Foster made a move. He leaned forward and touched my face. His left hand against my ear, his fingers pulling at the back of my head. His thumb stroking my cheek a split second before his lips touched mine.
He kissed me.
I froze.
Foster kissed me again, the tip of his tongue sliding so gently across my lips.
My heart exploded with ten thousand butterflies that tickled down in my stomach.
His other hand slid around to my back and he pulled me closer to him.
I nestled up close to him, turning my head to one side as he turned his to the other.
I tried to put the bloody paper towels down on the porch and knocked over the bottle of peroxide. I scrambled to reach for it without breaking the kiss.
Fumbling like an idiot, missing out on this crazy moment.
Foster grabbed my hand and interlocked his fingers with mine.
He pressed at me, forcing me to slide back. My back touched the house and he kept kissing me.
My right hand just dangled at my side, fingertips twitching. I wasn’t sure what to do with that hand. Touch Foster? Grab his face? Do something else?
When Foster broke the kiss, I felt like hours had gone by.
He kept himself close to me. Really close.
His forehead touched mine. The tip of his nose brushed against mine. Our lips flirted a few times with playful kisses.
“Rose,” he whispered.
“Foster,” I said. I swallowed hard.
I tried to figure out what time it was. How many hours I had until Foster needed to disappear from the house. A way to get him inside. Or maybe just stay outside. On the porch. We were alone. In the dark.
His thumb stroked my cheek again.
He nodded and grinned.
The cut on his lips. Swollen eye and cheek.
He was so hot to me. Everything about him was so different than everyone else. And it wasn’t just because he was older than me. That didn’t matter.
I wanted to confess to him right there that what had just happened was the best kiss I’d ever had. And nothing would ever top it, unless it was just him kissing me again and again.
His mouth started to move like he had something else to say.
I waited, wanting to hear what he would say - or do - next.
There was a cry of a police siren in the distance that made me jump.
Foster’s head spun around. “Shit.”
“Foster…?”
At the corner there was the reflection of lights flashing off the building.
Foster stood up.
“Foster? What’s happening?”
“I have to go,” he said without looking at me.
“Why? What’s wrong? I didn’t call the cops, Foster. I swear. Whatever those guys did to you…”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Rose. Go inside. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
He hurried down the steps.
“Foster? What are you talking about?”
He stopped at the end of the sidewalk and looked back. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
The sirens got louder.
Foster started to run.
I climbed to my feet and watched him disappear as he darted through the parking lot next to my house.
My heart still racing. My lips still tingling. My body sort of confused as to why it felt the way it did.
And Foster was gone.
And he would be gone for a while.
9
A New Place to Live
Foster
I should have been home an hour ago. That was the plan. That’s what he told me to do. I was supposed to drop some shit off, pick up some other stuff, and then get back to the apartment. It was a risky thing, I guess. He kept telling me how risky it was and not to fuck it up. He sat there in a chair, drinking whiskey from a bottle, repeating himself over and over. I could tell something was up because he never got nervous.
Hell, the last couple months had been the closest I had gotten to my father.
Now I was running through alleys and backyards, trying to get to the apartment before the cops did. I had no idea if they were actually going to visit my father, but something told me they were. I had screwed up big time. How? It wasn’t completely clear to me yet.
But something big was going down.
I gritted my teeth, pissed off that I had just been kissing Rose. Of course that’s how it would happen. Just like at that stupid party. I should have kissed her then. But I didn’t want it to be because of that game. I wanted it to be real. And, yeah, I had kissed another girl at the party, but whatever. In some way, I wanted Rose to catch me so I could see if she got jealous. Which she did. That meant she liked me.
Fuck, this was hard. Navigating these waters of liking someone like Rose, all the while trying to help my father with some favors so he would actually look at me like I was a real person. Usually he’d just get strung out on booze and drugs, and eventually, someone would come and take me away. He’d do some time, hit rehab, and by then my new foster family would be ready to boot me out.
This time had been different. From the day I got back with my father, he showed interest in me. Maybe because I was older and I had an actual purpose now.
Whatever it was, it hadn’t been all that bad. First thing was that he didn’t hit me anymore. I was big enough to knock him out if he tried. Second thing was that he bought me stuff. He bought actual food to eat. If I did him favors, he would buy me a bike, give me cash, even talked about buying me my own guitar.
So I ran faster. I ran harder.
I cut through one more backyard.
The sirens wailed and suddenly stopped.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
The lights flashed against the apartment building. It would only be a matter of time before the lights would come on and everyone would want to see what was happening.
I jumped the last chain link fence and ran toward the front of the apartment building.
We lived on the ground floor.
I appeared just as two officers began to approach the building.
“Hey!” I called out.
They looked at me and put their hands to their weapons. “Stop! Don’t move!”
