A God in Carver (Carver High #1)

by Haven Francis

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to grow up,” I suggest. If I were her I wouldn’t want to grow up. I would want to stay in that room and keep living in a fantasy world. Maybe if my mom put some effort into Meghan, and not just Meghan’s clothes and room, Meghan would want to live in reality. I don’t say any of this though. The Eastman house is run on denial.

  “It’s embarrassing the way she carries that doll around and puts those silly ribbons in her hair.”

  “If it makes her happy, who cares?”

  “I care. She’s my daughter. People look at her and wonder what I did to make her so peculiar.”

  “I think she’s pretty amazing.”

  “Well you’re not the one who has to deal with the dirty looks I get.”

  “Dirty looks?” I say, laughing at my mom’s over dramatization.

  “Yes. Dirty looks. Did you see the way Sissy Cafferty was looking at me while Meghan was twirling in her dress after service today?”

  “That’s just her face, Mom. She looks at everyone that way,” I tell her, standing and kissing her on the cheek. “I’m gonna take off for a while if that’s okay.”

  “I think your dad wanted to talk to you,” she says, tensely.

  “I’ll be home by dinner. He can talk to me then.”

  “You need to stay here, Brandon.”

  I suck in a deep breath. “Fine. I’m gonna go get some homework done while I wait for him.”

  I sit in my room for two hours, fighting the urge to pound my fist through the wall or pull down the shelves that are lined with the trophies I’ve been collecting since kindergarten. But I don’t do any of that. I just stare at my room that is neat and orderly and decorated in a preppy black and red design as a subtle nod to the team I play for.

  When Dylan knocks on my door and tells me dad wants to talk to me I obediently make my way to his study.

  He says nothing to me before starting up the dvd from last Friday’s game.

  I spend the next hour listening to him pointing out all the mistakes I made. When he opens the dvd player I think he’s finally done but I watch as he pulls down the jewel case of his favorite dvd from the season. The one where my pass got intercepted and Lexington scored on my mistake.

  “You know,” I say coolly, “some people, like the reporters from The Daily Sentinel and the analysts from Max Sports, claim that I’m the best high school quarterback in the state, possibly the nation, at the moment.”

  “You can’t rest on your laurels,” he tells me, hitting play.

  “I’m well aware of the mistakes I made in that game. I appreciate all your help, Dad, but I think I’ve already seen this tape.”

  Before I even have my sentence finished he’s out of his chair and has the neck of my shirt in his fists. “You think I don’t have better things to do than sit in this office with you watching tapes that make me embarrassed to call you my son? You think I’m doing this for me? You need to shut up and pay attention. Maybe if you learned how to do that you wouldn’t have almost lost that game for your team.”

  I grab a hold of his forceps and pull his hands off me. “We won that game by fourteen points because I threw five touchdown passes. Why don’t we watch that part of the game, huh?” I’m standing now and I’m in his face. I’m just asking for him to hit me. Right now, I want him to hit me so we can end this ridiculous charade he puts me through every Sunday night.

  He wraps his hands around my neck and forces me across the room and into the door. “Listen to me you cocky little son of a bitch. You might think that, because the rest of this town thinks you’re some kind of hero, you have the right to back talk me and tell me how to do my damn job as your father. But here, in my house, your ass is mine and I can do whatever I want with it.”

  The blood is rushing to my head and I can’t breathe. I try to force him off me but the adrenaline pulsing through him is making him stronger than my oxygen depraved body. He gives my head one last hard shove into the door before releasing me. “Sit your ass down and shut your mouth.” He turns and heads back to his desk, trusting that I’ll follow.

  I open his door and head down the hallway. “Brandon, get your ass back here right now,” he hollers after me.

  I ignore him and grab my jacket out of the hall closet and step into my boots. When I hear his door open and the sound of his feet running down the hall I open the door and sprint to my car. Fear courses through my body as I watch him approaching and I fumble getting my car started. I manage to shove it into reverse before he reaches me, screeching backwards down the driveway with him chasing after me. When I hit the road I shift into first and take off down it, ripping through the gears as fast as the engine will allow me to.

  It’s freeing yet terrifying to drive away from that house. Every once in a while he’ll bring me to my breaking point and I’ll fight back but I never walk away. I don’t even want to think about who he’ll be when I go back.

  17

  As I sit in the Carter’s pole barn and watch Tatum work on her truck along with Nash, Nate and Nick, I feel out of place.

  Even when I was living in the neighborhood with Nash and Tatum I knew I wasn’t really like them. The fact that I was living with both my parents who had jobs and were addiction-less was unheard of.

  Tatum and Nash are carbon copies of each other – I can see that now. Both of them have single parents who act like kids. And older siblings who once ruled Carver High but are now getting by stripping and dealing weed. All of them with looks that turn heads and attitudes that let everyone know they don’t give a shit.

  It’s like they were born to be together. From the minute I introduced them I felt like an outsider. Which is why, when they chose each other, I overreacted the way I did. I resented the fact that I wasn’t like them. That I would never understand either of them or their lives like they understood each other.

