Only Keep You (Only Colorado Book 4)

by JD Chambers

  Ted

  My emotions are all over the place as I read and reread his email. Warmth that they miss me as much as I miss them. Aching over Arthur. The part about him going to the store every day almost breaks my heart as much as it heals it. And finally, fury. My mom told Ted I wouldn’t be going back to work there? Hell no.

  Ted,

  Keep my job open for me. I might have to work part time at first, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.

  Dave

  It’s a departure from the numbness I’ve felt since the mugging. I think I had to shut down a bit, just to make it through the whole ordeal and get through the pain. But now that I’m on the other side of it, I’m ready to get my life back.

  I log out of my account and delete it from the laptop before wiping the history clean. Some habits die hard, thank you internet nanny software. I’m shocked my dad didn’t barge in and accuse me of trying to escape. I really am tired from the exercise of earlier, and now from the energy that my anger consumes, so I lie down in the bedroom and wait. I have a feeling I’m going to need my strength for this battle. I keep one ear out for the garage door, and I’m up and waiting in the kitchen before Mom even makes it in the house.

  “I think it’s time for me to go home.”

  Mom’s forehead wrinkles in confusion as she sets down two large paper bags. “You are home. Come help me unload. There are some light bags you can handle.”

  I have to stand firm, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help with the groceries. She hands me a bag with cereal and another filled with bags of chips and bread. “No, I mean, back to Fort Collins,” I say as I carry them inside.

  “You can’t seriously be considering returning to that place? It was bad for you, sweetie. You fell in with a bad crowd and look what happened.”

  Now it’s my turn to look confused. It’s not the first time since I’ve been back that she’s mentioned a bad crowd, but I never really paid attention before. I feel like after emailing Ted, I’ve come out from being submerged underwater, and I haven’t gotten used to the world around me yet.

  “I wasn’t with any crowd. That was sort of the problem. Had I been in a crowd, I likely would not have gotten mugged.”

  I walk with Mom back out to the car, but there are only two bags left, so I close the trunk behind her and follow her back into the house.

  “It’s safer here,” she says as she puts away the groceries. I grab a soda and crack it open at the table, trying not to crush the can in my frustration. “You can find a job, or even better, help your father with his re-election. He’s been anxious for you to attend meetings with him and share your story. It will be good for you to open up and talk about it. Think of it as a public service.”

  Open up and talk about it. Like I want to do with a therapist, but that’s weak. Doing it for money and advantage, though, all good. Fuck my family.

  “Mom. We’ve been over this. I am not going to campaign for Dad. I only did it before because I was under duress.”

  She scoffs at my protest. “But don’t you see how this could have been prevented, if only there were judges like him in Fort Collins?”

  “No, I don’t. It’s a ridiculous leap. I’ve never agreed with him politically before, and no amount of damage to my head is going to change my mind.” There’s a niggle at the back of my brain, and I don’t want to pay it any attention, but the more I avoid it, the more it grows, forcing me to inspect it. Please tell me my mom didn’t quit my job for me so that I would be forced to campaign for my dad. Deep breaths. “Besides, I already have a job.”

  She flushes a little and turns her back to me while putting things away in the refrigerator. She did it before when I mentioned my phone, and now I get it for what it is. She feels guilty. She doesn’t know that I know she told Ted I wouldn’t be returning to Game Over. It makes me wonder if my phone really did get destroyed, or if she has somehow decided that without a way to contact anyone from my former life, I would just forget about it and stay here.

  “I’ll be right back. Have to pee.”

  I rush into my parents’ bedroom on the opposite side of the house. She’ll be a few minutes still with the groceries, but I have to hurry. I look through her dresser drawers and her vanity. Even under the cushion of the bench at the foot of their bed. Nothing. I hesitate only for a second to rummage through her bathroom drawers, for good reason I discover, but that only makes them the best possible hiding place. I lift my perfectly intact phone from underneath my mother’s warming lube with a shudder. I plug it in to the phone charger next to their bed and a battery symbol pops up on screen as it changes from zero percent to one.

  I unplug the charger and carry it and my phone to my room before returning to the kitchen.

  I pause outside the kitchen to collect my thoughts. It’s been almost three months since the mugging. I’m healed. At this point, I think the damage is more mental than physical. I’ve never been so depressed before in my life. I’m usually the happy guy who can snap out of a funk with a beer, or a great song, or a night out with friends. But these weeks have been so draining, I haven’t been able to snap out of anything. For so long, there was no distracting from the pain, and now I just feel empty, like everything that makes me me was robbed from me and not just my wallet and my sense of safety and security.

  I really do need to get back home. Now that I have my phone back, I don’t need much else. I think returning to Fort Collins will help me more than any walks around my parents’ neighborhood could.

  “Do you know where my keys are?” I ask, returning to the kitchen to find Mom starting to pull out ingredients that I recognize are for my favorite casserole. She’s fighting dirty.

  “Your keys to what, dear?” Her voice is flat and without a hint of inflection.

  “My car?”

  “We got rid of that death trap. It wasn’t safe for you to drive.”

