Everything to Me

by Teresa Hill

  She backs away again. “I’ve got it.”

  And then I’m back to her big brown eyes, wide as can be, staring at me, and me trying not to show everything I feel for her.

  “I thought you left already,” she says, wringing water out of her long hair. “With Andie.”

  I shake my head. “She went home with her cousin. I’m going to help clean up.”

  “Oh, okay. We can use it.” Her towel starts to slip long before she’s done with her hair.

  “Let me do that,” I say, because I can’t help it. I push her hands out of the way and start gathering her hair like she would if she was going to put it into a ponytail. I’ve seen her do this so many times, catch it in one hand and then use her other hand like a round Squeegee.

  I run my hand to the ends twice, and water streams out of it. I’m not touching anything but her hair, so why it suddenly feels so personal, so intimate, I can’t say. I can feel her staring at me, but I don’t let my gaze meet hers.

  “You’re cold,” I say, as I lay her hair against her right shoulder. “You have dry clothes somewhere?”

  She nods. “In the locker room in the gym.”

  “Come on,” I tell Dana. “Let’s get out of here.”

  If I come face-to-face with Tripp right now, I know I’ll get into it with him.

  She doesn’t say anything as I walk with her through the parking lot to the gym’s side doors. I want to tell her so many things, all of them things I know I can’t, or at least I shouldn’t. Things I have no right to say. They’re eating away at me, destroying me. I keep seeing her with Tripp, and I’ve tried — God, I’ve tried — not to ask her anything about him, because I’m afraid whatever I say will make things worse between us. No way I can do this and stay calm. But it’s impossible not to say anything anymore. It scares me too much. Did I overreact at the party? Did Andie? I don’t know anymore, but if there’s even a possibility he might hurt Dana, then I have to say something.

  As we get to the gym doors, I reach out to open one of them for her.

  “Thanks,” she says, not looking at me, not stopping. She’s going to disappear inside if I don’t start talking right now. I can’t let her go without trying.

  “Dana, wait,” I say. She turns her head about a quarter of the way toward me, no more. “What are you doing with Tripp?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  I shrug helplessly. “I ... keep seeing you two together.”

  She’s still not looking at me. She’s staring off to the right, toward the floor. “We just keep running into each other.”

  “That’s all?”

  Now she’s looking at me. Now, I’ve clearly made her mad. She has her arms crossed in front of herself and is giving me one of those looks like she’s daring me to do something. “If you have something to say about me and Tripp, go ahead and say it, Peter.”

  “He is not a nice guy.”

  “Well, maybe I’m tired of nice guys,” she says.

  “You do not mean that—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I say, like that’s some kind of damned reason. Finally, I add, “You can’t trust him.”

  “Can’t trust him how?”

  “In any way.”

  “Like talking to him in the halls at school? I can’t trust him there?”

  “You know what I mean.” I’m getting more frustrated every second.

  “No, I don’t.” She steps closer, so much so that I have to back away a little, and her big brown eyes are flashing with fire. “Why shouldn’t I be with him, Peter?”

  I shove my hands deep into my pockets so it’s harder for me to touch her. “Look, guys talk. When it’s a bunch of guys together? You’d hate the way he talks about girls. All the girls he’s been with. And there’ve been a lot.”

  “So, now he’s a man-whore?”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “And you’re not?” she says.

  “What?” I yell at her.

  She shrugs, looks only a little sorry. “Girls have called you one, too.”

  Okay, yeah. They probably have. Not without reason.

  Freshman year, back when I was still really angry, there were girls who were into that whole bad-boy image. I only wanted Dana, but I knew that was impossible, so I tried to drown all the feelings I had for her with a lot of different girls.

  It never worked.

  Then I went through this crazy phase where I told myself there had to be a way that I could have her. But her dad caught us together on the couch in their family room last February—just curled up together sleeping, nothing else, I swear—and went nuts. I knew I’d been right the first time.

