by Megan Hart
“I love you,” Simone whispered against his mouth. “Elliott, oh, God. I love you.”
“I know you do.” It was the first thing that came out of him, the stupidest thing he’d ever said in an eternally long line of stupid things. He knew it the instant he said it, but it was too late to take it back. All he could do was move back, out of the way.
All he could do was let her go.
Simone slapped him so hard his ears rang. Pain exploded in his cheek, his ear. The copper taste of blood sparked on his tongue.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck. You.”
He tried to say her name, to call out after her, but she gave him the finger and kept walking. Didn’t look back. He tried again, her name slicing at his tongue and throat, leaving him voiceless.
She stopped to walk backward a few steps. “Don’t you ever touch me again. Don’t you ever look at me again. Don’t you ever fucking think of me again, do you hear me? I don’t exist for you, Elliott. You want to make me nothing to you? Fuck you. I’m nothing.”
“You aren’t nothing, Simone.”
But it was too late. She gave him the finger again, this time with both hands. Then she was beyond his reach.
Then she was gone.
* * *
Elliott would not drink and drive. He wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his father. But the second his car got into his garage he unscrewed the cap of the bottle of Jameson he’d stopped for on the way home. The first slug hit the back of his throat like a fire bolt. The second wasn’t much better. Eyes watering, the sting of it in his nose like the buzz of hornets, Elliott gulped one last shot and put the cap back on the bottle before he got out of the car.
The world was already tilting when he pushed through the door into his kitchen. Bottle in one hand, he slammed the door behind him and moved to the counter. He meant to get a glass. Some ice. Hell, he might even cut the liquor with some soda just to keep himself from getting obliterated too fast. Getting blackout drunk would stop him from thinking of all the ways he’d fucked up with Simone, but it would also let him stop thinking about her. He didn’t want to stop thinking about her. He didn’t deserve to have that sweet oblivion.
He deserved to suffer.
He’d already kicked the chair, nearly breaking his toe and sending the chair spinning across the floor, before he realized it was out of place. He’d very carefully pushed in all the chairs that morning, as he always did, and this one had been a good foot from the table. The cupboard doors, too, were open. A dirty plate and fork in the sink instead of in the dishwasher. Crumbs on the counter.
Elliott let out a grunt of surprise and took another drink. The alcohol was already burning through his system, setting him off balance. With narrowed eyes, he looked around the kitchen again, cataloging everything that was out of place.
“Hey there, sonny boy.”
Elliott had figured out it was his dad mere seconds before the bastard showed up in the doorway to the living room. He didn’t have a bottle in his hand, but the few days’ growth on his face and the mess of his hair, the red eyes, showed he’d probably been doing some drinking of his own. His clothes looked clean, at least. The last time Elliott had seen him, his father had looked like a hobo who’d been tossed off a train into a barrel of shit. Smelled like it, too.
“What are you doing in here? How’d you get in?”
“Key.” The old man grinned, showing teeth too white and straight to be his own. He gave Elliott a curious look. “It’s my house, for the love of Pete. You think I don’t know how to get into my own house?”
“Who gave you the key?” Elliott paced to the counter, where he put down the bottle. He slammed the cupboards closed and ran the water in the sink over the mess of dishes. He focused on these tasks so he didn’t have to look at the man behind him.
“Nobody gave it to me. I got it from the fake plastic rock out back.”
Shit. Elliott hadn’t known about that spare key, but he didn’t put it past the old man to have harbored the memory of it. His father might be a drunk who couldn’t seem to remember his son’s birthday, but you could be damn sure he’d never forget where he put a spare key.
“Your mother told me she let you know I’d be stopping by.”
“She’s not my mother.”
His father snorted. “She’s more a mother to you than anyone else ever was. Hell, she’s more a parent to you than anyone ever was, including me.”
Elliott gripped the sink for a moment as the floor threatened to move under him. He closed his eyes for a second or so to get his equilibrium. He swallowed hot spit, but it didn’t wash away the taste of whiskey. “What do you want?”
There was silence, punctuated by the disgusting snorfle-grunt of the old man’s breathing. Elliott turned. His father gave him a wide, broad grin.
“What do you want?” Elliott repeated.
“You gonna pour yourself a glass or what?” His father pointed at the bottle.
Elliott turned back to the bottle, which seemed to have grown and shrunk at the same time, a real Alice in Wonderland bit of fuckery he had to squint to see. The bottle rattled against the glass as he poured. He added ice from the freezer and turned to lift it. “You want one?”
“No. I don’t touch the stuff anymore. I thought you knew that.” His father paused, eyeing him. “I’ve been sober for eight years.”
“Funny how prison makes that easier.” Elliott drank back half the glass. Then the rest. The burn of it had gone away; now he only felt the warmth.
“Prison didn’t make anything easier.”
More silence. Elliott turned the glass in his hand to rattle the ice. He lifted it to his mouth again to gather the last few drops. He thought about pouring himself another, but he’d lost track of how much he’d had. Everything had grown a soft fuzz around the edges.