  My ass thumps into a seat as the walls start to feel like they are closing in on me. I shake it off. I am not going to fall into despair again, now that I’ve finally clawed my way out of it. That’s fine. I’ll get an Uber home. The weather isn’t total shit yet. I can ride my bike, or even walk, to work and back until I’m able to get a new car. I’ll think of it like forced physical therapy.

  These things are all fixable.

  “Did you sell it? I’d like the money. After all, I paid for the car myself years ago.”

  “Don’t be daft. No one was going to give us money for that thing. We donated it to charity.”

  Deep breaths.

  “Okay. I’ll get an Uber.” I stand to go to the bedroom. Even poppy seed chicken couldn’t tempt me to stay at this point.

  “And where are you planning on going? We had to let your apartment go,” Mom says with her nose in the air. “I guess you have to stay here.”

  My hands curl around the back of the chair until my knuckles turn white, similar to the white-hot rage coursing through me. “You terminated my lease? What about all my stuff?” And then I remember even more of the stuff that I should be worried about, and panic really begins to set in. Is that what she meant by hanging with the wrong crowd? Did she find my puppy gear? Oh, dear god.

  “All of your things are boxed and put in storage. I got rid of a lot of the clutter and only kept the really valuable items and the solid pieces of furniture. That flimsy thing you called a table went straight to the curb.”

  “You had no right to do that. Those were my belongings.”

  “Yes, and we couldn’t keep paying your rent indefinitely when we had no idea how long it would take for you to recover.”

  I try to calm down, but the panic has put my stomach onto a simmer. The slightest hiccup is going to set me off, I can feel it.

  “I have no apartment and no car. You made me think I had no phone and I’m fully aware that you think I have no job to go back to. Is there any part of my life you left intact? Any piece you haven’t tried to manipulate to your advantage these past few weeks?”

 
“I’m just doing what’s best for you, sweetie.” Mom scoffs and her endearment for me has never grated more in my life. “You act as though I was responsible for your accident. You know full well it wouldn’t have happened if you still lived here in Longmont.”

  She returns her attention to mixing soups and spices in a large bowl for the casserole, as if her good intentions settle the matter.

  “I know no such thing. And you might not have been responsible for what happened, but you do realize you have basically kidnapped me, right? Like completely eliminated my ability to function as an independent, grown man. That’s not normal, Mom.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. You don’t need any of those things if you stay here and work for your father.”

  “Which I’ve already said I’m not going to do.”

  “I think it’s your only option at this point.”

  “It’s the only option you tried to leave me. But it didn’t work, and if you keep pushing, not only will I not be working for Dad’s campaign, I’m going to actively campaign against him.”

  My hands ball into fists and I thrust them behind my back. I’m shaking with anger right now, and I need to leave. I rush to my room and grab my phone and her charger, and pull up the Uber app.

  There’s a guy one minute away and I rush out the front door to meet him.

  Once I’m safely in the car, I have him take me to a café in the nearest shopping center. I don’t have a clue what my finances are like right now, but I doubt I can afford an hour-long Uber trip. The app is linked to my bank account through my debit card. Which I no longer have thanks to the mugging, and I’m pretty sure the police notified the bank of that fact. I sure hope this poor guy gets paid somehow. At least this ride was only three bucks.

  At the café, I order a muffin and a coffee, and pull out my phone. I’ve never seen as beautiful a sight as my home screen. Over a hundred messages wait for me, but I ignore them for now and click on contacts. My phone account was set on auto-pay, so at least I know my phone bill got paid. I don’t want to think what my account looks like now with four months of auto-drafts and no income.

  “Game Over, this is Ted.”

  “Ted? It’s Dave. I need a really big favor.”

  21

  Arthur

  My parents arrived yesterday for Westley’s family weekend, but I won’t be able to join them until after work today. My mom has mentioned Dave several more times in family group texts, commenting how we’ll be close enough to pick him up. Or at least stop by. My dad keeps telling her to mind her own business, but I’m happy that she’s butting in. It’s like, for once in my life, I have a normal family. One that has just mastered technology.

  By the time I arrive in Boulder after stopping off and changing after work, the three of them have already gotten a table at the restaurant. It was going to be a long wait, according to a text from Westley, so they went ahead and put themselves on the list at a brew pub in the Pearl Street Mall after I called and said I was on my way. They had only been seated five minutes earlier, Mom assures me, as I slide into the seat next to Westley after leaning over to give my mom a hug. She’s under five feet tall, probably the only stereotypical thing about her, and it always feels like I’m going to crush her when I hug her. My dad says she has bird bones.

  “Parking was a bitch,” I say, and my parents agree. “I ended up going back to your apartment and calling an Uber. I figured I can ride back with you.”

  “Yeah, of course. It’s the Stampede combined with family weekend. Probably the most crowded this area ever gets. And why this table took us an hour and a half to get,” Westley says with a grimace.

  One of the family weekend events is the Pearl Street Stampede. It’s like a pre-game pep rally for the whole town, from what I understand. Soon, the mall will fill with the school band, cheerleaders, and football players, and it will be even more packed than it is now. If that’s even possible.