  Me and her together?

  No way.

  So I’m back to seeing other girls every now and then.

  What am I supposed to do? Live like a damned monk? I’m days away from being eighteen.

  But I’m sure as hell not the kind of guy who’s out for all he can get, anytime he can get it, from as many girls as possible.

  “Is that what you think of me?” I finally ask her.

  She really does look sorry now. I think I see a hint of tears in her eyes.

  “Shit. Never mind.” I turn around and walk away, so pissed I can hardly stand it.

  She should be with a great guy, a golden boy who has everything going for him. Smart, talented, polished, almost as perfect as she is. Someone nothing like me, and definitely nothing like Tripp.

  I can give her up, I keep telling myself. I can let her go. If it’s for a guy who is so much better for her than me. That’s the deal. I guess the problem is it’s my deal, not hers, and it’s her life.

  Still, Tripp?

  No way.

  No fucking way.

  * * *

  7

  Peter

  Zach taught me it’s okay to hit some things, like the heavy bag boxers use for training.

  Your hands make a really satisfying smacking sound when you hit it. It takes muscle to move the thing more than a few inches. Hit it hard enough, and when it comes back at you, it could easily knock you down if you’re not careful.

  I’m really glad to have that as an option for working off some of my anger after the school carnival when I come home to another little sit-down with Zach and Julie. Turns out, I probably haven’t been paranoid thinking I’ve seen my mom around town. She’s out, and no one told us.

  Zach looks pissed. Julie looks like she ate something that made her sick, and they both seem to want me to talk about it. Really? What is there to say?

  We knew it was coming. When Mom broke the terms of her parole last spring, it was only for drinking and disorderly conduct, which wouldn’t keep her back in lockup for long.

  Over the next couple of days, I spend some serious time hitting the bag. Other than school, work and football practice, that’s about all I do. I’m barely sleeping, not even playing poker, because I can’t sit still long enough. I’m too keyed up.

  She could be anywhere. She could show up in front of me, telling me lies about how much she missed me and trying to wedge her way back into my life. My birthday’s getting closer, and I thought it would feel so good, would be such a relief to know she had no legal claim on me anymore.

  But then I think about how upset and uneasy Julie’s been the last few years. She’s an adult, but Mom still messes with Julie’s head, even if we don’t see her.

  Turns out, almost-eighteen doesn’t feel as great as I thought it would.

  I refuse to have a birthday party, which apparently is unheard of in Zach’s family. Birthday dinners are held at Sam and Rachel’s house with the whole family there. Rachel cooks, and she’s a seriously great cook. Sometimes Sam grills outside. On your birthday, you get to pick the menu, and it includes a homemade cake from Rachel — great cake.

  Nobody ever made such a fuss over my birthday as these people do every damned year, but I can’t do it now. My mother knows damned well what birthdays are like in Zach’s family. My sister a
nd Dana’s Aunt Grace were best friends for years when they were young. Julie went to all Grace’s birthday parties. Sam and Rachel still live in the same house they did back then. It would be so easy for Mom to barge in. No way I’d risk having a party. So, I planned to lay low and let this day pass.

  I finally agree Zach and Julie can take me to dinner at my favorite Japanese place tonight, and after that, Kev and I are going to hang out in his basement, have a few beers, play some video games, no big deal. Kev’s parents moved across town a few years ago, so if my mother comes after me, she won’t know where to look.

  I have a few presents from the family already, birthday cards with checks or gift cards inside, a nice chunk of change, even after I refused to have a party.

  Zach took my truck this morning, saying it would be back tonight. I’ve been talking about getting a bed liner for it, going back and forth on whether to spend the money on something that’s purely for looks. It’s Sam’s old work truck, the one he kept around for years to haul really dirty stuff, so he wouldn’t mess up his new truck. The cab is nice. I’ve cleaned it up, found a new seat, but outside, the truck looks like it’s hauled a lot of dirty, nasty stuff.

