by Sadie Allen
I looked around the room as I tried to see it through her eyes. The walls were an oatmeal brown, the carpet a similar color of beige. I had a double bed with a blue comforter, a bookshelf full of trophies and medals from all the years I played sports. I had a small desk in the corner with a few papers about college on top and a laptop. I used to have photographs on the shelf and desk, but after what had gone down with my dad, I trashed them all. The thought left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I watched as Sunny took in the room, and when she said nothing, I prompted, “Well?”
“It doesn’t look like you.”
Huh?
“What do you mean, it doesn’t look like me?”
It was a room. I pretty much just did homework or crashed here.
“It’s just not what I pictured your room looking like.”
She had pictured my room? I felt something in my chest lighten at the thought of her thinking about me.
“Well, what did you picture it looking like?” I was genuinely curious.
“I don’t know, but not like this. This … This is just so boring. I figured you’d have trophies and stuff, but I guess I was expecting maybe some posters or pictures or something. I don’t know. Maybe a TV. A game system somewhere. Maybe color.”
I laughed, guessing most guys did have rooms like that. Honestly, I had never spent much time sitting in my room. I worked out, and I used to go out with Ashley or my friends all the time, so I didn’t really care what it looked like. Now I still worked out, but I spent all my other time working at the diner or doing crap around the house.
I shook my head, and then reached out and tugged on her elbow. It felt right being here with Sunny. It felt right touching her and teasing her.
“Come on; we can go work on our stuff in the kitchen.”
I avoided going any farther down the hall. I definitely wasn’t showing her the pit that was my mother’s room. I just pointed to the bathroom before we found ourselves back in the kitchen.
We spent about thirty minutes going over who would say what and who would hand out the cakes, before the front door crashed open and banged against the wall.
“Judd!”
Oh, shit.
“Judd!” the woman yelled again.
“Wait here a minute,” I told Sunny, praying that my mother hadn’t noticed the pickup parked in the street in front of the house. Maybe I could get her to her room before she noticed there was another person in the kitchen.
I walked into the living room, and there stood my mother, swaying in the doorway. She was still in her clothes from yesterday, but they were disheveled and dirty.
“I’m right here, Mom.”
“Go get my suitcases out of the trunk,” she slurred as she stumbled inside and slammed the door.
“What are you doing home?” I forced myself not look behind me and into the kitchen. I hated that Sunny was getting a glimpse of my mother’s drunkenness. I hid it the best I could, but I couldn’t hide it inside the house.
“The hotel manager kicked me out.”
Uh-oh.
“Why did he kick you out? Even so, you should have still been able to attend the conference.” I stayed rooted to the spot and acted like everything was normal, hoping she couldn’t see past me. I was a lot taller than her, and she was drunk, so she might not ever notice Sunny.
“I just had a little drink at the hotel bar, and before you know it, that asshole manager said I had to leave. So, I told him I was there for the conference, and he said that I couldn’t stay.” She looked like she was about to cry until her eyes narrowed at something over my shoulder. “I need a drink.”
Before I could stop her, she was barreling past me, knocking me into the doorframe as she went into the kitchen.
I followed, but stopped dead when she started yelling.
“I’m barely gone, and you’re bringing home some slut!” She wildly swung her arm toward Sunny, who was in the middle of packing her things inside her backpack.
Sunny looked up and watched as my mom berated her, and I felt something in me shrivel and die at the blank look on her face.
“Yeah, I know who you are … Sluuut!” My mother was nodding her head like she was agreeing to something someone was saying when she was the only one who had said anything.
“Mom, you need to stop.” It was a warning. My own mother was not going to insult Sunny in front of me.
I took a step forward in her direction.
“You live in a tin can in that cesspool outside of town. I don’t want you around my son. He’s going places … Playing football … He doesn’t need some slut riding his coattails or ruining his chances by leading him around by his dick. Yeah, I know what kind of girl the daughter of that loser, Lonny Blackfox, is. It’s written all over you!”
“Enough!” I roared, charging up to her, shaking with rage as I got up in her face. I could not believe the utter shit that my own mother spewed at someone she didn’t even know or had ever met.
When I invaded her space, she started scrambling back until she had nowhere to go, her back against the counter. “I’m just stating the truth. She’s no good. Not good enough for my boy.” Uncertainty flickered across her face as she leaned away from me, but I kept crowding her.
When I got an inch away from her face, I told her through clenched teeth, “You don’t know shit. Sunny’s not good enough for me? Have you looked in a damn mirror lately?”
Her mouth dropped open. I wasn’t sure if it was from shock, or if she was going to say something. I didn’t care, either. I was past the point of caring.
“You’re the cesspool! Dad wasn’t the only one who left me that night. You might as well have left, too, because you’ve been a piss-poor excuse for a mother … A piss-poor excuse for a woman the past few months,” I sneered.
Her face paled, and she lifted her hands up like she was warding off my words.
“Sunny has been here for me. Where have you been? Oh, that’s right; you’ve been lying in your own puke at night, instead of taking care of your kid.”
