Bad Habit

by Charleigh Rose

  Asher stands there, unmoving. Adrian and their friends are laughing and talking all around him, but he’s zeroed in on me. I hear Jackson whisper-yelling at Brett for not warning him that my brother would be here, but it’s all that I can do to focus on the important stuff, like standing upright and breathing. I can barely make out his face in the dark, with only glow sticks haphazardly tossed around for light, but I know it’s him. I can feel it. I can feel him. And more than that, I can feel the rage floating off him in waves. But what does he have to be angry about? He’s the one who left me. Lovesick and lonesome. If anyone’s allowed to be upset here, it’s me.

  I force myself to turn my back on him, already feeling the loss. I don’t want him to know he can still get to me. I don’t even know if he remembers that night. Asher pretty much stayed drunk back then, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s changed.

  Nat’s face is suddenly in my line of vision, and I do my best to blink away thoughts of Asher.

  “I think I just came,” she breathes, fanning herself. “When did your brother get all hot and…growly?”

  “Apparently, it’s a new development,” I say bitterly. Jackson and Brett finish their little lover’s quarrel and come stand next to us.

  “I’m sorry,” I start. “I have no idea why he’s even here.”

  “It’s all good,” Jackson says, running a hand through his perfect teen-heartthrob hair, flashing a cocky grin.

  “I don’t know what his deal is,” I admit distractedly, because my brain is still stuck on Asher. Why is he here? Where did he go? What happened? Why is he looking at me like that? I lost my first love and my best friend that night. I never thought I’d see him again, and now he’s here, hanging out with my brother like nothing ever happened. His dad served time soon after he left, but he got out after less than a year, and he’s been rotting in that god-forsaken house ever since.

  “Earth to Briar?” Nat pulls me from my chaotic thoughts once again. “Okay, I sent the boys to get us drinks. Spill.” I take a quick glance around and confirm that Jackson and Brett are, in fact, nowhere to be seen.

  “What do you mean?” I usually tell Nat everything. And I mean everything. But I can’t have this conversation. Not here, and not now.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just try to play dumb. I know something is bothering you, and I have a feeling it’s not the fact that your brother just cockblocked you.”

  “He’s here,” I say, widening my eyes for emphasis.

  “Who?” Nat immediately scans the building, her eyebrows pinched together in confusion.

  “Him.”

  “Asher?!” she whisper-yells, and I send a pointy elbow into her side. “Ow! He’s not fucking Voldemort. You can say his name.”

  “Say it a little louder. Please,” I deadpan. Jackson and Brett are walking toward us now, a six pack of beer in tow. “Okay, they’re back. Don’t say anything. And don’t make this weird. Please.” Nat makes the “cross my heart” gesture before turning her attention to the guys. Super reassuring.

  “Try holding on to this one this time, butterfingers,” Jackson quips, and I accept the beer, downing the entire thing in one gulp.

  Jackson whistles and a few people cheer, while Nat gives me the “Oh, honey…” look. I glance up to see Dash making his way over, concern tugging at his expression. Asher’s face becomes visible as he steps out of the shadows, but he does nothing but glare as he walks toward me. This is literally the last thing I need in my life right now. Asher, Dash, and I in the same room for the first time in three years. Dash still has no idea what happened that night, and even though I’m dying to confront Asher, it has to stay that way. For everyone’s sake.

  I look to Nat, wordlessly pleading with my eyes for her to do something, anything to break the tension. She gives me an almost imperceptible nod, letting me know she understands.

  God, I love her.

  “Soooo,” she singsongs, climbing onto an old upside-down paint bucket with a devious look in her eyes. “Who wants to go exploring?”

  Phones and flashlights are whipped out, and Adrian and Dash take the lead, Natalia hot on their heels. Asher hangs back, not making a move, as everyone else follows suit. Our eyes connect, and I wait for him to reveal some hint of the boy I grew up with, but there’s nothing. Nothing except contempt, and maybe even disgust. I rub my arms, suddenly feeling cold and insecure under his icy glare, even in the stifling heat.

