by Marie James
“I have to go,” he grunts before walking out, leaving me trembling in my room without so much as an explanation of what the call was about or an assurance of when I’ll see him again.
Tears sting my eyes at the sight of his retreating back. If this was a test, I failed miserably.
Chapter 10
Blaze
“This isn’t your responsibility,” my grandmother chastises as we walk through the funeral home. “I told you as much on the phone.”
I stop before reaching the door to the director’s office, niceties and placations for this woman now a thing of the past. Turning to face her, I do something I never thought I’d be brave enough to do in my life. For the first time, I stand up to my grandmother. “This is more my job than yours.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Thomas.” Her words are fierce, but the way she raises and clutches her ancient purse higher on her chest shows her intimidation.
“Blaze,” I spit out. “My name is Blaze.”
Her calling me by my middle name my entire life is another thing I’ve hated but never had the balls to voice.
“I hate your first name,” she mutters.
“And I hate my father’s, so don’t call me it again.”
She takes a step back, but manages to find some strength, refusing to leave her overpowering, dominating ways too far behind. “You need Jesus, young man. For years, I told your mother her choice to leave the church would be the downfall of this whole family.”
I take a calming breath, but it only assists in angering me more. “Jesus? The Church?” I seethe. “Where is your God now! Where was the church when my mother lay in her own vomit, shit, and piss for four days before someone found her fucking body?”
“Where were you?” she taunts. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your mother?”
Disgrace weighs heavy on my conscience. The dark clouds from my past open, pouring years of neglect at my feet, thrashing at my soul. I made excuses each time the thought of visiting my mother came to mind, but the way I was raised and things I suffered through in my earlier years placates the shittiness I feel at knowing my mother died alone.
I haven’t spoken to her since right after the season began. I went to her, overcome with glee that we had such a strong team, elated to tell her about the opportunities I was creating for us, but she was indifferent to my arrival, more concerned about her own life than celebrating the strides I made.
“You left her,” she continues.
I stumble back from her words, feeling like the little boy I said I’d never be again. “Sh-She told me to,” I stammer. “She was getting clean. Told me I only dragged her down. She said being responsible for a grown man’s feelings was too much stress for her recovery. She asked me not to come back.”
The memory of the look in my mother’s vacant eyes from that day will haunt me for as long as I live. I was angry. I hated her more in that moment than I ever had—more than the hundreds of times I pulled a heroine needle from her arm. More than when I had to bathe her because she was so filthy, she was getting sores on her skin. Not going home for months was the only way I could punish her, even if my absence never registered in her dope addled mind.
I hoped against hope she’d call, text, something—but radio silence is all I got. Nothing on Thanksgiving when I was in my room alone, all my teammates spending time with loved ones. Not a peep on Christmas, even though I shouldn’t have expected it. Refusal to celebrate religious holidays was something she held firm to throughout my childhood.
Her lack of contact and my shitty mood was why I began drinking on New Year’s. Of course, winning the bowl game was part of it. It’s what I told myself, because getting drunk because your mommy doesn’t love you is beyond fucked up, and something I’d never voice out loud.
All that pain, self-pity, and anger put me right in Fallyn’s path, and I can’t be upset about that. Everything that has ever happened to me led to that one moment—culminated to that one flash of red across my inebriated vision. Every bit of it was worth it to have that woman in my arms now.
“Dad must have come back,” I say, more to myself than the judgmental matriarch of my family.
“She made her own choices,” she argues.
“She could’ve gotten better if it weren’t for him. Every bad decision she’s made in her life is because he’s poison.”
“Whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways—” she begins, but I turn and walk away, unable to listen to her spouting bible verses.
Everything I’ve ever done wrong has been narrowed down to a couple bible verses. She’s spouting them now, just as she did the handful of times I was forced to live with her when my mom was spending time in county jail for various drug and prostitution charges. She never let me forget how gracious and kind she was when she was forced to open her home to me. She spouted verses about family and obligation when she shoved me out on the street with my mother the second she showed back up. My devotion belonged with my mother, she assured me—but not a mention of her responsibility to her own child.
***
I squeeze my eyes tight and tilt the bottle of bourbon up, catching the remaining mouthful on my tongue before casting the drained container to the ground next to the bench. The last couple days have been beyond brutal, and it’s not over yet. The funeral looms like a final nail in the coffin of my life. My mother is the one dead, yet I’m the one who has nothing to live for. At least I can be proud my mother will finally rest. She’s free from a world of drugs, abuse, and contempt for how her life turned out. I imagine she’s in a better place. A victim of circumstance isn’t something I feel a forgiving God would judge her so harshly for.
There is no love lost between my grandmother and me. Suffer the Children by Napalm Death is her ringtone for a reason. She was so condescending and overpowering when my mother was growing up, shoving religion down her throat all while being one of the biggest monsters my mother had ever seen.
