Every day, for a month afterward, I would walk through the halls enduring whisper after whisper—snide and lewd comments would filter through my ears and eventually it just got too much, too loud to drown out.
So, for the last two months, Mom has been homeschooling me. It isn’t so bad. She’s actually a great teacher, which really doesn’t surprise me. Evangeline Moretti is good at pretty much everything, to the point where it’s slightly annoying. Her damn contagious charm more than makes up for it, but even so, I’m finding myself feeling more alone as each day passes.
I’ve never really had too many friends, not real ones, anyway; they always seemed borrowed, like they would leave with the slightest rock of the boat.
Well, my boat came-a-rockin’, and I’ve been the only one riding the wave. Besides Dyl, but he has his own shit he’s dealing with.
That’s when I came to the decision a couple of weeks ago to forgo homeschooling for the rest of the year and transfer to another school after winter break. Thankfully, I have a badass teacher for a dad who has quite a few connections on the school board. Somehow, he managed to score me an interview last week, which I subsequently nailed. The potent urge to not be so goddamned broken anymore, to finally try to forget, not forgive because I’m sure as shit not ready for that, but to forget…sounds really fucking nice right now.
So, after Christmas break for the last leg of my senior year, I will be attending The Portland School of Music and Art—a prestigious private school with an amazing art program. And the best part? I know absolutely no one there.
And no one there knows me.
I can start over.
Be myself, my true self. Whoever that may be.
And if that isn’t weight being lifted off my shoulders, I don’t know what it is.
I glance at my clock and wince, silently cursing up a storm.
Fifteen minutes.
I knew I should’ve stayed with Dad and Angel. But I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I still acknowledged his existence, let alone thought about him so much that I couldn’t handle living in the same roof as him for two weeks. That I missed him, even just his presence in the house—the times he would randomly pop his head into my room just to say goodbye, or how every once in awhile he’d sit on my floor crisscross-applesauce and watch me sew, asking me to go into every single detail of what I was making or recounting some story about the crazy-ass shenanigans he and his teammates got into over the weekend as I worked.
That even after all of the shit he did, after thoroughly humiliating me, using me, tearing me apart, I still fucking loved him.
And I hate him for it.
Although, I don’t mind him knowing the hate part. I hope he has felt that from thousands of miles away.
What I do mind is him seeing the doubt that continues to creep in every time his name is mentioned, when I come across a picture of us, when someone plays Otis Redding, when our favorite movies come on, or even when I see a fucking basketball. I’m terrified that after all of this time—after every tear shed, every piece of myself lost, every hole I had to triage to keep my heart intact—I will just hand it right back over to him with a single glance of his sea foam green eyes paired with that stupid half-smile that is so fucking perfect, so deceptive in its beauty, I forget all past sins.
And the cycle will begin all over again.
He hurts me.
I let him.
He charms.
I forgive.
He gives me hope.
I hold on desperately.
Rinse and repeat.
I can’t let that happen. I won’t. The days of him manipulating me—playing me, using me like I’m some prop, his little doll that he can bend and twist however he pleases—are so fucking over, it’s almost laughable.
I will not cower. I will not cry. My tears will never again be for him. I will stand tall and embrace the fire that has been kindling for far too long, only to go ignored. But not anymore. It’s time to rage. To roar. To hit him where it hurts. To show him he didn’t break me after all. It was just a crack, a chip, a temporary bump, and I’m slathering on a shitload of super glue—holding my head high and not giving him the chance of seeing me fall for real.
I lost myself, even before Ben’s betrayal. I had become someone I didn’t recognize, someone I didn’t want to be. Someone I will never be again.
Today is the day I become me.
And Ben better watch the fuck out, because I have a feeling the real me is a bit of a bitch.
For the first time in what feels like forever, I smile—an honest to goddess smile—and damn, does it feel good.
Nine
Songs to listen to:
“No Peace” by Sam Smith
“I Ain’t The Same” by Alabama Shakes
“Another Sad Love Song” by Khalid
“Way Down We Go” by Kaleo
“Nothing Can Change This Love” by Otis Redding
Ben
I’ve never been so terrified, yet equally excited, in my entire life.
We’re about ten minutes away from home. Ten minutes away from finally seeing my girl. Although, I’m pretty sure she’d give me a swift uppercut to the jaw if she heard me call her that. She is far from mine…at least according to her.
But for me, even with all of the shit I put her through for years, I have always thought of her as my girl. My one. The only. There is no one like her. She’s the dream…that perfect effing dream that even after you wake up, you close your eyes and try to remember every single detail, to go back and relive the fantasy.
But it’s never the same.
It never works.
And that, my friends, is my reality.
I let my dream slip away before I even had the chance to revel in it, to enjoy it—to hold on. I just pushed it away like it meant nothing—like she meant nothing.
Shit.
“Maybe this was a mistake, coming home. I don’t think I should be here.”
Jake looks at me through the review mirror. His green eyes, just a shade darker than mine, are trying but ultimately failing to mask the concern projecting from his irises. Evie turns in her seat up front, brows furrowed and brown eyes narrowed, ablaze in protest.
