by Brei Betzold
“Trinity, fancy running into you.” A wry smirk pulling at his lips.
I wrenched my eyes from his lips and glanced around and remembered I was late for work. “Hey, Jeron, uh I gotta go.” Then I stepped around him and ran toward my car. I could hear him chuckling behind me, but I wasn’t brave enough to look back.
After my shift I dreaded going home. My mom spent less time there than ever, and the trailer had a lonely feel to it now. I would have called a friend to go out, except I didn’t have any true friends, I had acquaintances, people who sat at the same table at lunch with me, shared notes when we needed them, but no one that I could call on a Saturday night. After stopping to grab dinner from Sonic, I went home. I walked up to the aged, creaking wooden stairs in front of my trailer and stopped, there leaning against the weathered wooden rail was Jeron.
“I was beginning to think you got lost,” he jested while looking down at his phone. When he was finished, he shoved it in his pocket and looked up at me. His messy dirty blond hair was hidden behind a backward baseball cap, his lips shaped into their normal smirk, and he stared up at me while I gaped up at him. “Cat got your tongue, little Trinity?”
“Wh, what are you doing here?” I stuttered.
“I haven’t seen your mom around lately, you doing okay?” he asked, ignoring my question.
I shrugged, “Yea, I’m fine.”
He nodded not taking his inquisitive eyes off of me. “Yea you are.” He smirked once again and then stood up. He leaned over and chucked me on my nose. “Take care, little Trinity,” then walked away, leaving me there once again gaping as he climbed into his old beat up truck and drove away. When his brake lights could no longer be seen, I pulled myself to my senses and went inside to eat my now cold dinner and watch crappy television before I passed out.
The next morning the sound of someone banging on the front door woke me, I reached around the ground searching for my glasses. Once I found them, I slapped them on my face. Then trudged to the door and after fighting with the locks, which almost won, I pulled the door open. There standing on my doorstep was Jeron, his smirk slowly transformed into a grin as he took in my worn white tank top and sock monkey sleep pants.
“Morning, sunshine.”
“What do you want?” I growled.
“I come bearing gifts.” He waved a bag in the air that had the logo from the best donut shop in town, and then I noticed his other hand had a carrier with coffee cups in it.
I scowled at him. “Are you bribing me?”
He shrugged. “Well if you don’t want fried dough covered in chocolate, I’m sure I can find someone else who does.” He smiled and began walking backward.
“I didn’t say that.” I snapped.
I shoved the screen door open for him then shuffled away. “I’ll be back in a minute.” I yawned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
I heard him snicker. “Okay, Trinity.”
I staggered still half asleep into the bathroom, and paused when I saw my reflection then groaned. My brown hair was plastered to half my head while the other half looked as if it had been invaded by rats. There were deep red sleep lines running across half my face, and my brown eyes were bloodshot behind my glasses. I was half tempted to just climb back in bed and wait for Jeron to leave so I wouldn’t embarrass myself any further. Only the thought of Jeron sitting in my small living room was too much incentive to pass up. I quickly jerked a brush through my hair, tossed it into a pony tail, scrubbed my face then teeth. I still didn’t look great, but I at least looked half human now.
When I walked back into the living room Jeron was sprawled across my couch, remote in hand as he flipped through the channels. “You need cable” he said not looking up as he flipped through all five channels.
“You going to pay for it?”
He glanced over at me. “Nah.”
“Then no bitching.” I grabbed the coffee off the coffee table, shoved his legs out of the way and sat down on the other side of the couch. “What did I do to deserve the visit?”
He bit off a piece of donut, with his mouth full mumbled, “I was hungry and on my way home.” He chewed and swallowed, “thought you might want breakfast.”
I sipped the coffee and eyed him. “Why now?”
“Why not now?” he lobbed back.
“Why not two months ago?”
“Didn’t think about it” he shrugged and bit into his a new donut.
“You are so damn confusing” I moaned, leaning my head back against the couch.
“What did I do?”
“We live next door for what two, three years, I don’t think in that time you knew my name. Then two months ago you rush in here and save me like some avenging angel, then nothing, you show up a month ago yell at me and disappear again. Now all of a sudden you show up on my doorstep twice in 24 hours, you don’t know me Jeron, were not friends, so why are you here?”
“I didn’t know your name until my sister told me after that night” he said it so flippantly but I felt my stomach cramp at hearing that truth. After years of living next door to each other, in tin cans where you can hear your neighbor’s conversations, he never even knew my name. “You seemed lonely, and I didn’t want to eat alone.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
He gave me a look. “I don’t pity you, Trinity.”
After that I kept quiet, we ate our breakfast. When we finished, he picked up the trash and tossed it away, gave me a salute and sauntered out the door without a word or backward glance.
Jeron Price knew how to drive someone bat shit crazy.
