by Jamie Shaw
“I yelled at my dad,” I say to avoid her question. More silent tears. I lift the bottom of my shirt to wipe them away. “He told Joel about my mom, and Joel used it to try to psychoanalyze me when we were fighting and . . . I don’t even know, Ro. I just . . . I was just so . . .” A sob bubbles out of my chest, and I bury my face in my arms.
Rowan drops to her knees beside me to drape her arm over my back, trying to rub my pain away.
“I threw it all in my dad’s face. I took it all out on him. He didn’t deserve that.” The sobs start coming hard and heavy, my entire body aching with the force of them, and I say, “He’s been through enough. He’s always been such a good dad.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Rowan says, and I know she’s right, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it makes me feel worse.
“I just don’t know what to do.” My words are muffled and stuffy. My eyes are swollen and I’m too congested to breathe.
“Just tell him you’re sorry—”
“No, I mean about everything.” I sit up and wipe my nose with the back of my wrist and my eyes with the tips of my fingers. “He’s never going to talk to me again.”
“Your dad . . . ? Or—”
“Joel,” I answer. “We can’t be friends. Not anymore.”
“Do you love him?” she asks, and I shake my head, tears falling between my knees.
She waits for a long moment, holding my gaze, and then says, “Are you sure?”
I shake my head again, and she sighs and brushes her thumb over the apple of my wet cheek. “When you told Joel to go home, what happened?”
“He went.”
“Did he say anything?”
He told me he wouldn’t get over me. He practically pleaded with me not to push him away. He told me I was crushing him.
I shake my head. “He just left.”
“Maybe you should call him . . .”
“And say what?”
She frowns, because we both know there’s nothing to say.
“I need a fucking drink,” I say, already feeling the sting of new tears and desperately trying to hold them at bay. I need a buffer, something to help me forget. Something to help me sleep until being awake doesn’t hurt so much.
Rowan stares at me for a moment, and then she nods. “I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later, she returns with a bottle of Jack Daniels I’m guessing she stole from her parents’ liquor cabinet. She unscrews the cap and hands me the bottle, and I take a big swig before holding it back out to her. “Let’s just get drunk.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asks, not taking the bottle.
“Yes,” I insist, never so sure of anything in my entire freaking life. I push the bottle into her hand, and Rowan takes a little swig before handing the bottle back to me. I take a big swig, then another, before sending it back her way, and we keep going like that until my tears stop falling—until most of the whiskey is gone and so is the aching in my heart.
“Dee,” Rowan says later that night, waking me with a light touch to my shoulder that makes my head throb. “Dee, your dad’s here.”
I try to sit up, and the whole room spins. I feel big hands steady me as the world slowly comes into focus, and then there’s my dad’s face.
“What . . .” I mumble, not sure where I am or why I’m being woken up.
“Come on, kiddo,” he says, and then he helps me to my feet. The night seeps back into my consciousness in bits and pieces. Joel, crying, Rowan, Jack Daniels.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I slur, my eyes thick with burning tears as we walk down the stairs into Rowan’s garage. He shushes me, but I turn under his arm and wrap my arms around him. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” he says, holding me upright and rubbing my back. I hear him whisper something to Rowan, and she whispers back, but I’m too busy sobbing in my daddy’s arms to care. “Let’s get to the car, okay, sweetheart?”
I nod but don’t stop hugging him, and eventually he picks me off my feet and carries me the rest of the way.
I fall asleep sometime during the car ride home and don’t wake up again until four o’clock in the morning. The alarm clock on my nightstand glows an angry, fuzzy red, and I realize I’m still in my clothes, but my shoes and jacket are off and I’m snug under my covers. My eyeballs feel too big for their sockets—and my brain, too big for its skull. I press my fingers against my temples until I’m sure my head isn’t going to explode, and then I reach for my lamp and flinch away from the light when it smacks me in the face.
I lie in bed with my eyes squeezed closed for another few minutes before summoning the strength to roll out of bed. Then I lumber down the hall and rummage through the bathroom medicine cabinet until I find the aspirin. With three of them in my hand, I turn on the faucet and dip my mouth under the water; then I swallow the tablets down and brace my hands on the sink, lost in deep blue eyes and a voice I’ll never forget, words I’ll always remember.
I only know that I’m in love with you. Like seriously fucking in love with you.
I pat the back pocket of my jeans, closing my clammy fingers around my phone and pulling it out. I have missed calls from my dad and missed texts from Rowan and Leti.
Nothing from Joel.
Go home, Joel.
My heart twists, and I bite the inside of my lip to keep from crying again.
I did what needed to be done. I extinguished the fire before it consumed us both. Now I need to let it go.
After shutting off the water, I find myself walking away from my room instead of toward it. I slip into the guest room at the other side of the house and stare down at the unmade bed Joel was sleeping in less than twenty-four hours ago.
I feel like I’m keeping a secret.
Some secrets are better off kept.
I take off my jeans and crawl under his covers, wanting to be close to him even though I can’t be and won’t ever be again. My knee brushes against something soft, and I pull a T-shirt out from under the covers. Yesterday morning, he borrowed a clean one from my dad, and last night, he didn’t come inside to get his old one before leaving.
