Homegoing

by Janae Keyes

  “Yeah, what’s up Dad?” Liam’s voice came from under the car before he slid out and his eyes instantly met mine. My stomach clenched at only a look as it did years ago when I still called him mine. “Bethany.”

  “Hi,” I belted like a nervous fourteen-year-old whose crush had spoken to her for the first time.

  “So, what brings you in here?” Mr. Howard asked again as I continued to watch Liam, who stood and wiped his hands on a rag.

  “My car stalled on me out on Redwood Drive. Well, the intersection of Redwood and Cedar. I figured you could help me out,” I looked at him.

  “Okay, let me get the truck and I’ll head over and get her for you,” Mr. Howard insisted instantly. I started to follow him toward the tow truck parked out front. “Now, now you don’t need to be in this heat. Give me your keys and you can stay in here with Liam.

  I tossed my keys to him and he gawked at them.

  “BMW, eh?”

  “It’s a gray 6-Series,” I smiled sadly at him before he turned back to the truck, hopped inside, and was off to my broken-down car.

  “You, umm, do you want something to drink?” Liam’s voice instantly made me turn to him as he stood in front of the car he was working on.

  I took a moment to take him in. He was honest to God one of the sexiest guys I’d ever meet. He stood in a dark pair of jeans that held smudges of oil and whatever else he encountered while fixing cars. His tight dark blue tank top showed me everything he worked with. His arms were muscular, but not bulging, and his six pack was clearly defined through the fabric.

  Why did it have to be so damn hot? I was already sweating and now lusting after the one who broke my heart. I felt pathetic.

  “Sure, I guess,” I said as he motioned for me to follow him. I knew the place like the back of my hand and I knew we were heading into the back office where the fridge was always packed.

  Going through the office door, I was happy the fan was running at full blast to cool me down. My long hair blew around me in the strong wind created by the fan. I pulled my hair behind me instinctively and watched as Liam bent over to the small fridge. He still had a hot butt. God, why was I thinking about his butt?

  “We’ve got water, beer, Coke, Sprite, and Red Bull,” Liam called back, startling me as I was still transfixed on his backside.

  I shook from my lustful trance. “Oh…water is fine with me.”

  Liam stood and turned to me with a cold bottle of water in his hand. While I turned the top to open my water, he grabbed himself a Coke and popped it open before he leaned against a file cabinet and looked me over.

  “Everything going alright?” he asked.

  I took a gulp of water and quickly swallowed it while nodding to his question.

  “So far I suppose. I went to Dad’s house to find his insurance papers, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I was on my way to the bar to see if maybe he had them there. It’s important I find them, so I can have the payments for his service and burial taken care of,” I felt the words rush from my lips.

  There was so much to do and so little time.

  Chapter Four

  Liam

  Dad brought Bethany’s car straight to the garage and he had an idea of what could be wrong but was going to run some diagnostic tests on it. Bethany sat in the office waiting for results, but I saw her constantly looking at her phone and checking the time.

  “You know, I can take you to the bar,” I finally said to her. She glanced up from her phone and her look of disappointment had changed to one laced with a smidge of hope.

  “I’d appreciate it so much. Thank you, Liam. Really, thanks for everything you’ve done from helping Dad to keeping the bar running,” Bethany stood and approached me. I hadn’t expected her overflowing gratitude, but I would accept it.

  I was with her dad in his final days when she should have been there. She should have spent nights hearing him barely able to breath and getting up early to make sure he had everything he needed for the day. She should have been the one giving her dad a bath when his limbs were beginning to no longer support him.

  My fists balled at the thoughts of the moments she should have experienced. Instead she was living the high life, driving her BMW in LA, and planning an over the top wedding to a fool. I took a breath. She didn’t deserve my anger. She would regret the days she missed, and karma would find her.

  “Come on,” I said before I turned away from her. My anger toward her was masked by the feelings I somehow still held for her. Bethany and I were together for nine years before I’d decided to walk away.

  For nine long years I was in love with a woman I considered a saint. She was always loving and caring, and seemed to put others before herself, but I suppose living the high life changed her perception.

  With Bethany following me. We stepped back into the garage and toward my car, my other baby besides my Renni.

  “Dad, I’m taking Bethany to the bar. You can call me with updates on her car,” I called out toward my sad who stood with his head under the hood of the overpriced car.