  I turn my back on him and catch up to our group, digging my phone out of my back pocket to use for light, but my battery is at five percent. Shit. I tuck my phone back into my jeans. I’ll have to make sure to stick close to everyone without my own light.

  This place is seriously creepy. Graffiti covers every surface, and everything is in shambles. We pass what must have been the bathroom, full of crushed porcelain and crumbling concrete before entering another big, open room.

  “Look,” I say, snagging Nat’s phone from her hand and shining it above us to illuminate what’s left of the signage. “Pot pie, Salisbury steak, burgers, and coleslaw… We must be in the old kitchen.” We were standing where the food lines were, and each one had a different sign. It’s fascinating to me that this place is in ruins, but some things, like the menus and even some old light fixtures, have been well-preserved.

  “Guys, over here,” Dash says, sounding far away. I follow his voice and find him standing on the old grandstand that overlooks the dirt area where the track once was. As I get closer, I hear crunching with every step and look down to find—

  “Is that…?” I ask, lifting a foot.

  “Bird shit.”

  I jerk my head at the sound of Asher’s voice. It’s deeper than I remember, and it cuts right through me. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that I’ve been missing that voice for three years, and the first words he says to me are bird shit. I shake my head and trek through the piles of mummified poop and stand in the open air, trying to make out the stables through the glassless windows, to no avail.

  “I wonder what happened to the windows,” I muse aloud. They run the entire length of the grandstand, and every single frame is empty.

  “They blew them up in that Charlie Sheen movie,” my brother offers. “I saw it on YouTube.”

  “Yeah, and killed thousands of pigeons in the process. Pissed PETA off real good,” Asher adds. I feel my eyebrows pull together as I try to decipher his tone. He isn’t amused, nor does he seem particularly saddened by the fact. Just…cold ambivalence.

  “That’s disgusting,” Nat says, tiptoeing toward us—like that’s somehow going to help her avoid the droppings—with her nose scrunched up like she just smelled something foul.

  “That’s sad,” I argue.

  “Why, because you weren’t there to give them a funeral?” Asher says snidely.

  When I was eleven, I found a dead pigeon on our lawn. The bright, crimson blood coming out of its eye a stark contrast to the light gray feathers. We were coming home from Dash and Asher’s swim meet, and I cried and begged my mom to let me give it a proper burial. She screamed about it being full of diseases, ordered me to stay away, and called my dad to dispose of it. By the time my dad got home, he said the bird was gone. Later that night, when Asher snuck into my brother’s window, he whispered into my ear not to worry. He’d buried it near a bush in our yard. Sure enough, the next day I saw the little mound of dirt and expressed my gratitude, but still thought something was missing. It was so plain. So sad. Everyone deserves to be buried by something pretty, I’d told him. Even a stupid pigeon. He laughed, the way he always did when he thought I was being a bleeding heart, and plucked a big, purple succulent, also known as a desert rose. The colors were beautiful. The middle was made up of a vibrant purple and faded into a lighter shade. Succulents weren’t your typical funeral flower, but I couldn’t have loved them more. “Is that better?” he said as he squatted down to place the flower atop the dirt, ever so carefully. Almost tenderly.

  I
remember thinking how surprising it was to see this gorgeous, rough-around-the-edges bad boy doing anything with such care, much less tending to a flying rat. Correction: a dead flying rat. That was one of the first things that drew me to him. I knew it was just a bird, but I cried all night thinking about it, unable to get the image of its bloody eye out of my head. And Asher… He knew it bothered me. He’d listened. And he’d fixed it. Clearly, that Asher is not here today.

  Dashiell’s eyes dart between the two of us, no doubt wondering what could’ve possibly caused tension between us already. I look down, afraid my guilty eyes will give us away. Asher scoffs and walks off. Dash shoots a look to Nat, and she holds her hands up in mock confusion before following suit.

  “He’s been through some shit, Bry.”