  “Damn, did you at least get to walk around and enjoy yourself while you waited? Or did you have to stay close by?”

  “They call your cell phone,” Dad says as if the technology surprises him, when the man works with the most state-of-the-art lab equipment for genome sequencing.

  Dinner is pleasant, and I have no idea what switch flipped in my parents, but it’s like they are jumping through self-made hurdles to prove to Westley and me that we matter.

  “Is someone dying?” I blurt out, after my dad tells Westley that he thinks backpacking around Europe one summer sounds like fun.

  They turn to me with shocked faces, except Westley who has a smirk.

  “I’m sorry that we haven’t always focused on you boys,” Mom says with a frown, setting down her silverware and commanding my full attention. “When Westley called with news of your young man and how devastated you were when he was in the hospital, we realized how much we’re missing out on.”

  “We always felt like our work was our legacy. But the closer we get to the end of our careers, seeing what happens when our colleagues retire to nothing and no one, it made us re-evaluate some things,” Dad says.

  “What you do is important, Dad,” I say. “No one has ever questioned that.”

  “It is,” Mom answers for him, “But work doesn’t love you back. Especially when you work for the government. Do you know how many hours of use-or-lose leave I’ve lost over the years? Probably enough that I could take a vacation from now until the time I retire. We’ve agreed that we’re not doing that anymore. From now on, our family and our marriage come first.”

  Westley raises his mug of soda, since he’s still a sophomore and not old enough for beer. Legally anyway, not that I’ve ever seen him drink it illegally either.

  “Cheers to that.”

  We clink our glasses and my insides settle a little. If one part of my life is going to fall completely apart, at least another small piece is getting put back together.

  “What do you guys think about coming up here for Christmas? I could teach you how to ski,” Westley says, and the look of horror on my parents’ face is priceless. As are their attempts at feigning excitement over the idea.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll stick you on the bunny slopes with Arthur. It’ll be fun.”

  After dinner, we make our way outside and join the masses of black, gold, and silver that have gathered for the Pearl Street Stampede. The band plays and the crowd anxiously waits for the arrival of the football team in some old firetruck that’s apparently a big CU tradition.

  “This feels weird, like I’m surrounded by the enemy,” I say and Westley laughs.

  “At least you didn’t wear your green and gold. You might have gotten mobbed.”

  I fake a shudder.

  “You know, if it makes you that uncomfortable,” Mom says, resting a tiny hand on my arm, “Instead of coming to the game tomorrow you could go visit your friend. Maybe convince him to come to dinner with us if he’s up for it?”

  “Real subtle, Mom. I was joking. I’m going to the game with you. The fact that I hate football is more of a deterrent than it being CU.”

  “All the more reason to call your friend. I don’t want you doing anything you hate.”

  “Fine.” I throw my hands up in surrender. “I will call Ted and see if he knows the Taylors’ address.”

  When I grab my phone, I realize that it’s dead. Fuck. My car charger only works half the time, if you twist it a certain way, and I bet that leaving the location on for directions ate up my battery. I borrow my brother’s phone instead. I don’t know Dave’s or Ted’s numbers off the top of my head, so I look up the number for Game Over and ask for Ted.

  “Sorry, he had to leave for an emergency,” I’m told. “Can I help you?”

  “Do you have the number to his cell? This is Arthur, by the way.”

  I figure I’ve gone into the store enough by now that anyone working there knows me by name. I stop in almost daily, just because it helps, being with a group of people who can also commiserat
e with missing Dave, even if it’s not quite in the same way. I recognize the voice but can’t quite place the name.

  “Ohmygod,” the voice says, so sudden that the words run together. “Arthur! Ted left because he got a call from Dave.”

  My heart catches in my throat, and goosebumps light up my skin, whether from excitement or nerves, I’m not sure.

  “Hang on,” he continues, “I know his number is written around here somewhere.”

  I hear him digging in the background and I fear my heart might not hold out long enough for him to return, but surprisingly, it does. “Okay, got it!”

  I snag a pen from my dad’s chest pocket, thank god I have a family of nerds, and write Ted’s cell phone number down on the inside of my arm.

  “Thanks, man,” I say.

  He responds with “Good luck.”

  I trust that he’ll hang up on his end, so I immediately input Ted’s number and hit send.

  “Hello?”

  I’m so used to calling the store and hearing “Game Over. This is Ted,” that I stutter. “T-Ted?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Arthur,” I say, and he interrupts before I can get anything else out.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you. I heard from Dave.”

  “That’s what they said at the store. My phone died, so I’m on my brother’s phone.”

  “Hang on, let me pull over and get that number. I’m headed to Longmont now to pick him up. I’m about twenty minutes out, but I’m sure he’s been trying to call you too.”

  “I’m in Boulder. I could come meet you.”

  “I’ll text you the address.”

  22

  Dave

  I don’t mean to flinch.

  Ted’s face breaks out into a relieved smile when he enters the café and spots me sitting alone at a booth, so it’s a natural reaction for him to offer me a hug. My brain understands this, but my body feels like I’ve been dunked in ice water.