  Last year on my birthday, Sam offered to give it to me on the condition that he could still haul crappy stuff in it every now and then. I told him that was too much. I wanted to pay for it. Damned if he didn’t take the money I paid him and had a friend of his find an almost brand new engine out of some truck that had been totaled, and the three of us put it into that old truck. It doesn’t look like much, but it has a great engine. The thing will run forever.

  Now, I bet it’s going to have a nice new bed liner.

  That afternoon, I’m downstairs, hiding until it’s time for dinner, trying to burn off some of my uneasiness by going at the heavy bag. The doorbell rings. Sweat’s dripping off me and I have no shirt on. I feel like my heart shoots up into my throat, and my gut clenches tight.

  I’m sure it’s her.

  God, I hate that she can still do this to me.

  Eighteen friggin’ years old, and she’s still tearing me to pieces in seconds.

  I won’t answer the door, I decide, as the bell rings again. My truck isn’t here. I’m in the basement. Unless she walks around the house and looks in the basement windows — or breaks in — she isn’t going to see me. Assuming I locked the kitchen door. I did after I got home after school, but a while ago, I took the recycle bin to the curb — it’s picked up in the morning — and I’ve been distracted lately.

  I feel like a silly, scared kid, hiding in the basement, but I stay there at the bottom of the stairs, breathing and listening as carefully as I can. I swear I can feel someone walking around the side of the house.

  Go, I whisper, as my body turns around slowly, looking toward where I think that person is. Go. Go. Go.

  Then I hear the kitchen door open, and Dana calling my name.

  “Shit,” I whisper, my body going weak as I sink down to sit on the stairs.

  Maybe she won’t find me, either. Maybe she won’t think to look down here, and she’ll go. I don’t think I can stand to see her right now. I might grab her and never let her go.

  “Peter?” There she is, standing at the top of the stairs. “Are you okay? I rang the doorbell twice. Did you not hear me?”

  “Sorry.” I don’t turn around, not right away. I need to try to get myself together before she sees my face, before I see her. “I was … finishing my workout.”

  Lame, but all I can come up with at the moment. I’m too busy trying to convince myself I can stand up, walk up those stairs, and pretend nothing is wrong.

  “Really?” she asks. By the sound — or lack of sound — I know she hasn’t moved, hasn’t taken one step toward me, and what I hear in her voice …

  Does she think I’m hiding from her?

  Seriously?

  I stand up and turn around. She’s still at the top of the stairs. Her dark eyes are all big and glistening with what might be tears. She’s oddly frozen. I’m afraid if I make one wrong move or say one wrong thing, she’ll turn and run away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, grabbing a towel I’d thrown over the railing and wiping some of the sweat off my face, my chest. I don’t even have a t-shirt down here to put on. “I didn’t … It isn’t … ”

  Shit, I hate when things get tense between us, but what can I say?

  I watch as she bites her bottom lip, her eyes still suspiciously wet. I either tell her the truth or hurt her even more than I already have. No way to win here.

  As I climb the stairs, she backs up into the kitchen. “I was just dropping off birthday cards for you. One from my parents, one Lizzie made you. And I got you something. Just something silly. Mom kept putting off mailing the cards because she was sure you’d change your mind about your party. You really don’t want one?”

  “Not really.” I’m at the top of the stairs now, toweling off my neck and my hair, which are dripping with sweat. It gives me something to do other than look at her and feel like complete shit for hurting her, and hating the whole world for making it impossible for us to be together.

  “Lizzie … doesn’t understand. She thinks birthday parties are the greatest, and there’s nothing like having her sing Happy Birthday to you in that baby voice of hers. It’s the best part of birthdays to me, so sweet I almost cry when she does it, and she … You know how she feels about you. You’re one of her favorite people in the world.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think about that. About upsetting her.” And I can see now that it would. “I’ll come by tomorrow or the next day and make it up to her somehow. Maybe take her for ice cream.”