  I shrug, feigning indifference. “Okay.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “If you say so. When did he get back?” I can’t help myself from asking.

  “Couple of weeks ago?” he guesses, running a hand over the top of his sandy blond hair.

  “Oh.”

  I don’t know why that feels like a punch straight to my gut, but it does. He’s been here for weeks—plural—and he hasn’t come to see me. Not once.

  “Why are you guys here, anyway?” I ask. I know they didn’t come to hang out with a bunch of high school kids.

  “I really don’t know. Asher asked me to meet him here, and then your friends showed up.”

  He had plans with Ash, and he kept them from me.

  “I would’ve told you sooner…” he trails off, looking uncomfortable, and I know more is coming.

  “But?”

  “But, he asked me not to tell you.”

  Okay. Ouch. That hurts more than it should. I feel tears starting to well up, and I hate that I’m still affected. I’ve shed enough tears for Asher Kelley over the years. I vow to myself, right here and right now, that these are the last ones.

  “Look, I know you guys were close, too. He was like a brother to you.”

  I cringe at his word choice. I’ve felt a lot of things toward Asher, but sibling love was never one of them.

  “I just don’t get why he wouldn’t want me to know.” The night he left was perfect…until it wasn’t. It was as if a switch went off, and I have no idea what tripped it.

  “I don’t think he wanted anyone to know, really.” Dash shrugs. “He hasn’t told me much, but I know the past three years weren’t exactly fun.”

  My chest aches at the thought of anything bad touching Asher. He’s had too much of it in his life. Throughout the years, whenever he got a raw deal—whether it was a misunderstanding or plain old shitty luck—he never complained. Not once. He simply accepted every negative thing life threw at him. More than accepted it, he expected it. Like he thought he deserved it. And it broke my heart.

  “Come on. Let’s get back.”

  I nod, not trusting my voice to hide the hurt, and we head back to our friends. Nat curls her fingers around my hand and gives it a squeeze without saying a word, and we all explore some more. When we come up to a decrepit escalator, I have to stop and stare. It’s the creepiest, most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen. No one realizes I’ve stopped, so they keep moving, but there’s something about this escalator that has me rooted to this spot.

  I pull out my phone. Four percent battery. If I’m lucky, I can get a picture or two before it dies. I back up, taking in the missing stairs and gutted handrails with metal protruding like curled ribbons. I lean over the ledge, just a little, to get a better angle, and snap a photo. I survey the picture, and it’s too dark to make out. I lean a little further, hoping for enough battery life to use the flash one more time, and snap another.

  “Don’t fall.”

  I jerk at the cold, taunting words rumbled near my ear and pitch forward. Instead of falling to my death, I’m yanked back by a fist closed around the back of my shirt. I stumble before righting myself, and I attempt to calm my erratic heart. My chest heaves, and Asher’s eyes follow the movement for a fraction of a second before the apathetic mask falls back into place. Those green and brown eyes appear even darker, and the shadows cling to his features, making him look like some sort of otherworldly creature.

  For long moments, we stare. Him with his hands in his pockets, me with one hand on my chest, still catching my breath, but both of us unspeaking. I open my mouth to say something, anything, like maybe why the hell did you just almost kill me? Or why did you leave us? But the words are stuck in my throat. Realizing that I’m not going to be the one to break the silence, Asher gives me a derisive laugh before shaking his head and prowling off. I really hate the sight of his back walking away from me.

  “Okay, so tell me about that night again. Don’t leave anything out,” Nat says from the driver’s seat of my car. After my encounter with Asher, I practically dragged her out of the building, leaving Jackson and Brett’s drunken protests behind us. I was feeling a little lightheaded myself—from chugging that beer, or being near Asher again, I still don’t know—so I asked Nat to drive.

  “I’ve told you this a million times.” I sigh, reclining my seat all the way back. I stick my hand out of the backseat window, feeling the hot, summer wind whip against it. “I threw myself at him. He was into it for a minute. Then, Dash and Whitley showed up before anything else could happen.” Not that it would’ve happened anyway, much to my fourteen-year-old self’s dismay. “He basically told me we made a mistake, gave Whitley a ride home, and I never saw him or heard from him again. Until now. He didn’t even end up taking the scholarship. I checked.”