“Nonsense. You’re home. Home is the only place you belong.”
“I can name a few people who would disagree. One of whom is most likely plotting my demise as we speak. You haven’t seen her, like, make any dolls recently, have you? Maybe one with a few pins in it? I’ve had this dull ache right here,” I inquire, pointing to the spot right below my collarbone and directly above my heart. “For months now. It won’t fu—effing go away. It just sits there, irritating as hell. I thought it was just a really bad case of heartburn—you have no idea how many Tums I’ve ingested in the last six months. I’m like a walking CVS.”
My own brows knit together in confusion as I watch my parents give each other a conspiratory look.
What the fuck is that about?
“What?” I ask them, my head moving back and forth between the two of them, gauging their suspicious reactions.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jake answers cryptically, but I don’t have time or the will to press further because we’re turning down our street.
Mother-effing effer!
My heart begins to race faster than Usain Bolt could run the hundred meters. I rapidly suck in a few deep breaths, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
Holy shit, am I hyperventilating?
Seriously?
“Ben. Ben! Breathe, baby. Eff!”
I hear Mom speak through the dense fog that is now congesting my ears. I watch through squinted eyes as she quickly unfastens her seat belt, flinging her tiny body into the empty seat next to me. Almost instantaneously, I feel her comforting hand on my back, drawing big, gentle circles, slowly but surely decelerating my breath with each motion and word of reassurance. And just as we pull into our driveway, my breathing returns to nor
mal and my heart no longer feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest.
“Shit, well that was unexpected,” I manage to breathe out shakily, wincing in embarrassment and shock.
Did I seriously just have a panic attack?
What. The. Fuck?
“Honey, are you okay?” Evie asks as we come to a stop in front of our garage door. She shares a concerned look with Jake, and something passes between them that I don’t quite catch because I’m too busy trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.
I brush off their concern. “Yeah, yeah, I just um, I just think I need a few minutes before… You guys can go ahead inside. I’ll see you in a few.” They both look at me like they want to protest and Evie even opens her mouth to speak, but the words don’t come and she settles for a nod, a small, tight but understanding smile pulling at her lips.
“Take your time, kid,” Jake nods at me, his smile matching his wife’s. “C’mon Pix, let’s go make sure Ziggy isn’t tied to the recliner again. I don’t know why we keep letting Dylan watch the kid,” he muses as he steps out of the car, carefully shutting the door to his vintage Camaro, aka Side Piece.
“As long as he didn’t touch anything in Dylan’s room, we should be in the clear. But really, who the eff ever knows what we’ll find when we walk through our door? It’s half the fun.”
I close my eyes and grin slightly as the familiarity of their conversation washes over me before drifting away as they get closer to the house. Goddamn, I’ve missed them. And I know this break means a lot to them. I know they were worried about my empty threats and that I wouldn’t actually show. But as fucked as this situation I have put us all in is, I couldn’t do that to them. Or to me.
I need to do this. It’s going to be rough, quite possibly violent—on Cady’s part—definitely icy and uncomfortable as eff, but in order to move past this, this bump in the road, we have to learn to at least manage to be in the same damn house together. At the end of the day, we’re still family.
Once Cady can acknowledge that, once she can remember what we were before, I can begin to show her that we can be more. So much fucking more. Everything she had hoped for and everything I denied.
But first, I gotta walk through that fucking door.
Never thought something so simple could be the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
Thankfully, I’ve always loved a challenge.
***
I barely have one foot inside the door before I hear, “About goddamned time, asshole!”
Dylan.
“Language!” Mom yells from down the hall. I swear that woman has superhuman hearing.
Dyl reaches the door at a dead sprint, barreling into me with an audible oomph. He wraps his bulging arms around me and I laugh heartily as the mammoth of a man lifts me off my feet, twirling us in circles around the corridor. Yeah, I know we’re grown-ass dudes, but damn, I missed my brother.
“Dude, steroids much? Holy shit, Hulk, put me down before you break me in half!”
At 6’3”, I’m not small by any means, but damn son, Dylan’s got at least fifty pounds of muscle on me.
“Sorry, it’s been so long, I forgot how fragile you are,” he teases with a smirk, as he drops me like a hot potato onto the hardwood floor. I try to glare at his stupid chiseled face, but I can’t help the betraying smile that surfaces.
“Asshole, help me up.” He grabs me by my forearms and yanks me up with a big-ass grin.
“I missed you, man.”
I smile back. “You too, bro.” The smile doesn’t last long as I try to covertly look around him for a glimpse of Cady.
Apparently, I won’t be living my childhood dream of being a super-spy anytime soon, since Dylan can see right through me. “She’s not down here. And I doubt she will be tonight. Pretty sure she plans on only coming down for food and water, although she’ll probably just text me for that shit so she won’t have to come down at all until Christmas morning.”