My mother left the second she could, even if the one holding her hand while she walked away from home was a different type of monster. She walked away from the father who snuck into her room at night for years and the mother who blamed her own daughter as the reason her husband no longer wanted to touch her. She traded that life for the devil she carried on her back until the last plunge of the venom she’d first shot into her vein at sixteen.
Imagine my surprise when my grandmother, pretentious and full of self-righteous indignation, sat down and pulled out a life insurance policy she’d taken out on my mother in her teens. It was only enough to cover a simple graveside service, but as much as I hate my grandmother, I was grateful.
I bit my tongue and swallowed the bile clogging my throat when she explained how she knew this day would come sooner rather than later. That she discovered her daughter was the ultimate succubus, luring and drawing a God-fearing Christian into her bed at night, seducing him with her sinful body and devilish ways.
I clenched my fists tight inside the pockets of my coat when she laid every ounce of abuse my grandfather committed at my dead mother’s feet. I remained silent, because I was helpless and in no position to refuse her fucked up offering. If I so much as whispered a rebuttal, I knew she’d fold up that aged piece of paper and walk out, leaving my mother to be buried by the state in a pine box and shallow pauper’s grave on the outskirts of town.
I’d heard the stories before. My mother would mention Satan coming into her room as early as seven years old. When she was high, she’d whisper about the smell of church wine on his breath as he did despicable things to her body. She’d beg him to leave, promising she’d been a good girl and did nothing to earn his punishments. I’d hold her, cursing a man who took his life years before I was born—a man who got wind that she’d finally spoken to a guidance counselor and principal at school. The little birdie guidance counselor, as a mandatory reporter, had to call child protective services, but he also made another call that day. As a deacon in the
church, he felt the Godly thing to do was inform my grandfather of the lies his daughter was spreading and the impending investigation.
My grandmother did nothing that day. She didn’t say a word when my grandfather loaded his gun and escorted his only daughter out of the house. My thirteen-year-old mother ended up in the hospital and my grandfather in the grave.
With my mother gone, I’m the one left behind, suffering, alone, abandoned. My mind flashes to Fallyn’s gorgeous face, the pout of her lips when I pull away after kissing her for hours. The last thing I want is to drag her into the middle of my shit, but the need for her pulls harder than the warning that opening this door will ruin the purest thing I’ve ever found.
That drawing force is the only thing that keeps my feet under me and my body propelled in her direction. She’s the soothing balm—the one positive thing that will keep me going.
Chapter 11
Fallyn
“You’re drunk,” I mutter when I pull open the door to find Blaze leaning against the jamb rather than the Chinese food delivery guy I was expecting. Just like every time he’s popped up unannounced, he lowers his face to mine for a kiss, but stumbles on unsure feet, his lips landing on my cheek instead. If the sway of his walk isn’t a big enough clue, the fumes from his breath leave no room for doubt.
“You’re perceptive,” he says with a half-hearted smile. The adorable nature of his grin does nothing to hide the disheveled clothes and red-rimming of his bloodshot eyes.
“You can’t do this,” I complain as I mentally try to throw up walls around my heart. I never should’ve let him in. He’s nothing but heartbreak looking for a good time. Crossing my arms over my chest in an attempt to protect myself emotionally, I don’t attempt to hide my frustration and annoyance.
“I can’t see my girl?” His mood isn’t playful. He’s almost angered by my words, but his emotions can’t be my primary concern.
“You can’t show up drunk and act like everything is fine after three days without a word.” I shift my body in front of him, preventing him from coming in. I know where things will lead if he makes it inside. I know how quickly any resilience I’ve built over the last couple days will fade. It’s already waning at the sight of his tired face and unshaven jaw. “I’ve texted and called, and got nothing. You may treat other girls—”
“My mother is dead,” he interrupts, and tears immediately fill my eyes as the rest falls to the wayside in a distant memory. Not responding to messages, not showing his face for seventy-two hours, and leaving immediately after sharing our most intimate moment no longer matters.
I wrap him in a hug, struggling under him as he leans his full weight on me. The burden of the world is dragging him down and I feel like it’s my duty to make sure he stands on two sturdy legs when the dust settles. I chastise myself internally for being so quick to turn on him in the first place. He’s been dealing with the death of a parent and I’ve been sulking in my room for days because the handsome football player hasn’t called.
With the speed of a turtle running in peanut butter, we make our way to my room. Without an ounce of grace, I roll him onto the bed. He covers his eyes with his forearm, and I dim the light, only leaving the bedside lamp on. I pull his boots from his feet and lie beside him. Rolling into him as best as I can, I wrap my arm around his middle. When silent sobs wrack his body, I realize he’s covering his face to hide the pain, not because the light was blinding. Tears streak down my cheeks and wet his shirt at the sound of his weeping, heavy with the loss of a loved one.
A burdensome feeling of helplessness sits on my chest because I have no idea how to help him. I’m unprepared, powerless, and paralyzed by the knowledge that he’s come to me for comfort and I have nothing to offer. I’ve never dealt with anything on this level. I attended a funeral of a very distant relative when I was twelve, but other than that, my life has been pretty grief free. I hold him, resting my head on his heaving chest until the sobs turn to sporadic sniffles.