I could see the tears in her eyes, but I’d had enough. The dam that I had been building to hold back all my hurt and rage had just burst, and it was all coming out.
“My dad’s a damn drag queen, and my mom’s a drunk. He might’ve left, but he’s not the one forcing me to watch you slowly kill yourself.” I glanced at Sunny from the corner of my eye and saw that she was still standing at the counter, frozen, her mouth hanging open.
I looked back at my mother to see she was shaking her head from side to side, eyes wide, as she mumbled in a voice so laced with agony, “Don’t talk about him. You can’t …” She then turned, slid past me, and half-ran, half-stumbled out of the kitchen and down the hall. I could hear her bouncing off the walls and glass breaking from what must have been the pictures that hung on the wall. When I heard the door slam, I knew she was in her room about to do God only knew what.
My eyes stayed glued to the spot where she had just stood until I heard a soft, “Judd …”
“Just go.”
I felt numb. I hadn’t even noticed that Sunny had gotten closer to me until her voice was right behind me.
“No, you need to talk.”
Talk? I laughed without a trace of humor. It sounded wrong, ugly.
“No, I think I’m all talked out,” I croaked.
“Judd, if you hold on to all this, it’s going to change who you are. That kind of anger and bitterness … it will kill something inside of you that you may never get back.”
I turned to look at her, seeing her shake her head slowly.
“I know, Judd, I know—”
“You don’t know shit,” I told her softly as I charged toward where I left my keys. “If you won’t go, then I will.”
I stormed out into the night, sucking in one huge lungful of cool night air after another.
“Judd!” Sunny yelled from right on my heels.
“No, Sunny, you don’t get it!” I whirled around a
nd shouted at her, my arms raised at my sides.
“I do, Judd.” She talked to me like I was some feral creature, and I guessed I was.
“My dad wants to be a woman, Sunny! How messed up is that?” I dropped my hands, my sides heaving, and let the rest of it out. “I just don’t understand. He was a man’s man. He played college football, went hunting and fishing, had sex with my freakin’ mother! How can he want to be a woman? How do you go from that to wearing fake breasts and a dress? That makes absolutely no sense!” I exploded.
“Judd …”
“No, Sunny. You can’t explain this away. There were no signs. None. I keep thinking that one day I’ll wake up, and it will have been a bad dream.”
Her face remained sympathetic, but then a look I couldn’t place flashed across her face.
“Judd, I’m not going to make excuses for what he did, but I do think you need to do something about this anger inside you. It’s like a cancer, eating you alive from the inside out. Having Asher and Ashley Klein and their idiot friends on your case doesn’t help. But I don’t think that would bother you that much if your dad was still around. You have to admit … you’re angrier at your dad for leaving than anything else.”
I didn’t say anything. My jaw was clenched tight and flexed. I was too agitated to let what she said sink in.
“Yeah, and the cherry on the effin sundae is that my mom is shit-faced drunk about ninety-nine percent of the time. You saw that!” I gestured toward the house. “She’s a different version of that every night. I have to clean up her vomit at least twice a week … She barely gets out of bed in the morning …” I shook my head jerkily, rage still searing inside of me.
Sunny took a step toward me, the look on her face making my blood run cold. I had never wanted to see that look on her face.
“Yeah, I don’t need this …” I turned around and stalked toward my Jeep, hearing her footsteps behind me. Then I paused with the door open as I watched her stop on the other side of my car. “I know you’re trying to help me, but one thing I don’t want or need is pity.”
She opened her mouth to probably deny it, but I cut her off.
“No, I saw it on your face a moment ago. I just can’t take that from you right now.”
She didn’t say anything, so I took that as my cue to leave. And as I pulled away, watching her fading figure disappear in my rearview mirror, I felt like shit.
Judd
A few weeks later…
THE BELL OVER THE DOOR jingled, signaling another customer. I looked up from the table I was clearing and froze as I stared at the group I saw standing in the doorway. Then I looked over at Sunny to see her pause in gathering menus for the group. She had also just realized who had come in.
Her eyes darted to me, checking to see if I had noticed, and I gave her a small smile to let her know that I would be okay. Then I watched her walk over to guide them to the booth that was the farthest away possible from me in an empty section.
Sunny’s face was back to its normal beauty. The bruises had faded after about two weeks, and things were more or less back to normal between us.
After I had lost my shit and ran the night she had come over, I thought for sure she would tell me to stay away from her the next day, but she shocked the shit out of me by acting like nothing had happened. I had tried to apologize, but she quickly shut me down. So, I followed her lead. We presented our mini-pineapple upside down cakes and never talked about it again. I was grateful.
My mom, however, I only caught glimpses of her. She was rarely home now, and if she was, she was holed up in her room. I guessed she was avoiding me, which was fine since I didn’t really want to lay eyes on her anytime soon.
Sunny hadn’t said anything about her dad in a while, so I assumed he was still in jail. The people he had tried to rob were fairly rich, so I didn’t see him making bail any time soon.
I was about to haul the tub of dirty dishes and cutlery to the kitchen when I heard Asher’s loud obnoxious voice.