I quickly showed my hands. “I live here. With my father.”
I had no plan. I had no idea what I was doing.
Maybe it was my instinct to distract the officers so my father could make an escape.
“Your father?” one of the officers asked.
“Foster,” the other one said. “Get over here right now.”
I approached slowly.
“We have a warrant and cause,” the first officer said. “Get over here, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I said. “You should get out of here.”
“Foster, don’t do anything stupid,” the second officer said.
I curled my lip. I hated this shit. I hated when the cops came. I hated when they arrested my father.
“I have a gun,” I said, blurting it out in a shaky voice.
“Get him!” the first officer ordered.
Before I could take a breath, the second officer jumped on me. I slammed to the ground and was face down. The officer’s hands moved fast, finding the gun in a second. He slid it behind him and put his knee to the middle of my back.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Foster?” he yelled. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You got what you wanted,” I said. “Now go. Take me and go.”
“Not a chance,” the first officer said.
“It’s mine,” a voice said.
I craned my head and saw my father walking from the apartment building. He was stumbling drunk, holding a bottle of whiskey. He threw the bottle back and took his last drink. He slammed the bottle to the ground, letting it shatter.
“It’s my fucking gun,” he called out.
“No,” I yelled.
“Shut up, Foster,” the officer said and
dug his knee into my back.
I groaned in pain.
“Come on, Kevin,” the first officer said to my father. “You know why we’re here. Don’t make this harder than it is.”
“You going to shoot me in front of my own kid?”
“No,” the officer said. “You’re going to turn around, put your hands behind your back, and drop to your knees.”
“I’ll do that if you let my kid go,” my father said. “That’s not his gun. I gave it to him to hold.”
“Stop this,” I said. “He’s lying.”
My father stumbled forward even more.
“Get off him,” the officer said to the one with his knee to my back.
He got off me and pulled me to my feet. He put my wrists together behind my back and held them.
“Be good, kid,” my father said. “Be good.”
“No,” I said. “This is wrong. I had the gun.”
The officer pulled at my wrists, sending pain up my arms. “It’s more than that, Foster. Just shut up.”
The first officer arrested my father.
There was a disaster of charges waiting for my father this time. Cops had been tracking him and some friends for a while. Money, guns, drugs. Me being a pawn in it all. But nothing would happen to me. I was considered a kid. A kid who stood there with his hands behind his back, watching his father get tossed into the back of a police car. A kid who had his hands released and was escorted by a police officer into the apartment so I could get my stuff. I was told to pack my bags.
A kid that emerged from the apartment with two bags and all the neighbors outside, staring. Knowing who my father was. Knowing that he was in trouble again. Knowing I was just some poor kid that would get shipped off to a new home.
Which is exactly what happened.
A car pulled up and a woman hurried to get out. I didn’t recognize her, but she knew everything about me. She reassured me that everything was going to be okay. She told me I would be safe.
But that was a lie.
The only time I felt safe… was when I kissed Rose.
PRESENT DAY
10
A Jam Session
Foster
“Plug it in and play,” I said to Rhett as he stood there with my guitar.
“I’m nervous, Foster.”
I pointed to all the empty seats. All the chairs were flipped up and over the tables. Beth had a wet mop and earbuds in her ears as she cleaned the floor. Stephanie was behind the counter rearranging stuff and taking inventory.
It was a really slow day at the coffeehouse thanks to the pouring rain.
Rhett probably should have been in school, but I hadn’t asked why he wasn’t. At least not yet.
He showed up, soaking wet, without his guitar, asking for a lesson. I saw the look in his eyes. That look of tough guy terror. I’d lived with that look on my face for years. Getting through the years and the streets, but forever looking over my shoulder waiting for the cops to show up.
I bought him a coffee and instead of giving him a lesson, I gave him my guitar and put him up on stage.
“Work through it,” I said. “Nobody here. And if someone comes in, who cares? Just play, man. Come on.”
Rhett looked at me and sighed.
He strummed a chord. It was choppy. But coming through the amplifier behind it, it was loud and powerful.
Rhett strummed the same chord over and over. He switched to another chord, missed a note, but kept playing. That was the fun part of live music. Even if you messed up, you could just play through it.
“See?” I called out. “Not so bad, is it?”
“I guess not,” Rhett said. “Can I play something I tried writing?”
“You wrote a song, Rhett?”
“Yeah. I mean, I tried.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
Rhett stared at the neck of the guitar. He tried to play up the neck a little. It was rough sounding, but if he wrote it, that’s how it was meant to be.
I stepped back and sat on the black barstool and crossed my arms.
