by Emilia Finn
“I’m not too sure that worked out,” I tease, “seeing as how prom is still going strong, even now.”
“Right.” He chuckles. “It didn’t work. But we tried with all our might. We were advocating for the students who would never get a date, we were advocating so that they wouldn’t feel less because of it.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, we each got a one-week suspension from school, and then detention for weeks more. Though that detention was never completed. We dropped out of school not so long after prom.”
“You dropped out?” I set my wine down and sit forward. As always, his stories are riveting; they grab me by the throat and demand I listen until the end. “How? But you’re a college graduate.”
He smirks and makes himself comfortable in his seat. “This is true. ‘Dropped out’ is a false description of what happened during that part of my life. My mom and dad felt I was making poor life choices. And what’s more, they felt that Maria was a terrible influence on me – nevermind the fact that half of our crazy plans were mine to begin with – and so when I was in tenth grade, my folks pulled me out and put me into a school for wayward youth.”
“No way!”
He nods, serious and foreboding. “Way. I went to bed one night, just like any other, except this particular night, Maria wasn’t texting me like she usually would. I was getting impatient, because I wanted to hear from her, but I wasn’t worried. She was always insanely independent, so I never had to worry. I went to sleep around ten or eleven, expecting to have unread texts by the morning. But if there were texts, I never got to see them. I woke up around midnight to my parents tossing a suitcase on my bed, they packed my things, and I was out the door long before the sun came up, still in my boxer shorts. The next day, I was enrolled and already in what some would describe as military school, but…” He shudders. “Worse. They were mean, they were strict, and when you fucked up—” His eyes pop wide and tear back to mine. “I’m so sorry. Excuse my language.”
“No. It’s okay.” I wave in his direction. “Please go on.”
“Well…” he hesitates. “If you messed up, if you fought with any of the guys, if you got less than eighty-five percent on any given essay, assignment, or test, then you were punished.”
“What kind of punishment?”
“Well, they thrilled in torture,” he says. “Not, like, electric shocks or peeling off fingernails,” he adds with a faux laugh. “But the sleep deprivation kind. Food deprivation. That sort of stuff. We were made to stand guard all night outside the dorm rooms. We had a stick, which we were to hold like a gun, feet together, shoulders back, and we were to stand for twenty-four hours. Once every six hours, we were excused to use the bathroom, we had five minutes, then it was back to our post. No sleep, no food, but we were given water.”
“That sounds awful.”
He smiles and looks down into his wine in contemplation. “It was. Most guys learned fast not to screw around. But see… I was mad. At my parents, at the school, at the whole world. Maria was back home, I missed her like I would miss my arm, but I had no way to contact her. Her family left town soon after I was moved, and I wasn’t told that until a year or so after I was shipped out. So I lost contact, which means the worst part of those twenty-four-hour stints was the thinking time. That in itself was torture, because all I could think about was her. Where was she? Was she okay? Was she happy? Was she still as in love with me as I was with her?”
“So that was it?” Sadness coats my every word. Heartbreak. Longing for someone I don’t even know. “You lost contact forever?”
“That was it.” He sucks on his bottom lip. It’s like he has a million things he wants to say, but he’s only giving me a few. “Military school led to the real military. I stayed for a little while, got my degree – government funded – got fit, got beat up a lot,” he chuckles. “I was a little too free-thinking for some of the guys, a little too mouthy, and when I screwed around and talked back to our superiors, my entire unit would often share in my punishment. The guys took care of that pretty quickly. So I learned to conform… for a little while.”
“Because you were beaten up?”
He nods, and swallows down his laughter. “Because I was mouthy. I stayed in long enough to get my degree and a little on-the-job training. Then I left, and got a job in the private sector.”
“Which brings you here to work on Colibri, the youth center being developed in town. And Maria?” I ask. “You never heard from her again?”
