He didn't know whether to snort or ask if she was serious, something in her tone might have led him to believe she wasn't joking.

"Michael, are you listening?" She snapped, looking at the boy incredulously.

"Yeah," in truth he wasn't, Michael had the conversation memorized. It happened to be the third time he'd heard the lecture this week.

"What did I just say then?" His mother raised a thin eyebrow at Michael, giving him the mum look.

Suppressing an eye roll the boy repeated, "Michael! A new tattoo? I said last time you came home with ink in your skin that you weren't allowed to do certain things under my roof. You're twenty years old for crying out loud! People your age are going to college or getting a job, you need to get your act together!" He mimicked in a higher pitch just to annoy her.

"Mum, I have a job." Michael groaned, spinning around to look for the leftover pizza he'd put in the fridge.

"Michael, you work at a pizza place." She stated, her tone telling him that she was far passed unimpressed.

"I'm almost done college too, just because you ignore my chosen career doesn't mean it doesn't exist." Michael frowned, his pizza was missing.

"You wanted to be a lawyer, what happened?" His mum asked rhetorically, shaking her head at the mess her son had become.

"No, you wanted me to be a lawyer. I just went along with it to make you happy. I'm pursuing the job I want, why can't you just be happy for me?" Michael said, he was fed up with the way his mum had been treating him since he finished high school. She was in no position to tell him that he made a bad career choice.

She dropped out of school at the age of seventeen, who was she to say he made a bad life choice? The only reason she was living a decent life was because of dad, who was a lawyer.

"Your father's disappointed too," she hissed at him over the breakfast bar with a scowl. "That's why he's never home, doesn't want to see his twenty year old son wondering around the house like he's still thirteen."

Michael felt a sigh tumble out of his lips, he may have heard it two other times this week but that didn't stop it from hurting any less. He couldn't even be sure if it was true, his father was a great lawyer so he was always off somewhere and he was a good guy, but Michael still couldn't tell if he would purposely avoid coming home because of his son.

"Mum," Michael mumbled, bones weighed down by sudden fatigue. "You need to stop drinking."

His mother's laughter filled the empty house as she looked at her only son head on, "Don't tell me what I can and can't do."

"It's only four," Michael tried to reason, glancing at the clock on the microwave just to be sure.

It was pretty easy to tell that his mother had a drinking problem, thankfully she wasn't an angry drunk or Michael might have moved out by now.

"I don't care," came her famous remark as she brought the bottle up to her lips. Michael scrunched his nose, alcohol and cheap perfume were the only things he could smell when he was home and he hated it. He would rather have his mum not do the dishes for weeks, the smell wouldn't suffocate him as much as her perfume did.

Grinding a hand into his face purely out of stress, he decides to drop the subject. "Um, what do you want for dinner?"

"I want a straight son that is going to have a decent job." His mother said, causing Michael to sigh again. She was being more difficult than usual.

"Mum," he gave her an exasperated look, pen poised and scrap piece of paper in hand.

"I want Chicken Alfredo." She answered decidedly, nose pointed toward the ceiling like she was some kind of posh lady. She looked a little ridiculous with her disheveled hair and brown tinted bottle in hand, she looked much older than she was when she drank.

-Chicken, Michael jotted down quickly, pausing to think of anything else he might need to make it.

-Heavy Cream
-Garlic
-Parmesan
-Fettuccine

He thought of other things they would need that they didn't already have in stock.

-Dog food
-Chocolate
-Vegetables

He added one final thing to the list, cigarettes.

"That's a nasty habit, you know." His mother snickered as he stuffed the crumpled piece of paper into his pocket.

"You're one to talk." He snapped back, dangerously close to exploding. He was sick of her, his own mother. The boy quickly threw on a jacket and kissed his mum on the cheek even though she reeked of alcohol. With a hand gripping the knob to the front door he looked back at his pyjama clad mother, "Love you, be back soon."

"I'm almost out of my perfume!" She yelled after him when his back was to her and he had the door fully open. He gave her a thumbs up as he left to show he heard her.

Making dinner seemed like the polite thing to do as a twenty year old still living at home, even though Michael had been making dinner for his mum since the age of twelve.

He pulled the shopping list out of his pocket and double checked it, a habit he'd picked up when his mother had scolded him for forgetting chocolate one too many times.

The trip to the store was so short that Michael didn't even bother taking his car, it was nice out despite the season. He managed to make it the store and only tripping twice on the cracked up sidewalk, a new personal record.

Something caught his attention before he could make it to the section that sold sweets though.

It'd been a while since he'd even bothered to glance at this section of the store, the items would probably be better placed in the pharmacy across the street rather than a grocery store. The options were pretty limited, half were for middle to older aged women that wanted to get rid of the grey.

But a box quickly caught his eye, it wasn't often that he saw a bright green dye on shelf. He couldn't help himself, he took it along with him as he ventured further into the store.