“This won’t do, sweet Pocahontas. I think my friends and I would like a table with a better view.”
My body locked at hearing him call her Pocahontas, and I could feel my ears starting to turn red. I looked over at them to see Asher had an anticipatory smile on his face as he pointed in my direction. He wasn’t talking about the view out the windows.
Deciding that my best course of action was to keep my head down and do my job, I turned and hauled the bin into the kitchen where Sally was busy cooking behind the stove and hadn’t noticed the potential trouble that had walked into her diner. I thought about saying something, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of something that might not happen. I also didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that, just by hiring me, she had signed on for a soap opera.
I emptied the refuse into the trash can and loaded the dishes and silverware in the industrial dishwasher. I tried to think of chores to do here in the back so I wouldn’t have to go back out front, but I still needed to wipe down that booth I had just bussed. Plus, I didn’t want to leave Sunny to deal with them alone. Therefore, I grabbed the bottle of cleaning spray and a rag, dreading the scene that was probably about to happen as I pushed through the swinging door.
Asher and his friends, along with Ashley, were sitting at the booth next to the one I was about to clean. Their group was too big to sit at just that table, so they had added a neighboring one.
I was trying to bite back a groan at the sight. It looked like Asher wanted an audience for whatever he had planned. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe he didn’t have anything up his sleeve, especially since Asher and Ashley considered “diner food” below their standards.
I did my best not to look in their direction as I started spraying the table and faux leather seats down, but it was hard when there was no way for me not to hear their conversation.
Was that how I used to sound to other people when our conversations were overheard with my former friends? I wondered if Sally would let me wear headphones while I bussed tables. I hated the whispers and sometimes downright nasty comments that people said when I was in their vicinity, especially if this was going to become a regular thing for Asher and his crew.
“I wonder if this place even passed its last health inspection. If I catch Hep C from something here, I’m going to kill you, Ash.” Ashley’s grating tone set my teeth on edge.
“Are you going to actually eat something here?” Asher asked in a droll tone.
“Um, no … Ew. I doubt they have anything organic or gluten-free besides the water. Even then, I doubt the water is any better since it probably comes from the tap.”
Asher just laughed like always.
That was something I definitely didn’t miss. Ashley was the pickiest eater I had ever met. What little she ate had to be up to her specific requirements, depending on what the trend was for food in society. Going on a date with her had been a special kind of hell. It had been embarrassing when we went to restaurants and it took her five minutes just to order food, and then she sent it back because there was always something “wrong” with it. Dinner took up a majority of our date since it took so long for her to order, get the right entrée, and then eat only a third of it. I would bet my last dime that more than one server had spit in her food.
“You know what might be worse than actually having to eat here? Working here,” she said with so much scorn it made my eye twitch.
I glanced over at them from the corner of my eye to find her staring straight at me with her lip curled in disgust.
When I noticed Corey Reed had his arm draped over Ashley’s shoulders, I was surprised I didn’t feel a thing, not even a twinge. I had been in love with that girl less than four months ago—or so I thought—so I had expected to feel something, even if it was a minuscule amount of emotion.
Maybe this should have bothered me, but all I felt was relief. I had a feeling it wasn’t love I had felt when we had been together. More like lust.
I turned
away and started wiping everything down as Sunny came over and delivered milkshakes for the whole table and one glass of water. Not even a minute later, there was the sound of glass breaking.
I sucked in a deep breath and exhaled it before looking over to see that Asher had knocked his chocolate shake off the table, and it was now a bunch of glass shards and splattered liquid all over the floor.
“Clean up on aisle loser!” He elbowed his lackey Shawn, and the both of them laughed over what they thought was a clever joke. “Hey, Judd, you better get over here and clean up my mess,” he gloated with a big old smirk on his face, clearly enjoying the prospect of me having to get on my hands and knees to clean up his spill.
Clenching my jaw as I motored back to the kitchen to grab the bin and some more cleanup rags, I walked back out to see Sunny already there, picking up glass as Asher watched her.
When I moved closer, I could see his eyes were glued to the view the dip in her shirt was giving.
I felt my hands curl into fists and blood rush to my head. I wanted to knock his eyes out of his skull. I had never felt anything like this before—this urge to protect and possess someone.
“Hey, eyes up, jerkwad,” I said through clenched teeth.
Asher’s eyes took their sweet time meeting mine, lingering on her chest before turning his head sideways to check out her butt, and then he took in her face and hair.
Yeah, Sunny was hot.
It was a long minute before his attention was back on me, and he had a triumphant look on his face. “Doubt Sally would like you talking to her paying customers that way.”
“Doubt she’d like your eyes on her girl’s tits,” I challenged.
I heard Sunny inhale a quick breath as she stood up lightning quick, pressing her hand against the top of her shirt, her cheeks red.
When I touched her arm and she gazed up at me, the tenderness she aimed at me in that one look made my heart beat faster.
“Why don’t you go get a broom and dust pan for me? I’ll clean this up,” I told her in a quiet, controlled voice, still feeling the rage burning in my gut from Asher’s eyes on her.