He studies his glass of wine and shakes his head. “I have not seen her once since high school. I haven’t spoken to her. But from the moment I was a civilian again, I started searching. It had been years by that point, but she was still on my mind, ya know? Still in all of my thoughts, and though I tried to shake it – because surely, by that point, she’d have moved on, right? Her world would look completely different by then – I just couldn’t let it go.”
“But you didn’t find her. You said—”
“Right.” He smiles and looks up to meet my eyes. “I didn’t find her, but I went back home and found my mom and dad.” He stops for a moment, and chuckles at something dark and mean in his mind. “I found them, and I used my powers of persuasion to get them to talk.”
My heart speeds up, from a rhythmic beat to a trot. “Military. Angry man. Powers of persuasion…” I swallow. “Oh dear.”
He laughs. “I found out why I was shipped off in the middle of the night. Turns out, Maria had gotten pregnant.”
I gasp, loud enough that other diners look over. “What?!”
“Mm. Maria hadn’t been feeling great in the days leading up to my final night in town. I guess she discovered her pregnancy that evening while I was waiting for her to call. Her parents told my parents, my parents went ballistic and sent me away, and while I was gone, Maria herself disappeared.”
“That’s so horrible. So…” I do the math in my head. “You said you didn’t find this out until you’d finished the military. So you were a dad for years, and you didn’t know it?”
“Right. My child would have been nearly fifteen before I was even made aware of their existence. But even then, I couldn’t find Maria. I just knew she was out there somewhere, living her life and raising our child. And in her mind, I’d probably run out on her. Deserted her like a coward.”
“But you didn’t! You were sent away.”
“I know that.” He sits back when our server brings a basket of bread and sets it down where the candle was when we arrived.
“Are we ready to order entrées?” she asks.
“Yep.” Jason grabs the last of his wine and tosses it back like a shot. “And another glass of this, please. Tonight might get messy.”
Luke
The Inevitable Blow-Up. We All Knew It Was Coming
“Hi, you’ve reached Allyson Moore. I can’t get to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Beep.
I sit on the end of my bed with a wet towel slung over my shoulders, and sigh. “Hey, Ally. This is the…” I look at the wall, like that’ll somehow help me count. “I don’t know. The fourth… maybe the fifth time I’ve called tonight. Um… I’m trying really hard not to be that guy. The crazy, loud, overreacting-boyfriend-type, since we both know you’re not into that. But listen, I’m getting a little worried, okay? You said we could hang out tonight, but now there’s that big storm, and you’re AWOL. It’s stressing me out. If you’re tired or whatever and just don’t wanna hang, that’s cool. I mean,” Don’t say it, Luke. Don’t fucking say it. “I’m still gonna be pissed about it. I’ll sulk for a while and try to change your mind.” I said it. “But let me know anyway so I don’t have to worry.
“I’m at my apartment right now, so if you get this, feel free to come on over. I’m gonna hang for a little longer, but if I don’t get word from you soon, I’m probably gonna have to come looking. It’s storming out there, Ally. Big storm.
So I’m starting to panic that you’ve slid off the road or something. I just…” I flex my hand in front of me. My forearm bulges, the veins grow bigger. “Come to me, please. Or at the very least, text and say you’re safe.” Then I sigh and say the words she refuses to return. “I love you. A lot. Let me know you’re safe.”
I bring the phone away from my ear and end the call, then checking for the hundredth time in the last two hours that my phone is not set on silent, I place it on my bed and groan. My stomach hurts, and that’s not something I’ve ever really known before. I don’t do anxiety, and I don’t do worry. But Ally has both coursing through my veins.
“Still nothing?” Emma stands at the doorway in jeans and an oversized gym hoodie that stretches halfway down her thighs. The hoodie belongs to her dad, or Rob, or hell, maybe me. But she wears it like she’s not ashamed of stealing it.
“Nothing,” I answer. “And I feel like a total punk for worrying.”
Snorting, she folds her arms and studies me with a tilted head. “It must suck to be Luke Hart, the eternal doesn’t-give-a-fuck bachelor… and now you’re all tied up over a single girl.”