That breakfast was the beginning of an odd friendship between Jeron and me. He’d randomly show up at my door step, usually with food in hand. We’d eat while watching a movie, not talking much other than him asking me how I was. Even though we didn’t talk I felt a connection with Jeron, I wasn’t sure if this was because it was Jeron, or just human contact. I was coming to realize just how lonely my life was. It was becoming blatantly obvious on the numerous nights I found myself alone.
Being alone never really fazed me before, a part of me knew it was par for the course of my life. I’d had few friends, my mom worked constantly, and I preferred books to reality. Feeling a connection, even if it was one sided, to a person for the first time put a giant red beacon over what I’d been missing.
It was fun to watch a movie with another person, to have someone else laugh along with you, to scoff when the stupid girl runs into the house. To have a friend, just someone else in your space, could lighten a day that you thought was lost in darkness. I began to look forward to the time I spent with Jeron, a part of me knew that this was a mistake, but a larger part didn’t seem to care.
I saw my mom less and less often, though when I finally did ask her where she’d been staying, all I got was vague answers about a friend’s house. Friend, that was an odd word in our house, neither of us until recently really had a friend. I was also sure her definition of friend was vastly different from mine.
On one of my few days off from both work and school, I was spent catching up on laundry as well as cleaning the trailer. While I was elbow deep into the commode, I heard someone banging on the door. “Come in, Jeron,” I yelled. The cheap door banged open the shut, I heard Jeron’s lazy shuffle through the living room until he found me. I’m sure I looked sexy as hell with my hair tossed into a messy pony tail, my glasses sliding down my nose, in old worn sweats and t-shirt while my hand was stuck in a salmon-colored toilet. I’d be self conscious with anyone else seeing me like this, but honestly it never failed that Jeron showed up when I was less than my best.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he growled, “just yelling and telling me to come in. I could have been a mass murderer for all you knew.”
I rolled my eyes at that while scrubbing. “You’re the only one who comes over.” I looked up at where he was standing in the door frame. “And if it was a mass murderer, I don’t think they’d knock, nor do I think my thin a
luminum door would do much to stop them.”
He scowled at me. “Your mom is a bitch.”
I rubbed my cheek with my shoulder and tried to figure out how he thinking my mom was a bitch had anything to do with a mass murderer breaking into my trailer. I couldn’t get the connection. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Trin, you’re not eighteen yet, and your mom is never home. Isn’t that like illegal or some shit?”
I shrugged. “Probably, though I am eighteen in three weeks.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s not the point; you shouldn’t be here by yourself.”
I redirected my attention to what I was doing. “It is what it is,” I murmured.
“I don’t understand why you’re not pissed at her, she abandoned you.”
“She’s still paying the bills on the place, isn’t she? So she didn’t abandon me.”
“And that’s more than likely because if things don’t work out with her latest guy she has a place to come back to.”
That was a fair point; the mom I knew growing up was different from the one I had now. I’d like to blame it all on what happened months ago, but honestly things had been changing before that. “What happened hurt her, too.”
“Yes, I’m sure letting a rapist into the home of your child was hard on her, but that does not mean she gets to check out on you,” he cried.
“I’m not saying how she’s acting is …” I stalled thinking of how to word this. “… the correct way to deal with the situation. It’s just that I understand why she’s acting the way she is.”
“I swear, Trin, you drive me insane.”
“What’d I do?”
“You’re too god damn forgiving; you should be pissed off, out doing stupid shit to get her attention. Not working and staying in all the damn time.”
“Not my thing.”
“Between you and my sister, ya’ll are going to give me an ulcer.”
“What’d your sister do?”
“She’s dating some asshole from across town,” he grunted.
“Oh,” I said softly. I didn’t know Beth well; she was a year younger than me and a junior, but I knew all about that type of relationship. Across town was where the wealthy people lived. The town was split into thirds: you had the wealthy people, the middle class, and then the rest of us. And our side of town did not typically mix with those from across town, unless it was to ask would you like fries with that? When they did attempt a more amorous affair, it rarely turned out well for all involved. My grandparents were from across town; I rarely saw them. They weren’t thrilled when their teenage daughter ended up pregnant, and her high school sweetheart chose college over taking responsibility for his actions. When my mom refused to get an abortion, she was told not to come to them for help.
“See.” He pointed at me. “You get it, but all she does is roll her eyes and stomp off when I tell her she’s being dumb.”
I snorted. “It may be the way you’re going about it, Jer.”
He gave me the stink eye and muttered whatever under his breath. “I brought sandwiches; let’s eat.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” I saluted him with the toilet bowl brush, flinging water across the bathroom.
“Hey, watch it,” he yelled.
I giggled, which caused him to glare at me before turning and heading back to the living room. I quickly washed my hands and then joined him for lunch, listening to him bitch about his sister, work, and life in general.
After lunch I gathered the trash. “What are you up to for the rest of the day?”He shrugged. “I have a date tonight.”
I inwardly flinched and sighed then gave my best fake smile. “Well, have fun.” I wanted to scream at him to look at me, really look at me. Instead I ignored the tightening in my chest the way I always did when he talked about other girls.