I love you.
You don’t have to say it back, but don’t tell me how I feel.
I lift the shirt to my nose—breathing him in, missing him, wanting to go back in time even if nothing could have changed—and then I tuck the shirt under my cheek and fall asleep alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
“DO YOU WANT to stop at IHOP?” Rowan asks from the driver’s seat of my car. This afternoon, she drove my Civic from her place to my place and picked me up to head back to school. I didn’t bother offering to drive, and she didn’t bother asking if I wanted to.
“I look like crap,” I mutter with my forehead resting on the cool glass of my passenger-side window, every single hair follicle reminding me of how much I had to drink last night.
“You’re wearing alien-sized sunglasses,” Rowan counters. “No one can even see you.”
I turn my head to give her a look, but it’s lost behind sunglasses that are just as big as she said they are.
“Are you glaring at me right now?” she asks.
“Something like that.” I lay my head back against the glass with delicate precision, careful not to wake the troll hammering at my brain.
This morning, after dry-heaving in a hot shower and finishing washing up in a cold one, I got dressed and faced my dad in the kitchen. He slid a coffee and a stack of home-made pancakes in my direction as I took a seat at the breakfast bar.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
The truth was, I felt too shitty to even look at his pancakes. I slid them to the side and glued my cheek to the cold granite countertop. “Bad.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened with Joel?” my dad asked, and my heart pinched at the mention of his name.
“Not really.”
My dad rested his big hands on the counter and said, “Oka
y . . . but you know you can, right? I’m here to listen if you need me to . . .”
I closed my eyes for a long moment before I began to sit up. My head protested, but I managed to get my elbows on the bar and the rest of me into an upright position. “Dad, about yesterday . . . I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean anything I said.”
He frowned at me. “Sweetheart . . . we both know that’s not true, and I think it’s time we talk about it.”
I didn’t want to talk about it, but my dad lured me into a conversation, and every confession I made felt like a weight lifted from my soul. I told him about how much I hated my mom, about how much I needed a mom because, even though he had been the best dad a girl could ask for, there are some roles a dad just can’t fill. I told him about the night I heard him crying after she left, and his eyes filled with fresh tears as he apologized for me having overheard. I told him that I hated her for what she did to him, that I hated that he never moved on or dated anyone else.
And my dad told me things too, things I didn’t want to know but that he said I should understand.
“Your mom got pregnant with you when we were nineteen, Dee,” he said as I finally began picking at my pancakes. It was easier than looking him in the eye. “We hadn’t even been dating that long.” He sighed and raked his hand through his dusty blond hair, like he was trying to work up the courage to tell me something he didn’t want to admit even to himself. “She never loved me,” he said, quietly, “not really . . . I thought I could love her enough for both of us, but . . .” He shook his head at some unseen memory he was reliving. “Anyway, when I found out she was pregnant, I immediately got all these ideas in my head about a marriage and a house and a family. And your mom went along with it because—even though you don’t think she did—she loved you. She did her best . . . it just wasn’t enough.”
I sat in my chair, my headache forgotten while I listened intently to every word my dad was sharing. I clung to each new piece of information, saying nothing because I didn’t want to risk him shutting down and leaving me in the dark.
“Sometimes, I would come home from work and your diaper would be filthy, and it was just because your mom was too overwhelmed to even change it. Looking back now, I realize she needed help, like professional help, but at the time, I thought I could do it all. I tried to be everything for you both, and I’m sorry.”
“Dad—” I began to say, hating that he was blaming himself for being a loving father and a devoted husband, but he just put his hand up.
“Just let me get all this out, okay? I’m not trying to excuse your mom, and I know you’ll still hate her when I’m done talking, but . . . she really did love you, Dee. She just didn’t know how to love you. She tried and tried to be who she thought she should be, but over the years I think she just . . . she just lost herself.”
“There’s no excuse for walking out on your eleven-year-old child, Dad,” I said, stern in my convictions in spite of everything he said.
“No, there’s not,” he agreed. “And I guess that’s why I can’t hate her. I feel sorry for her, Dee.” His almond eyes became glassy, and he stared across the counter at me. “Because look at the beautiful woman you’ve become, and she missed it.”
When we met each other at the side of the bar and hugged, I wasn’t sure who was being strong for who. Maybe we were being strong for each other. Like we’ve always been.
“You alive over there?” Rowan asks, pulling me from the memory.
“Yeah.”
“Sure you don’t want IHOP?”
“Yeah . . . I just want to go home.”
Over the entire week, I spend my days wanting to ask her a single question that dare not be spoken: Is this how you felt when you broke up with Brady?
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I make T-shirts for the band’s website, but I don’t enjoy it. I’m a robot—I go to classes, I suffer through homework, and all of it hurts.
I don’t hear from Joel, but neither does anyone else. He’s a ghost, haunting me with his absence through a phone that never rings. On Friday, after he skips out on the the band’s first practice with Kit, Rowan threatens to file a Missing Persons Report and he finally texts her back. But all he says is that he’s fine, and he refuses to say where he is. I spend my nights imagining the girls he’s with, the ways they might look, the ways he might touch them. I wonder how long it will take him to forget me, but then on Saturday afternoon, my phone rings and Rowan is on the other end. “They think he might be at his mom’s.”