  “Hmm,” Nat says thoughtfully, tapping her fingers against the leather steering wheel. “I mean, obviously, he was running away from whatever he was feeling for you. But to disappear for three years? That’s a little extreme, even for him.”

  I snort at that. There’s no way I had anything to do with his vanishing act. I’d have to mean something to him for that to happen, and the past three years have proven otherwise.

  “There’s no point attempting to figure Asher out. You’ll only hurt your brain trying.” I would know. Asher’s always played his cards close to his chest, never letting anyone in on the thoughts and feelings within.

  We pull into the long driveway leading up to our ranch-style house, then Nat throws the car into park.

  “All right, I’m out. I have to help my mom set up for an event tomorrow, so I promised I’d be home early.”

  “Boo. Call me after.”

  After Nat takes off in her little red sports car, I make my way toward the house, then tiredly stab the code into the keypad at our front door. Too lazy to go to my room on the other side of the house, I steal Dash’s charger from the kitchen counter and plant myself onto the couch in the media room. It’s fluffy and huge and could sleep ten people at least. This is my preferred room in the house. I throw in my favorite movie—the one I love to hate and hate to love since it reminds me of that night. Tombstone.

  I can’t focus on the screen. The events of tonight and the ones of three years ago play in my head on repeat, searching for something, anything, that will fill in the missing pieces. I keep coming back to the same two questions. What made him leave? And what brought him back?

  Before long, I drift to sleep with images of Asher’s hardened expression in my mind.

  “Don’t fall…”

  Someone should’ve warned me not to fall years ago.

  Chapter 2

  Asher

  “Are you sure, man?” I ask for the third time since Dash insisted I stay with him as we walk into his house. Being here again is the last thing I thought would happen tonight. Ever since I got back into town, I’ve managed to avoid this place like the fucking plague. This house and the people in it were the only good part about my life growing up. But after the younger Vale sibling betrayed me in the worst way, I lost that, too.

  I stopped by my old house exactly once. I was greeted by my father in an alcohol-induced slumber in h
is old, tattered recliner. A cigarette dangled from his fingertips, dangerously close to burning the house down. I walked out before he even knew I was there.

  “I told you, my parents are living in SoCal now. It’s just Briar and me, and you know she won’t mind.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

  I’m a bastard for what I did that night—for what I thought about doing every night for months before then. I know this. But I also don’t plan to come clean any time soon. Briar fucked me over real good. Maybe that’s what I deserved for hooking up with my best friend’s little sister, but either way, I’ll never make that mistake again. And as far as I’m concerned, Briar Vale is nothing more than a bad memory.

  I shouldn’t fucking stay here. I should keep paying eighty-eight bucks at the roach-infested motel down the street. I should go kick my pops’ old dying ass out of the house and stay there. I should do anything but stay in this house again. Yet, here I am, sharing space with my old best friend and his little backstabbing sister. Because I’m a goddamn masochist.

  After digging myself out of the mess Briar got me into, I made a life for myself. I met some good people—a guy named Dare who took me under his wing. I worked on roofs with him during the summer and did snow removal in the winter. Eventually, he finally took the plunge and opened up the tattoo shop he’d been talking about for years, so I unofficially took over the roofing business. I’d put Cactus Heights—and everyone in it—behind me in exchange for four seasons and hard work.

  I swore I’d never come back. There was nothing left for me here, with a deceased mother and a father who only saw me as the reason she died. Then, I got the call that my dad was in the hospital. Liver failure. I didn’t know what I expected to feel. Maybe nothing at all. Surprisingly, I felt a twinge of…something. Something I still haven’t identified. Guilt? Fuck that. I’m not the one who drank to the point of trying to provoke my kid into a fistfight and blacking out—in that order—night after night. Obligation? Probably.