“Are you trying to be a bitch?” I lift a brow and meet her eyes. “Or does it just come naturally to you?”
“Aww, are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Laughing, she meanders into my room and parks her butt right beside mine on the bed. Our thighs touch, and wrapping her arms around mine, she presses her cheek to my shoulder. “I’m not trying to be a bitch, Lukey. Promise.”
“I’m worried,” I admit, “but if I go out there looking for her, then I become the jealous boyfriend who is checking up on her. And we all know how that ends, right? I get kicked in the nuts. I lose.”
“So how about you come into the living room and watch a little TV? It’s only…” She looks at my phone and grits her teeth. “Um… ten o’clock. I mean, that’s still pretty early, really. You and Ally have gone nights before where you haven’t called or texted, right?”
“Right, but that’s because we made those plans,” I insist. “Like, Ally would tell me she’s having an early night, so we’d just say goodnight at that point, and that was the end of it. Or I’d say I’m gonna be at the gym till late, so we’d say goodnight and make plans to talk the next day.”
Em’s long, blonde hair falls forward as she tries to catch my eye. “So maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe she’s having an early night, and—”
“But we made plans to hang out!” I declare. Demand. I fucking vent, to release some of the worry strangling my heart. “We were gonna hang out tonight, and–”
My phone chirps, so loud and demanding that Em and I both jump. But then I dive for it, and frown at the number that flashes on my screen. I don’t know whose number it is, but I accept the call anyway.
“Hello? Hey.” I slam the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Luke, honey? It’s Miranda.”
“Miranda? Hey!” A surge of relief washes through my blood, but it only takes a second for that to make way for dread. “Fuck. What’s wrong?”
“Have you heard from Ally, honey?”
“Not since this afternoon.” I bound up from my bed and race to the door, only to stop and spin back. Where am I going? What am I doing? “Have you?”
“I spoke to her at a little past five,” she says. “She told me she was going out to dinner with this guy, and then she texted me with the details just in case, and I quote,” her tone lowers, “she dies and gets chopped up because she was too stupid to live.”
“Are you fuckin’—” I bite down my rage and toss my towel to the floor. I grab a hoodie, my shoes, and bolt through my apartment, dropping down at the kitchen counter to put them on. “Please tell me the name she gave you wasn’t Jason?”
Rob follows me into the kitchen, and right behind him, Emma stops. Their eyes are already sorry, like they know where this is going.
“I’m begging you, Miranda. Tell me she’s not with that guy.”
“She’s with that guy,” she murmurs. “Now, listen,” she cuts in when I bite out a “Fuck!” “I don’t want to cause trouble between you guys. This isn’t a ‘she’s cheating on you’ thing. But rather, she was mostly confident she was safe, but she still felt the need to give me the details. She said she’d only be an hour, then she was going to spend the night with you.”
“Well, she’s not with me, Miranda!” I shove one shoe on, the laces still tied, and the back of the shoe folding down and annoying me. “She’s not here, so she’s either spending the night with another guy, or he chopped her the fuck up. Where’d she go?”
“Some place called Pinocchio’s. An Italian restaurant on the corner of—”
“I know the place.” I shove my second shoe on. “I’m gonna go find her. I’ll call you back as soon as I know where she is.”
“I’m in town too.” Her words bring me up short, so my heart gives a painful thud, and with it, my brain pulses. “I’ve been calling her for the last two hours, so after the first, and the being-chopped-up thing fresh in my mind, I got in the car and headed down. It took longer because of the storm, but I’m coming into town now, and figured before I headed to the restaurant, I should first check to see if she was with you.”
“She’s not.” Rage and helplessness war inside my veins. Terror and fury. “We had plans to spend the night together, but she hasn’t come home yet.”
“Alright. Why don’t you let me deal with this? I’ll go find her, I’m just a few minutes away. If she’s safe, you have to leave it alone, Luke. You can’t go racing in there, all guns blazing. She will smack you down if you try to tell her where she can be, and with whom.”