Rhett was a lot like me as a kid. You tried to keep some distance, but sometimes things would just fall into your lap. What I meant by that… he got about ten seconds into his song when the door to the coffeehouse opened. In came a girl about his age, soaking wet from the rain. She was in a t-shirt that clung way too tightly to her body. A backpack slung over her shoulder. I could tell she had been crying, even though her face was soaked by the rain.
“Carrie?” Rhett asked.
“You know her?” I asked.
“That’s Carrie,” Rhett said as though I should have known who it was.
“Right,” I said. “That’s Carrie.”
The girl - Carrie - looked right at Rhett. She started to shake and the look on her face told me, again, that it wasn’t because of the rain. They both should have been in school, but as I watched the way Rhett took off the guitar and jumped off the front of the small stage, it reminded me of me and Rose.
Rhett went right to her and grabbed her arms. “What are you doing here?”
“You weren’t in school. So I left. To find you.”
“You’ve been walking in the rain?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I know,” Carrie said. “I needed to make sure you were okay. There were rumors…”
Rhett looked back at me. Then back to Carrie. “They were rumors. I’m just hanging here.”
“I’m cold,” Carrie said. “And soaked.”
I gritted my teeth and slid off the barstool. I went to my bag and unzipped it. I found an old hoodie and took it to the front door of the coffeehouse. Beth was still slapping the mop around the tables. Stephanie behind the counter, counting mugs, clanging them together.
“Here,” I said to Carrie. “Take this. Warm up.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Rhett looked at me again. He nodded.
“You two okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” Rhett said.
“You’re the guitar teacher?” Carrie asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Rhett really likes you.”
“Hey,” Rhett said. “I never said that.”
I smiled. “Right. I know I’m an adult. But the way you two are acting… I need to know if everything is okay or not. You two just ditching school to hang out? Or is it something bigger?”
I saw Carrie hesitate and wait for Rhett to answer.
“Come on, Foster,” Rhett said. “You know how it goes…”
“Try me, Rhett.”
“It’s none of your fucking business,” he snapped.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Everett,” Carrie said. “Don’t…”
“Don’t call me that,” Rhett said.
He walked away from Carrie and left her hanging.
I touched her shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll talk to him.”
She grabbed my wrist. “It’s not that bad. I mean, there was a rumor at school about him fighting my stepdad.”
“Your stepdad?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t like Rhett. And he caught me sneaking around to hang out with him.”
“Right.”
“He slapped me across the face in front of Rhett. I’d never seen Rhett that mad before. He wanted to fight my stepdad.”
“Does your stepdad do that a lot… to you?”
“No. He’s a total jerk though. But that was the only time he really slapped me.”
“So I take it Rhett has been through something like that before?”
“You can ask him. He didn’t show up in school and people were saying he was going to fight my stepdad. I hate school. I hate teenagers.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Stay put.”
As I turned, Beth stopped mopping and took out an earbud. “Everything okay?”
“Perfect,” I said.
“You sure?”
I didn’t answer.
Beth’s cheeks
turned red. She put her earbud back in and went to clean a different area.
I felt someone else staring at me. I turned and saw Stephanie standing behind the counter, eyeing me. I gave a quick wave of my hand - everyone stay calm - and Stephanie went back to taking inventory.
Rhett sat on the edge of the stage with his hands in his face. I had to admit, walking toward him felt like I was walking toward myself at his age. At his age. Christ, that made me feel old, and believe me, I wasn’t old. I had just been through enough shit in life that it was like I’d lived a lifetime already. I was only ten years older than Rhett. Time was a strange thing. When I was his age, going through life, he was just a little kid, learning his ABC’s and how to write his damn name.
Now look at both of us.
I sat down on the stage next to him.
“You’re going to fight her father?”
“Stepfather,” Rhett said. “Scumbag.”
“You didn’t tell her you were ditching school?”
Rhett looked at me. “I didn’t ditch. I was told not to come.”
“Suspended.”
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“Doesn’t matter, Foster,” Rhett said. “This isn’t fair.”
“What’s not fair, Rhett?”
“Life.”
I laughed. “Get used to it, kid.”
“Foster, how did you end up here?”
I shook my head. “Nobody is walking that path, Rhett. Right now you’ve got a girl over there worried sick about you. Whether you like it or not, she’s got a stepfather that doesn’t like you. You have to find a balance there.”
“He hit her.”
“She said that. Does he do it all the time?”
“No.”
“Well, I can call the cops, Rhett. You two can talk to an officer. That officer is then going to take her to school and call her parents. They’ll investigate the house, everything, determine if she’s in a good or bad environment.”
“Shit,” Rhett whispered. He stood up. “She’s got a good life. I don’t. She says she loves me. I don’t get it. She’s got a nice house. Her mom is nice. Her stepfather is a dick. But I get it. I’m a loser. I’m a poor kid with no future.”
Let You Go Page 7