  Now that Tatum and I are no longer avoiding each other and I get to see her and Nash together again, it’s clear that nothing has changed. She’s perfectly comfortable, tool in her hand, throwing just as many insults at the Carter boys as they throw at each other.

  When Nate starts riding Nash too hard, he just smiles and laughs before removing himself from the situation to grab a beer and come sit with me. None of it bothers him. Nothing has ever bothered him. I think I’ve spent more time stressing about his life than he ever has.

  “Nash, get your ass over here,” his dad yells.

  “I’m consoling my friend. He needs me more than you do,” he says, laughing. He’s not consoling me. He can tell I’m pissed off but when I talked to Nash about Coach’s plan for Friday all he did was shrug his shoulders and tell me, ‘Good luck’ through his laughter. When I allude to the fact that I got into it with my dad he tells me that I’m Brandon Eastman and Brandon Eastman doesn’t need to be taking shit from anyone.

  He and Summer are really the only two people that know anything about my life at home. You would think that between her attitude that doing my best and staying focused will get me through anything, and his who gives a shit, everyone can go to hell attitude, I would be able to find some assurance in the middle ground. But all the dynamic does is make it clear that I don’t really know who the hell I am, what I want, or how to deal with my own damn life.

  I watch as Tatum hops down from the frame of her truck where she was sitting, working on something under the hood. Her work boots, tight jeans and white tank top look good on her. The grease smeared across her, otherwise flawless, face and the dirt covering her long fingers punctuated by bright pink nails, all looks wrong but something about the sight makes me damn happy for a moment.

  “Seriously, Nash, get your ass over there. I’m tired of getting yelled at by your dad and brother.”

  He reaches out for her and pulls her between his legs. “Just because I’m your boyfriend doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do,” he says playfully.

  “Well then we should probably break up because the guy that I was just sleeping with had
no problem letting me boss him around,” she tells him with a smile, sliding her fingers into his long hair and fisting it.

  “That kid was a bitch, huh?”

  “It’s my turn to take a damn break. I’m gonna hit Nate in the head with my wrench if I have to listen to his bitching for one more minute.”

  “It’s not like it’s a vacation over here with his mopey ass,” he says, like I’m not sitting right beside him.

  “Hey, assholes. One of you needs to get your ass over here and pour the fluid in,” Nate yells.

  Nash stands up, slaps Tatum on the ass and heads over to his dad and brother, easily throwing insults at them without the fear that Nick will slide out from under the truck and attempt to strangle him to death.

  Tatum grabs a beer from the cooler and hops up next to me on the dirty work bench. “If I had been smart I would have told these assholes, when they dragged me out here for the first time when I was a kid, that I had no interest in cars.”

  Cars have always been a huge part of their lives. Between the three Carter boys one of them is usually pretty involved with the street racing scene in Centennial County. They usually have one fast, functioning car at any given time. Depending on what that car happens to be and who they are racing, one of them can pull out a win. Nash is careless and will take chances. Nate is hot headed and can trash talk the confidence out of any opponent before the race even starts. And Nick is skilled and technical and can work any car to his advantage. You don’t fuck with the Carter boys – on or off the track.

  “How come you never got roped into this crap?” she asks me.

  “They tried a few times but, unlike you, I really don’t give a shit about how an engine woks. Nate decided pretty boys have no business getting their hands dirty.”

  Tatum laughs. “That kid is a prick about ninety percent of the time. I don’t know how Nash lives with him.”

  “Yeah you do,” I tell her.

  She laughs again, but this time it’s almost bitter. “It’s irritating, isn’t it, the way he never gets riled up about anything?”

  “Infuriating,” I agree.

  “Sometimes I just want to smack that damn smile right off his face.”

  “Yeah, but how great would it be to be him? To not care enough about anything to let it piss you off.”

  “I used to agree with you, I used to wish I was more like him. But he literally does not give a shit about anything. He’s completely content to just live his life here in Carver and never change anything.”

  “What’s there to change? I mean, despite the awful shit the three of them say to each other, they’re solid. Nash is living with his best friends, free to do whatever the hell he wants with no expectations. And he’s got you. He’s in love with his best friend. And now that you finally broke down and became his girlfriend, he’s about as happy as I’ve ever seen him.”

  “Yeah, but in three years he’s gonna be Nate, and fifteen years after that, he’s gonna be Nick.”

  “And he’ll have you by his side the whole time. Sounds fucking awesome.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, don’t you have a feeling inside of you, in your gut, that’s telling you there’s more to life than this? That’s telling you you can’t even comprehend what a big world this is and that it’s completely pointless to live your entire life in one small pocket of it?”

  “Lately all I want is to get the hell out of here.”

  She stares at Nash and is silent. Eventually she shakes her head and says, “I just look at him sometimes and try to imagine what it would be like to have no hope of a different future, no aspirations to become someone other than the person you’ve been your entire life. No dreams to motivate you. No desire to… live, like really live.”

  “He is living, Tatum. Every day of his life he is living it, to the fullest.”