  “Will do!” he yelled back in confirmation as I grabbed my keys from a work table.

  “Wait, this car is yours?” Bethany asked as I approached the driver’s side door of my lovely cerulean blue car.

  “Hell yeah. Meet Lucy,” I proudly announced as Bethany slowly approached the classic car I’d managed to buy and completely restore over the past three years. “She’s a 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. 4-Door hardtop. My only other pride and joy.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Bethany breathed as I opened my door and hopped inside. Bethany did the same and slid into the leather interior of my ride.

  My eyes were on her legs. I’d always loved her legs. She wasn’t a particularly tall girl, but just the right size for me. Her legs were too thin, but just right. They spotted a soft tan from her days in the Los Angeles sun and her heels were a nice touch. Beautiful.

  There I was again, lusting after her as if she hadn’t become a selfish woman who didn’t even care about her own family enough.

  I started the engine, which I’d just finished fine tuning until she purred like a tiger. The sound of a well-tuned engine was like sex to me. It was powerful and sent shockwaves through my every vein.

  We rode silently in the direction of the bar. Bethany peered out the window at the town we’d both grown up in. It wasn’t the same place it used to be, but it was still home. I’d never be able to call another place home. I wasn’t like Bethany who was able to pick up and move away to the big city at the first moment of freedom.

  Arriving at the bar, I jumped from the car and around to open Bethany’s door. I was still a gentleman, no matter the circumstance.

  Bethany mumbled her thanks before she fought to get her keys from her purse. She approached the door of the bar and unlocked the bar. It was still strange going to the bar without Mr. Cross in there.

  I watched as Bethany wasted no time in stalking toward the office. I followed close behind her as she passed the counter and rounded to the office. Taking another key, she unlocked the office door and disappeared inside.

  When I arrived, she was already searching through stacks of papers and mumbling to herself. I wish I knew more about Mr. Cross’s personal documents, but I was only allowed to take care of the bar and later his home.

  “He has to have the information around here somewhere. Olivia and I already went through everything at the house,” Bethany fussed about while she continued from one stack of papers on the desk to another one near the file cabinet.

  My cell phone started to ring in my pocket. I took it out to see Dad was calling from the garage. I knew he must have had a conclusion to what was wrong with Bethany’s car. I answered the call.

  “What’s up, Dad?” I asked before putting the phone on speaker for Bethany to hear.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with my car?” Bethany turned speaking midstep. I could see the anxiety plastered on her beautiful face. Bethany hadn’t change
d much since I last saw her, still gorgeous.

  “It seems to be your fuel pump. Looks like it’s faulty,” Dad explained to Bethany who looked confused.

  “Is that something you can fix?” she twirled the ends of her blonde locks, confusion in her voice. I remembered she always did that when nervous.

  “Yeah, but we don’t get or have too many BMWs around these parts. I called the closest dealership, which is in Medford and they just installed their last one. They’re going to order one for me, but it won’t be here for a few days,” Dad said and Bethany let out a loud sigh. “I’m sorry Beth.”

  “It’s okay. Thank you so much Mr. Howard. I ‘ll just use Dad’s truck for the next few days,” she concluded.

  “About that,” I started. I hated I was going to be the bearer of more bad news after an already stressful past few days for her. “His truck isn’t running. He needed a new alternator, but once the cancer really started to affect him he decided to wait it out.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Bethany sure loved that word. As I recalled she would also chant it while in bed with me as I gave her everything she needed, but that was years ago.

  The past was the past, and Bethany and I had both since moved on from our days being tangled in one another.

  “I will just have Olivia get me around until I can have a working car,” Bethany sighed, dejected.

  “And me,” I spoke up.

  “You don’t need to do that,” she expressed right away as if it was a bother to me. It wasn’t only because I knew it was what Mr. Cross would want me to do.

  “Yes, it is no problem–”

  “Liam, I’ve already taken up so much of your time. I know you have things to do and I can manage with–”

  I cut her off just as she’d done with me.

  “No arguing with me. I want to do this. Just let me.” I stood my ground with her. Bethany was one who could fight all day and night. She was strong willed and never backed down. There was no forcing her into a corner.

  We were interrupted by the sound of my dad chuckling through the phone. Bethany and I both paused.

  “There you guys go. I remember your bickering like it was yesterday. The back and forth of lovers,” Dad chuckled.

  “Ex-lovers,” Bethany was quick to remind him.