“What are you doing?”
“Probably reading; I have to finish Ethan Frome for English class, and then write an essay on the themes and symbolism found in the story and my own life.” I made a face at Jeron.
“Sounds like fun,” he deadpanned, “why don’t you go out, do something with friends? I mean, it’s Saturday night.”
“Uh, cause I don’t have friends.”
He tilted his head and stared at me as I shuffled my feet while he dissected me. “What do you mean you don’t have any friends?”
“It’s not a big deal, Jer. I just don’t really get along with people.” I crossed my fingers hoping he would let it drop.
“Are you really saying that out of everyone in that school, you can’t think of one person you could call to go see a movie with, or just hang out?”
“Nope, not really. Well not anymore.” I plopped down on the couch beside him. “My friend, Jane, she graduated last year.”
“Where is she now?”
“Uh, she’s at Tulane, got a full ride on academics.”
He nodded slowly. “That sucks for you.”
“It is what it is.” I glanced over at him, he was still looking at me like I was a bug under a microscope, and I squirmed like I always do when he looks at me like this. It’s like he’s looking for something and I don’t know what, I often wanted to ask but I was afraid of the answer. If it wasn’t the answer I wanted I knew it would crush my fragile heart. “I don’t really fit in, ya know? I’m too poor to fit in with some of the kids, and then I’m ‘too smart’ to hang out with the others. I may be too smart for some, but I’m not smart enough for the others, and when you add in I have no athletic abilities at all, it all makes me a social pariah.”
He reached over and grabbed my hand, threading our fingers together. “Well, I’m your friend, and I don’t think you’re a social pariah, high school just blows.”
I sighed internally and did a little dance; it was rare that we made physical contact, every time we did though I felt a thrill rush through my body. I looked over at him and didn’t see any acknowledgement that he felt the same rush of heat. I knew I was deluding myself in thinking that someone like Jeron Price could look at me like that.
“That it does,” I said on a sigh.
He squeezed my hand before letting it go. “Okay, Trin, I got to head out.”
I nodded and watched as he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket then walked out the door. I laid my head back on the couch and mentally cursed myself for letting him know what a pathetic loser I really was.
Something I realize now that I look back, Jeron was my best friend before I even acknowledged he was my friend. He was that one person I could talk to about anything without fear of being rejected. He was also the only person on the planet that could destroy me with ease if he chose.
I was never one of those kids who anticipated their birthdays, usually because they were rarely acknowledged outside of my mom. Even then they were simple things, a hug in the morning, a Hostess cupcake with a candle, a used paperback, nothing extravagant. That was fine with me; I understood we didn’t have money to spend on presents when we could barely pay our electric bill. My eighteenth birthday though I was excited about; it was a birthday that marked me as an adult. I could now vote, join the armed services, buy lottery tickets. The government entrusted me to make my own decisions because of that magical number. What I never expected though was to realize it was also the day my mom got to cut away the albatross from her neck. I was no longer her legal responsibility, and that came as a giant wake-up call to me.
On my eighteenth birthday I woke up same as any other morning; the sound of my alarm clock rattling through my head.
It was a normal day for the most part, school, work, nothing to mark it as special, except that I knew eighteen years ago I took my first breath.
I didn’t expect some huge tiered birthday cake or piles of presents, but I did at least expect to wake up and have my mom hug me. Instead I woke up in my tiny, dingy trailer alone.
I went about my morning ablutions like normal, had my typical Corn Pops for breakfast and then went to school, where I
was ignored. All in all, it was just like every other day in every way. I was looked through, my existence on the planet wasn’t acknowledged, and typically I was okay with that. Except on this one day I wanted someone to see me, to tell me that I meant something to at least one person. I went to work, chatted with customers, put away new inventory. The day happened as the day before had, and I knew the same as tomorrow. Except I was an adult now; I had to take responsibility for my life, even more so than before.
When I got home, it was to find my mom there. It was the first time I’d seen her in a week, and I was excited to find her sitting on the couch in our living room. I wanted my birthday hug, I wanted that Hostess cupcake with the single candle, and I wanted my mom. I smiled my first real smile all day and basically skipped to her, anxious for someone to acknowledge that today, this one day, I was special. So, when I sat down beside her expecting her to hug me and whisper happy birthday Trinity in my ear and I got nothing, I was sad.
“Trinity.”
“Momma,” I said, smile still there, only slightly dimmed.
“We need to talk.” She looked so serious, and I knew that my life was definitely shifting today, just not in the way I once believed. I sat and waited, I knew whatever she said at this moment everything was going to change, it was written on her face. “I’m getting married,” my mom said, and my eyes dropped down to her hands where she was playing with her fingers, no not her fingers― a ring, a ring sitting on a very particular finger.
“Oh,” I mumbled sitting back, my smile forgotten I couldn’t muster more of a response than that, I felt numb. She let out an exasperated sigh. “You could say congratulations.”