“Yeah, why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“’Cause you know her almost as well as I do, which is a tad disturbing, to be honest. She is my fucking twin, after all. Of course, that doesn’t surprise me, either. You’ve kinda gone into creeper territory with her.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I yell non-maliciously, wincing when I realize it was loud as eff. And sure enough, Mom, scolds us from all the way in the kitchen this time.
Seriously, that woman.
The powers she has…
Damn, it’s good to be home.
As soon as the thought filters through my mind, I feel it. I feel her. She doesn’t say a word, but she doesn’t need to. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise, standing at attention. The air around me suddenly becomes thick and balmy, causing my breath to dry up like I just stepped into the Mohave Desert. I close my eyes and slowly turn around. Once I dare to open them, my vision instantly blurs and everything around me disappears. Everything but her.
My Bug.
One minute. For one long and yet all too brief minute, we just stare. It’s like we have no other choice. No one says a word. No one moves. I don’t even think I effing breathed. I just…stare. Gazing—freely falling into the deep pools of blue that are her eyes. The same captivating pair I have seen behind my eyelids with each blink I have taken for the last six months. They have haunted me. Comforted me.
Fueled me.
Humbled me.
While I can’t seem to find my breath, she is doing nothing but—in the corner of my right eye, I can see her chest rise and fall dramatically to a near pant. Her mouth is slightly parted, lips full and inviting, although I don’t think I’ll be receiving such an invitation any time soon.
But that will change. Certainly not today or tomorrow, but the day will eventually come when I have her in my arms again, my mouth hot and unforgiving against hers until she is pleading me to never stop—to never let go.
Fuck. Just the mere thought has my dick pressing uncomfortably against the seam of my jeans.
Not the time, dude, so not the effing time.
As if she could read my thoughts, those eyes were still steadily fastened onto mine, reflecting a feeling I know all too well—longing. The same deep longing is pulling tight against my chest, as if it’s tethered to me. And she just tugs and tugs until I have no choice but to take a step toward her, just to relieve some of the pressure.
The instant I move, the tether snaps, jolting me back and severing whatever trance we were in. Cady’s eyes harden and narrow and her tiny fists clench at her side as I stand here, painfully watching her put that wall back up she so expertly manufactured in June.
It’s as if the moment we just shared never even happened.
Maybe it didn’t.
“Cady,” I dare to whisper her name. At the sound of my voice, I see it. It’s just a flicker, and it’s gone just as fast as it came, but I saw it. It was there. It was real.
She felt it, too.
But before I can get another word in, she turns on her heel and runs back up the stairs without a backward glance.
I turn to the sound of Dylan whistling before cringing in a way that would be comical if my heart wasn’t about to combust inside my chest. “Well, that was awkward as fuck. But enlightening… I thought it was gone, but damn, it’s just as strong now, if not stronger…”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Language!” Mom yells at us from somewhere in the house. Dyl and I both shake our heads in exasperation, but I drop my voice to a whisper anyway.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Dylan looks at me like I’m the village idiot of Portland. He rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically before finally answering me.
“It, you moron.” He looks at me like I should just know what he’s talking about, while I’m looking at him like I have no fucking clue what he’s saying. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Straight men,” he sighs again before continuing. “It. That thing—that impenetrable co
nnection that is so fucking rare, so completely unbelievable, you’re almost positive it’s just a myth. But it isn’t because I’ve seen it. With Mom and Jake. My dad and Angel. But as awe-inspiring as it is with them, it doesn’t even come close to what I see when you and Cady look at each other. Even through the hurt and anguish that is so clearly evident on both sides, the love—the fierce, all-consuming fucking love, you two feel for each other is…magical. Fuck, it’s—it’s everything I didn’t realize I wanted until a minute ago.”
That last confession takes me away from my own shit for a minute.
“What about Tyler?” I ask. Tyler and Dylan have been dating for the last year. It’s his third relationship since he came out when he was thirteen. I thought they were great together. Both of them are superior athletes—Tyler in track and field and Dylan, of course, in baseball. And I’m not ashamed to say that they were adorable as fuck, too.
“He broke it off last week,” Dyl says with a shrug, acting like it’s not a big deal, though that’s exactly what it is…an act. And he’s good at it. If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I’d miss the slight clench of his jaw, the flared nostrils, and subtle sheen to his eyes. But I see it.
“Shit, what happened?”
“What always seems to happen,” he says dryly, the irritation heavy in his words. I’m not entirely sure who he’s angrier with—Tyler or himself.
“Baseball?”
Dylan nods solemnly. “He said that he was tired of competing with baseball. That I love it more than I love him, and always will. And that I was scared to live out loud, whatever the hell that means. He wants it all, and apparently, I can’t give it to him. I thought—I thought he was different, I thought he understood.”
“Fuck, bro.” I don’t waste a second before pulling him into another hug. The tension in his bulky shoulders gradually begins to ease as my smaller yet still impressive arms wrap around his body. “I know it sucks. I know it hurts, but it just wasn’t meant to be, man. The right person will get you, he’ll love you for who you are, not for who he wants you to be.”
Falling Over (Falling In Series Book 3) Page 9