  Dana nods, keeping her distance, holding herself so still. “She’d like that. And you might want to say something to Gram, too.”

  Ahh, dammit. I hurt Rachel’s feelings, too? By not letting her cook for me and make me a birthday cake? “Really?”

  Dana nods again.

  “I didn’t want any kind of fuss, that’s all. I want the day to be over. It’s not … ” All at once, I can’t do it anymore. Hurt all these people I never meant to hurt. Lizzie? Rachel? Dana? I blurt out, “I think my mother’s in town, that she’s been following me. I haven’t actually spotted her yet, but I keep feeling like she’s watching me.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” she says, still looking like she doesn’t understand what one thing has to do with the other.

  The thing is, if there’s a way to fuck up my life, Mom will find it.

  She’s like this dark cloud you know is out there somewhere, waiting for the day it can come storming back into your life. Thunder, lightning, enough rain to drown you.

  Finally, I tell Dana, “She knows where Sam and Rachel live, what birthdays are like in your family. I didn’t want her showing up drunk or mad or out of control in front of your whole family.”

  “Oh,” she says, that pinched look gone from her face for a moment, and then her pretty eyes come back to mine.

  She gets it, and I feel not just naked in front of her, but like I’ve laid open the book of my whole life for her to read every friggin’ page. I finger the bony knot on my collarbone near my right shoulder, a little memento of a broken bone that didn’t heal right. Because I didn’t go to the doctor. Nobody ever set the bone properly. It’s not the only one.

  Dana doesn’t know any of that, the ugliness that was my life growing up.

  God, I hope she doesn’t.

  Her mother does. The whole first year Julie was my guardian, social services made me spill my guts once a week to a shrink, who turned out to be Dana’s mother. I have to believe that to her, protecting her family was more important than any privacy she promised me. She must have warned them.

  Watch out for Peter.

  Bad things have happened to him.

  Just one of the reasons I can never be with Dana. I’m sure if it ever came down to it, she’d hear all about my shitty childhood. If not from her mother, at least from her
father. He has to know. I suspect it’s one of the reasons he goes nuts whenever I get too close to her.

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t even think … ”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t want you to. I didn’t want anyone to know about it, but I didn’t realize it was such a big deal, not having a party. I’ll talk to Lizzie. And Rachel. Anybody else I need to explain myself to?”

  “No. It’s … Forget it.”

  She’ll do it, she means. She’ll fix things. It’s something she does. She sees a problem, and she wants to fix it. She thinks she can fix anything. That’s who she is.

  She’s done so damned much to fix me.

  As much as I can be fixed.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She nods. “So … have you told Zach? I mean, if anybody can do something to keep her away, it’s Zach.”

  “Not yet. They told me she’s been released again, but that’s all they know. Well, all they’ve said they know—”

  “You think they’re keeping things from you?”

  “I don't know. It’s … He and Julie have been acting weird since that fight with Tripp.”

  “Weird, how?”

  “Really nice,” I say.

  “They’re not usually nice to you?”

  “They’re okay. But this is ... Oddly nice. Weirdly nice. Like something’s up, but I don’t know what. Maybe they’ve seen Mom, and don’t want to tell me. I didn’t tell them. I figure Julie’s happier not knowing, and maybe they think the same about me.”

  “But you’re worried,” she says. “Tell Zach what’s going on. Have him get a restraining order. He’ll do that.”

  “Can’t. We talked about it when she got out before. She has to do something first, something threatening or harassing.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” And then she just stands there, awkwardness settling in heavily.

  I hate that, hate the way it hovers in the air between us. It was never this way before. From the first time I met her — well, really talked to her — at a cookout in her grandparents’ back yard, things were so easy between us. Other than me freaking out sometimes and having a hard time carrying on a conversation when it hits me over and over again how gorgeous she is and how much I want her.