  “I guess we’re just different than him,” she says, shaking her head then taking a pull off her bottle of beer. I stare at her as she does this, aware that I’m taking her comment much more personally than I should.

  “You two are about as similar as two people come.”

  “It would appear that way. And… maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just being completely unrealistic wanting more than I already have.”

  “Have you come up with an excuse yet? To be a stranger in the world?”

  “The options are pretty limited. As in, there are zero of them. With my grades I’m never getting into a college bigger than Centennial Community and, despite the fact that I work my ass off, I never have more than a hundred dollars in my savings at the end of the month.”

  “I love your mom, but you and Tally shouldn’t be supporting her.”

  “We don’t really have a choice. I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do when none of us are pretty enough to get a job.”

  “You should go to college. You could do so much more than wait tables. Those profiles you’ve been writing are really good. I think it’s the first time people are actually reading the school paper.”

  “It’s nice to get attention for doing something besides associating with Nash and being an Austin girl. I wish I would have realized that a few years back. I might have had time to build my resume and get good grades.”

  “I know you Tatum. Or at least I used to know you. You always find a way to get what you want.”

  “I’ve never wanted anything quite like this,” she says, shaking her head. “Do you know where you’re going? Which of your many options you’re gonna choose?”

  “Roger wants me to go to his alma mater, Texas A & M, so that school’s out. That’s about all I know.”

  She looks at me and cocks her head. “Grew out of the I want to be just like Daddy stage?”

  I worshiped my dad when I was young. Like Kellen still does. I don’t know if he was always an asshole and he just hid it from me or if success and wealth turned him into one. “He’s not the man he used to be.”

  “After you were at my house, staring across my yard, I started thinking about you guys… I can hardly remember who he used to be. Every time I see him he looks so serious. But he used to smile all the time, didn’t he? I remember his laugh being so loud it was obnoxious. That’s not just a memory I made up, is it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m having a hard time remembering who he used to be myself. It might be part of the reason I was obsessed with you and our childhood a couple of weeks back. I know I’m never gonna have the parents I had then, but I’m losing all my memories too.”

  “Have they really changed that much?”

  “Yeah, they have.”

  “Roger has to be so proud of you though, right?”

  I laugh at that. Tatum is staring at me with concern ‘cause I can’t stop laughing at that. “No,” I finally say. “He’s not proud of me. Tonight he told me that the way I perform on the field makes him embarrassed to call me his son.”

  She cocks her head at me. “You don’t sound like you’re joking.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “How could he be embarrassed by you? You’re the perfect guy, the perfect son.”

  “As far as he’s concerned I can’t get anything right. I played a near-perfect game on Friday but I spent an hour and a half watching back the game tape, listening to him point out all of my stupid mistakes.”

  “You did play a perfect game. I mean, I was actually there. You were flawless.”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly. It’s all I can say. She’s right, but I know I am too – he’s always going to be disappointed in me. No matter what I do.

  “Is he like that with everyone? With your mom and your brothers and sister?”

  “My mom… maybe, but she’s got some legitimate things going on that he has the right to criticize. But no, as far as my siblings are concerned, they think he’s great and with them, for the most part, he is.”

  “I’m sorry, Brandon. That’s messed up.”

  I manage to smile for her. I even wrap an arm around her, trying to reassure
her that she doesn’t have to worry about it. About me.

  She leans her head on my shoulder and it instantly brings me back to all of the hours I used to spend doing exactly this – reassuring her. Comforting her. Trying to help her believe that things were going to be okay.

  “Why do you think he does that to you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly before thinking about Summer’s reasoning and adding, “He just wants what’s best for me, I guess. He just wants me to be the best person I can be.”

  “What?” she says, sitting up straight and staring at me with a screwed up expression on her face. “What’s best for you? Bullshit. I mean, you could maybe make that excuse fly if it was how he treated all of you, but… bullshit. Why do you really think he treats you that way?”

  “Jesus, Tatum. I don’t know,” I growl at her. I’ve never been able to contain my emotions around her. She’s always brought out the worst in me.

  “You live with the jackass. I know how you work. You’ve spent hours thinking about it. So tell me - why does he do that to you?”

  “Fuck,” I say, annoyed at her persistence. “I don’t know. Because he’s an asshole? Because he needs an outlet for all the anger he has to restrain when dealing with his partners, his clients and my mom? Because I’m like a damn mascot – there to drum up business for him and he needs his mascot to be perfect? Because he never left the bench when he played college ball and he needs me to redeem the Eastman name? Because he’s pissed that he’s not living my life: never the star quarterback, never good enough to be damn near stalked by colleges, never given a shit about by the people of Carver? Because he needs to control something in his life and his business and his wife are completely out of his control and I’m next in line?” I freeze when I realize all the shit I just said to her. All the shit I just admitted to myself. All the shit that is never supposed to leave the Eastman house. All the shit I would never say to anyone.

  I look at Tatum and she’s smiling. “Okay. Those are some real, legitimate, reasons. Sounds like he’s got some personal issues. Any chance you can ignore him until you’re able to get the hell out of his house?”