I sit on the edge of the king-sized bed, swallowing the bile that has risen in my throat as I stare at the pain medication on the bedside table with disgust. I hate drugs. In the end, my mother was addicted to them. They were prescriptions, but when someone becomes reliant on medications like that, it doesn’t matter if they are legal or illegal, the effects are the same. They are not the people they first were. They change. They become sicker, both physically and mentally. They become withdrawn whilst also cunning in their quest for the next hit.

For Mom, the pain relief medication from her cancer diagnosis kept her in a permanent state of near-comatose for the better part of her final months. As a young woman, working three jobs to keep us afloat, worrying about how Mom was doing, I have spent the last year of my life permanently on edge, walking on eggshells each time I went home, wondering if the next day was going to be her last. Wondering if she would die from a drug overdose before the cancer got her. I didn’t like that version of my mother. I didn’t like that version of a human.

He must have been here. The man. I still don’t know his name, but now I’ll be thinking of him as my wolfman. When I fell asleep earlier, I dreamt that I was Little Red Riding Hood, and he was The Big Bad Wolf. Except, he wasn’t bad at all. He saved me, brought me to his home, took care of me and kept me warm. Kept me happy. It seems fitting, considering real life isn’t so far off from that dream.

Where does he sleep if I am now in his bed? My cheeks heat at the thought of being in his space like this. I keep telling myself it doesn’t mean anything, but I haven’t been in another man's bed before.

My one and only awkward sexual encounter happened when I was seventeen, with a boy who stayed in the trailer park for only a month. His name was Jimmy, and he came from Kansas. He and his dad were passing through and kept to themselves, but we got chatting the first week he arrived and became fast friends.