“His mom’s?” I ask, the memory of my own voice echoing in my ears.
Go home, Joel.
“Yeah. The guys are leaving to go check.”
“Stall them,” I say, already grabbing my keys and heading for the front door of my apartment.
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming.”
It’s my fault that Joel is there, and it’s my responsibility to bring him back. I pull my car into the parking lot of Adam’s apartment complex just as he and the rest of the guys are walking out of the building. I park next to his topless Camaro and hurry out of my car. “I’m coming with you.”
Shawn, who doesn’t look at all surprised to see me, just shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It might be . . .” Adam offers. He puts his cigarette out under the toe of his shoe and climbs into the driver’s seat, waiting for Shawn and me to figure out what we’re doing.
I climb into the back with Mike, challenging Shawn to try to remove me.
“Dee,” he sighs, “you don’t know Joel’s mom.”
“I know enough.” I give him a meaningful look, and something passes between us. I’m trying to tell him I know about Joel’s mom. Even if I don’t know her, I know all I need to know. I know we need to bring him home.
Shawn hesitates, hearing my unspoken words, and then climbs into the passenger seat beside Adam.
An hour later, we turn onto the derelict road of Sunny Meadows trailer park.
If I were in my own car, I’d roll up my windows and lock my doors. But Adam rolls onto Dandelion Drive with his roof down and his radio blasting. People on porches turn their heads to follow us as we drive by, and I flip my shades down, sinking lower in my seat.
We park next to Joel’s brown clunker in the stony driveway of a rusted brown trailer with wind chimes hanging on the porch. Tulips hide in a neglected garden, choked out by overgrown grass and weeds.
“How is that dog not dead yet?” Adam asks of a one-eared mutt barking at us from the next yard. He picks a stick off the ground and throws it over the chain-link fence, frowning when the dog doesn’t chase it. I slide out of the car on Mike’s side to stay as far away from the dog as possible.
“Maybe you should wait in the car,” Shawn tells me, and I give him a look that asks if he seriously wants me to get murdered.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I say, and he rubs his eyebrow like a serious pain has taken root there. Then, without another word, he climbs the stairs to the trailer’s porch and knocks on the broken screen door. It clangs against the frame as I climb up behind him, each stair creaking under my weight.
He knocks again, and when no one answers, Adam huffs out a breath and opens the door. He disappears inside, and I file in between Shawn and Mike.
“Hey Darlene,” Adam says to the woman on the couch who has just stirred awake. A white cat jumps down from the cushion beside her and rubs against my leg, but my attention is fastened on the woman I can tell is Joel’s mom. She has a certain something about her—a certain beautiful something that I can tell Joel inherited from her—but she doesn’t have his blond hair or blue eyes. Her hair is a washed-out brown with choppy layers and split ends, and her eyes are a murky brown. She has her legs stretched out on the built-in recliner of the sofa and an ashtray sitting on her lap, and she’s pretty like a ruby coated in years of neglect. This is the same woman who sold her son’s birthday presents, the same woman Joel can’t bear to talk about
unless it’s quietly in the dark.
“Who are you?” she slurs at me, and I catch myself glaring at her.
“This is a friend of ours,” Adam offers simply, nodding in my direction while I push my sunglasses on top of my head. “Where’s Joel?”
Darlene’s gaze swings back to Adam like she forgot he was standing there. “His bedroom.”
Adam immediately heads down the hallway while Shawn, Mike, and I stand awkwardly on the ragged brown carpet. The entire house smells like vanilla air freshener, and I dread to think of what it would smell like without it. Every available surface seems littered with something—liquor bottles, beer cans, full ashtrays, empty cigarette packs, magazines, old paper plates, old chip bags.
Darlene’s bushy brows pull together as she watches Adam head down the hall, and then she turns her attention on the boys at my sides. “Who let you in?” She has a smoker’s voice and a drunk person’s patience, irritation lacing the confusion in her voice.
“Door was open,” Mike lies, and Darlene lets out a disgruntled breath. She tries to put the footrest down but eventually gives up. I doubt she could walk a straight line even if I held a gun to her head, which I kind of want to.
I pry my eyes away from her to stare at the pictures on the walls—angels, Jesus, a wooden cross. Beside them hang pictures of Joel, with his dark blue eyes and innocent little smile. I stand in front of one of him with a head full of spiky blond hair, smiling in a bright orange T-shirt in front of a laser-filled blue background, and then I move to the next, and the next, taking them all in and realizing that he isn’t older than eight or nine in any of them. Maybe they were framed by his grandma before she had a stroke, or maybe by one of the ex-boyfriends Joel told me about. Maybe even the one who bothered to buy him a Hot Wheels track and leave behind a guitar.
My gaze travels back to Darlene to find her tracking me with cold, narrowed eyes. I don’t know why she doesn’t like me, but I know why I don’t like her.
“What’d you say your name was again?” she asks, her words all running together.