“What,” he said again, “do you want?”
“Well. For starters, I’m not here asking you for anything that isn’t mine.”
Elliott leaned against the counter, glass still in one hand, and loosened his tie with the other. “I don’t have a single fucking thing that’s yours.”
“Oh. Yeah. You do.” His father nodded and took a couple steps forward. “And let me tell you, I understand why you did it.”
“Did what?” Elliott closed one eye. Opened it to close the other. The fucker was still out of focus.
“Bought this house from her. I know she needed the money, and you thought you were doing a good thing, taking care of her. But I’m back now, and I can do it.”
The absurdity of this sent a rush of hot bile into Elliott’s throat. He choked out a laugh. “You? What the hell are you talking about?”
His father might as well have yanked a soft-brimmed hat off his head to clutch in front of him while he scuffed a foot. That was the depth of his performance. That “aww shucks, I’m a good old boy” act that had stopped working on Elliott at about the age of nine, which was the last time he’d allowed himself to be disappointed when his father let him down.
“Well, I’m gonna bring her home, of course. She should be taken care of by someone who loves her. Not be in some home with strangers. It’s the least I can do.”
Elliott turned. “The fuck are you saying?”
“I’m gonna bring her home. You heard me.” His father looked around the kitchen. “Get this place back in shape. Take care of her here.”
“Back in shape?” Elliott barked laughter. “Like you ever did a damn thing around here? Is that what you’re talking about? Me giving you this house back, so you can squat in it while you … what? Take care of Molly until she dies? You know she’s terminal, don’t you? Her condition is degenerative. She’s going to die.”
“We’re all gonna die.” His father gave him another of those horrifying picket-fence grins. “She ought to do it here in the comfort of her home.”
“You are so full of shit. And you are no fucking way taking her out of that facility.” Elliott stumbled on the words, slurring
. He swallowed the thickness of whiskey and spit. “And you’re not getting this house back, either. I bought this house. It’s mine. You. Can’t. Have it.”
His father’s eyes narrowed. Gone was the shuffle-footed clown, replaced by the first glimmers of the man Elliott knew much better. The one with the nasty temper. The one who liked to talk with his fists.
“I think you need to check your tone,” his father said.
Elliott straightened. He was drunk, but not wasted. He jerked his chin toward the back door. “Get out of here before I throw you out.”
“You can’t throw me out of my own house.”
Elliott pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed. It only took a minute or two to report a trespasser, and he was promised a patrol car would be by shortly. Calmly, he disconnected the call. “Get out now, before they get here.”
“What’re they gonna do? They can’t make me leave my own house; you don’t have a restraining order or something like that. I have every right to be here in my own house.”
“It was never your house! It was always her house! You just came around in between fucking my mother and sleeping on your friends’ couches.” Elliott sneered. “This was Molly’s house. Now it’s mine. And I will take care of her until she dies, because I owe her that. I don’t know what angle you’re playing, old man, but you’re not getting a damned thing from me. Or her.”
“She wants to come home,” the old man said. Sly. Furtive. Bold enough to lie and think he could get away with it. “She told me so.”
Elliott closed his eyes against a rush of dizziness. “Molly can’t tell you anything. Even when she can talk, she can’t be held responsible for what she says. And if you cared about her at all, you’d want her to stay where she can be kept comfortable and safe.”
“I got nowhere to go!” his father shouted. “Okay? I got nothing and no place. They tell you when you get out there are programs, places that will hire you, but a man can’t live right on what they pay there! I can’t get a job without an address. I can’t get an address without a job!”
“Not my problem.”
“You’re an ungrateful little son of a bitch, ain’t ya?” His father turned his head and spat an enormous glob of greenish-gray snot onto the floor.
The chair, out of place. The cupboards left hanging open. The dishes in the sink. The stink of the old man who clearly hadn’t showered. The affront of it, all of it, was nothing compared to the outrage Elliott felt at watching his father spit on the clean floor.
“Clean that up,” Elliott said carefully.
The old man’s eyebrows lifted. Deliberately, he hawked back another mouthful and spat it next to the first. “No.”
Later, Elliott would be unable to remember throwing that first punch. He could’ve blamed the liquor, but the truth was the rage had overtaken him and made him blind. When the cops arrived and pulled him off his father, he looked at the blood on his fists and felt the rising heat of the bruises on his own face from where his father had gone after him with as much zeal as he’d been given. The two of them had been bleeding, knuckles split, lips busted, noses squashed. And all Elliott could say when the cops asked him what had caused the trouble was, “He spit on the floor.”
He spit on the floor.
He’d made everything filthy.
And the bastard still had the gall to laugh when the cops hauled both of them away.
* * *
There was an advantage to heartbreak, and that was that being unable to sleep and getting up at the ass-crack of dawn meant she had time to do all those things she’d always put off because she didn’t have time. Like lining her drawers with paper and cleaning out dozens of old e-mails and using a toothbrush on the grout of her shower. The last had her biting back a sob, though, since spending that much time and detail cleaning was totally something Elliott would have done, and Simone didn’t want to think about him.
