a family now. But we are not. This idiot really needs to think, he just marrys my mother and I'm gonna forget about my criminal father and pull off this rich-family-with- model-son-show, but he's wrong.

„Please don't shout at me like that, it's so early.", Matt complains and I hear how somebody walks down the steps behind me.

„No! It should be early. But it's not, definitly not. I have work to do...do you know how exhausting it is to be a good lawyer?"

„Actually I do know, I..."

„Matthew, that's not the same!", my mother yells. „And also we have guests today. Oh, but of course: it's all about you. Just no restraint.", I can't see them, but I'm sure they have arrived on the ground floor now. I slightly turn backwards to passively attend their quarrels.

„Honey, please let's talk in peace, okay? I-„

„You what? You drank too much? Smoked too much? Slept too long??-Yeah, it all applies and I don't need your remarks to know that!", my mother yells and I can hardly believe that she can screech around so obnoxiously so soon after getting up. I just hope nobody mentions me sitting here on the sofa.

„Maximilian!", too late and to all abundance she even calls me by my full name. I make a face, then I directly look into my mother's direction, how she marchs toward the mustard-yellow sofa I'm sitting on.

„Mum, please don't shout like that."

„O, another one who drank too much. How about a good morning, or even better: good afternoon.", she says while looking at Matt sharp, but good this morning...afternoon...whatever is certainly not.

„i have so much work to do and I need to prepare everything for the brunch. And you two don't have anything better to do than getting drunk." The thought of the brunch with Amanda and her parents to come gives me an even bigger headache. When neither her husband nor I answer anything, she throws her hands in the air in an angry gesture and lets them down again, then she turns around and goes straight up the wide staircase and I can still see her disappearing into the bathroom. A place I won't be going to in the near future, bacause I want to avoid my mother as best as I can.

Her nerve killing husband-they call him Matt- sits down next to me onto the hideous sofa and looks at me in a way as if having a hangover together would be some kind of father-son-thing.I decide to stifle his hopes at once by just putting the word „Coffee" in the room and hurrying off to the kitchen before he can say anything else.