“Yeah, well, if she thinks she can get dinner with this other dude, who she knows I can’t stand, then I’m gonna have some shit to say to her anyway. It’s time she fuckin’ laid her cards on the table for me to see.” I bound up from my seat, and snatch my keys from the hook by the door. “It’s storming out, and I’m heading to my truck now. I’ll call you back in a bit. If I beat you there, I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Luke! No.”
Miranda has the mom-voice perfected. Too bad I was always a rebel.
My stomach continues to swirl with both rage and worry. Fury, and paralyzing fear. Because Ally’s not a liar. She’s not a cheat. She might hate the jealous boyfriend act, and maybe she refuses to commit, but she doesn’t demand I stop that nonsense then give me reason to be jealous. She’s brutally honest and painfully independent, so if she wanted a night away from me, she’d have told me so.
Which means this isn’t a cheating-on-me situation at all. It’s a Jason-is-about-to-get-himself-fucked-up situation.
“I’ll call you back, Miranda.” I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket.
“Wait.” Rob grabs the front door before I can race through and slam it shut again. He knows what this is, too, and he knows I’m about to land myself in a world of trouble. “I’m coming with you,” he growls, and jogs along the hall of our apartment building when I turn and dash away.
“Wait!” Emma slams the apartment door shut and follows. “No way are you idiots blowing shit up and leaving me at home.”
We sprint down the stairs and annoy the neighbors with the heavy thump-thump-thumping of our feet on each step.
Despite being the smallest, Emma is the fastest. She’s agile on her feet, smooth around corners, and has an uncanny ability to slide on the railing when the opportunity arises, so when we reach the bottom floor, she bounds out the lobby door first, only to squeal and spin back until she and Rob slam together.
“What the fuck?” I skid around them and open the door again.
Icy cold wind blasts my face, and with it, freezing shards of snow sting my nose and fingers.
“Holy shit,” I shiver so hard that it hurts my entire body. “What the hell kinda storm is this?”
“A cold one.” Emma extricates herself from Rob’s hold, slowly approaches the door again, and prepa
ring herself, she pushes through and shivers until her entire frame vibrates. “We gotta get in and out, then back inside. We’re not wearing the right clothes for this shit.”
“Go. Get into the truck,” I urge.
“I’ll drive.” Rob snatches my keys and jogs around to the driver’s side. Yanking the door open, he pushes Em up so she’s in the middle of the long bench seat.
I climb in on the passenger side and slam the door shut, and when Rob closes his door, we’re left in silence but for the sound of our heavy breathing and the howl of the wind on the outside, so strong it literally makes the truck rock back and forth.
“You need to calm your shit.” Rob stabs the keys into the ignition and turns the engine on. It takes a second; the engine starts with a slow rr-rr-rr before it turns over and roars like it should. “If you do this up wrong, your ass is going to jail, and no, I’m not gonna take the fall and say it was me.”
“I’m not jealous, Rob.” I look to him in the dark, and meet his eyes. “Honest. Something is wrong, because now she’s not even taking her mom’s calls. That’s a massive red flag for them. They talk more than Mom and Kit talk.” I look to Emma, to Kit’s second clone, and shake my head. “Miranda driving her ass down here is a massive problem. Let’s go.”
Ally
Well, Hell
Alcohol zips through my blood and leaves me with a swishing stomach and a goofy grin. But across from me, Jason sits sober as a monk, and with eyes that look like they’ve seen death.
“I never ever wanted it to be like this.” His head droops low with defeat. “And if I’d known, I would have done something about it. I would have taken care of business, ya know? I would have done what I was supposed to do.”
“And now you’re… what? Looking for revenge? Because they lied to you?” I try to use my therapist’s brain, but maybe around my fifth or sixth glass of wine, it ran away, and now I’m just a girl again, barely an adult, a child with secret abandonment issues. “That’s not…” I swallow and shake my head. “It shouldn’t…” Sonia, Sonia, oh where for art thou, Sonia. “Um… and how does that make you feel?”