The problem was, of course, as it always was, that she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
By the time she had to leave for work, Simone had cleaned everything in her apartment that could be cleaned. Then she’d made some things dirty just to spite herself. She’d also pulled up her resume and fiddled with it while she researched job-hunting sites.
It had been a productive morning that left her exhausted and ready to crawl back into bed, but she knew better. If she didn’t pick herself up and keep going, she’d spend the rest of the day in there and be unable to sleep tonight. Again.
Fuck that.
She showered. She dressed. She made herself coffee that burned her tongue, and she forced down half a bagel so she could tell herself she’d eaten for the day. When her doorbell rang, she already had her hand on the knob, ready to leave. She opened the door before she remembered to look through the peephole. By then it was too late.
She drew in a breath, then slumped for a second or so. Defeated. There was only so much brave face a girl could be expected to put on, and she’d reached her limit. She’d passed her limit of “fuck-yous,” too, nothing left but silence. She stepped aside to let him in.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing out of his mouth.
It was a good start, but she’d heard that from him before.
“You look like shit,” Simone told Elliott bluntly, looking him up and down. “Were you mugged?”
“Do you have any coffee?”
“It’s cold. I could make some.…”
He was already pushing past her and into the kitchen, helping himself to everything he needed. She watched him from the doorway at first, then came inside and sat at the table. She was going to be late for work. It had better be worth it.
“Your place looks nice.” Elliott stood with his back to the counter, where he’d turned on the coffeemaker.
“I cleaned it.”
“It looks good,” he said.
Simone kept her tone light and neutral, though she could feel herself frowning. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the second time he’d said it, and that surprised her.
Pleased her, too, though she didn’t want to admit it, not even to herself. When he came across the kitchen toward her, reaching for her, that surprised her more. Enough for her to shrink in her chair, putting herself just out of his grasp. He didn’t come closer.
Elliott rubbed at the spot between his eyes. He looked awful. No. He looked like a man who’d done something awful.
She didn’t want to feel bad for him. “What happened to you?”
If you’d asked her to list a thousand things she might’ve expected him to do, sinking onto his knees in front of her would not have been on that list, but that’s what he did. Elliott put his face into her lap, his strong hands pressing the outsides of her thighs. His shoulders heaved.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She tried holding on to her anger, or at the very least, clinging to her sorrow, but when it came right down to it, Simone craved pain. She did not like to give it. Not even to someone who deserved it. She loved him. She didn’t want to hurt him.
There was nothing she could do but put her hand on top of his head. She sank her fingers into the thickness of his dark hair. She stroked it gently, then kneaded the back of his neck and shoulders, working at the knots of tension.
“What happened, Elliott? Tell me.”
For a horrible moment, she thought he was crying and wouldn’t be able to speak. Her own throat closed, tears burning behind her eyelids. She rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades, hating whatever had made him break this way.
He looked up at her. His expression was bleak, but he wasn’t crying. “My father got out of prison a few months ago.”
It didn’t seem like “congratulations” was the right response, so she stayed quiet. Elliott cleared his throat, not getting up from in front of her. His fingers slid between her thighs and the chair. He pressed his face again to her lap.
�
��My father was married to a woman named Molly. He was an asshole. He drank and ran around on her. He beat up on her. Not all the time, but more than once. Once is too much.”
Simone said nothing, letting him speak.
“He had an affair with my mother. She had me. My dad was never around much, even though he never made me a secret. If anything, he kind of flaunted me to Molly. Taking me to their house sometimes, parading me around like a trophy. But then he’d disappear for months at a time. Years. He left me with my mom, who had an addiction problem. She lived in squalor, Simone. I grew up with roaches crawling on me in the night and rats in the pantry.” He looked up at her, his expression grim. “We didn’t have to live that way. She had a trust fund, of all things. A fucking trust fund, and we lived in filth. When I was seventeen, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to make something of myself. I showed up at Molly’s door, and she took me in.”
“That was good of her.”
Elliott managed a small, tight smile. “She took me in and stood up for me against my dad, who said he didn’t want to be bothered with being responsible for me, not when I’d be eighteen in a year. They fought about it. He punched her in the face and threw her down the stairs. She was in a coma for three days.”
“Was he drunk?”
“Does it matter?”
She stroked his cheek. “No, honey. It doesn’t.”
But it explained a lot.
“He went to prison for vehicular manslaughter a few years after that. She divorced him. She’s had a lot of health problems since then, and now she’s got a late-stage degenerative brain disorder. Dementia. She’s dying. I bought her house from her so she could afford to stay there, but now she’s in an inpatient facility.”
“You take care of her,” Simone said, understanding.
“She took care of me,” Elliott answered. He cleared his throat again and leveled his gaze with hers. “Last night, he showed up at my house. We got into a fight. I spent the night in jail, and you know what I thought about the entire time I was in there?”