“I don’t even know why I’m upset,” he manages after a long while of being stuck in his own head.
“She was your mom,” I offer.
With his arm still over his eyes, he gives me another tiny sliver of his life—something he’s all but refused to talk about since we met.
“My childhood was miserable. Drugs, Johns…going days without knowing if she was ever coming back. I should hate her. I thought I did, until I got that call.”
“We always love our parents, no matter the abuse we may have suffered at their hands,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper, as if saying anything too loud will scare him away and make him close himself off to me again.
His body stiffens under mine as the pattern of his breathing changes. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping I didn’t overstep. I may be a marketing major, but I volunteered for a year at a youth center in high school. How he’s feeling is very typical…as typical as losing a parent can be, I guess. And all I want is to be here for him, be the rock he needs.
“She didn’t abuse me,” he says eventually.
“She’s your mom, of course you love her,” I repeat, drawing circles on his chest with my hand, hoping to soothe him. Arguing that neglect is a more deceptive form of abuse than the closed fist of an angry caregiver wouldn’t be well received. It was one of the harder things we tried to get the kids to understand.
His weight shifts and I know I’ve ruined my ability to help him. My hasty words were a failed attempt to make him feel better in his grief, but he turns toward me.
When he pulls me to his chest, I angle my head away from the unpleasant smell of his breath and relax in his embrace.
“I love you so much,” he confesses into my neck. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, holding you in my arms, feeling your body against mine.”
It takes everything in my being to keep from denying him, telling him he’s drunk, but saying things like this when he doesn’t mean them are hurtful, especially when I want to believe every syllable he just muttered. Renewed tears sting my eyes at his drunken confession. I want to take his words as truth, but he’s intoxicated to the point of saying things he may not mean and won’t remember when the sun comes up.
The urge to push him away and chastise him for being insensitive, drunk or not, comes to mind. Instead, I cling to him tighter, holding on to him and the fantasy that this broken man needs me—wants me as much as I crave him.
“I’ve never loved anyone, anything as much as I love you,” he continues. “Not even football, and that’s saying a lot since football has been my whole life until you found me.”
His drunken disclosure makes me soar and breaks my heart at the same time. Less than a month since my eyes landed on this man, and had he spoken these words without the haze of alcohol, I’d jump for joy, because every word he just said is a mirror reflection of exactly how I feel about him. The tears on my cheeks, accompanied by the small smile on my lips, proves my mind’s contradiction.
Chase, my high school boyfriend, made the same verbal grand gestures, and not one of them came to fruition. The memory serves me well in helping to keep my heart in check as much as humanly possible around Blaze, who seems the epitome of perfection.
Love at first sight? Not a chance, but he’s somehow seeped into the crevices of my heart, nurturing, healing, and completing me.
As much as I want to curl myself inside him, attempt to fix him as well, I can’t ignore the foreboding settling around us. I know, without a doubt, this broken man is going to ruin me.
I hold him as his breaths even out to soft puffs of warm air against my neck. A knock sounds on my door and I look down, but he doesn’t budge. Unwinding myself from his heavy embrace, I head out to speak with Charity, needing to talk to someone about this but unsure if she’s the right person since our interaction has been strained since the New Year’s Eve party.
“Hey,” I say quietly, even though I’m sure a marching band traveling through our modest apartment wouldn’t wake Blaze.
She holds out some cash and I raise a brow. “What’s that for?”
“Chinese food,” she says. “Did you put it in the microwave?”
“It was Blaze at the door, not the delivery guy.”
I walk into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Blaze is going to need it when he wakes up. I also pull a few painkillers from a bottle inside the cabinet.
“It’s been over an hour,” she mutters, walking to the front door and tugging it open.
She slaps a bright yellow piece of paper on the counter as I’m putting the bottle of pills back. “Seriously?” she spits out.
I look down at the note left by the delivery driver proclaiming they would no longer deliver to this address since no one answered the door.
“Sorry,” I say with a guilty scrunch of my nose.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Blaze shows up and you just ignore my request?” Her angry glare barely even registers anymore.
The audacity of her indignant stance as she crosses her arms over her chest makes my blood boil.
“I’m not your fucking lap dog, Charity.” Her eyes shoot up, taken aback by my aggressive stance. I take a step closer and she at least has the wherewithal to drop some of the insolence bleeding off her.
She’s used to my placating mood, never calling her out when she’s being a bitch. She’s always making requests with the air of superiority like I’m a paid employee and not a friend. Any other night, I would’ve mollified her attitude, but my boyfriend grieving over the loss of a parent took precedence.
“But you’re his?” she all but yells, pointing down the hall to my closed bedroom door.
I glare at her, my fists clenching to the point that my palms sting from the pressure of my fingernails.
“This is just like high school all over again. Only I’m Monique and he’s Chase!”