  “I’ll let you go dad. Thanks,” I added before ending the call and shoving my phone back into my pocket.

  Bethany made a clicking sound with her tongue as her eyes searched around for the next place she should search. Almost at the same exact time, both of us landed at the large safe in the corner.

  “Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t think about the damn safe.” Bethany threw her arms in the air before she rushed to the big sturdy box. “Now what’s the combo again?” She mumbled under her breath. She had to be thinking aloud.

  “Twenty, Six, Eleven,” I expertly recited from memory.

  “Thanks,” Bethany mumbled again as she got to work on the office safe. I heard the distinct click as she put in the full combination and it unlocked. “Please be in here. Please.”

  She shuffled through all the papers Mr. Cross thought were important enough to keep in the locked safe.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she exulted as she pulled out a large white envelope. “American United Insurance, this has to be it.” She opened the envelope and pulled out the papers. Her eyes rapidly scanned over the papers. “This is it. Let me call the broker.”

  Bethany was on it fast as she took her cell phone from her purse and started to make her important phone call. I leaned against the doorframe and watched her with my arms crossed. In the past nearly seven years she’d changed so much, but so much of her remained exactly the same.

  I almost couldn’t believe it had been almost seven years since I made the decision to end my relationship with Bethany. We’d been together since I was a high school junior. We’d met two years before when I needed a math tutor and this middle schooler who was apparently a math wizard. She was a cool eighth grader who knew her stuff.

  In my junior year she was a sophomore and I asked her to Homecoming, originally just to be nice, but I couldn’t help, but be caught up with her. Bethany wasn’t just beautiful but intelligent and someone I could bare my everything to.

  She graduated with me the next year. She and her best friend Olivia had spent the summer before their junior year taking classes at the community college just over the border in Klamath Falls, Oregon. They entered that school year as seniors and not juniors.

  I wasn’t ready to leave home, but Bethany was ready to get out of Fort Shasta as soon as possible. She and Olivia both were accepted to San Francisco State University and they were off together at seventeen to the big city. I stayed around and decided I’d join the automotive technology program at Shasta College in Redding since I already wanted to be a mechanic like my dad.

  Bethany and I kept our relationship long distance. When we would get the chance, we would visit one another, and I assumed when she graduated she would come back home. I was working in Dad’s shop full time and was saving for a ring and a house. Bethany had other plans.

  “Okay, you close at five? Umm, I’m going to try to make it. Thanks so much.” Bethany’s voice broke through my distant memories and I shook them away to see her ending her call. “I need to be in Redding before five. It’s ten after three now and that’s an hour and a half drive. Fuck!”

  “Calm down. I’ll take you,” I resolved.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “No problem let’s go.”

  She grabbed her bag and we locked up the bar before hopping back in my car. Bethany was a frazzled. She as always did a decent job of hiding it, but I knew when she was stressed to her limits, and I knew the dam would eventually burst on her.

  We didn’t talk much on our ride down to Redding. Bethany received a few phone calls. It was funny hearing her as Dr. Cross. She spoke about moving around surgeries and informing her patients she was away on a family emergency. She could have taken that family emergency time months ago while her dad was fighting to survive.

  I gripped the steering wheel as my anger tried to flood me. I did know Mr. Cross would want me to let it go, but it was hard to know she was spending her time galivanting around LA while he struggled to make ends meet as he died of cancer.

  After the uneventful drive, I pulled into the parking lot of the insurance company. Bethany thanked me again before she jogged inside to make it to the business before it closed.

  I supposed things went well because within twenty minutes she’d returned to the car with paperwork and a smile on her face.

  The moment she slipped onto the cream leather seats of my car she allowed a breath to go. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders as she settled back onto the seat. I could see the physical change in her. Her shoulders that were once tensed were a little more relaxed and the light in her eyes was just that bit brighter.

  “I’m guessing everything went well?” I side-eyed her as I started up the car.

  “Everything went great. I’m so relieved. I was able to cash out Dad’s policies. I can pay for his service and work on the bar’s debt,” she started before a rumbling noise came directly from her stomach. Her creamy cheeks instantly took on an adorable shade of pink in embarrassment.

  “And you’re hungry,” I pointed out. “Let’s grab some food. I’m hungry too.”

  I put the car in reverse and we were off to our next destination, which was some good ass West Coast burgers from In-N-Out. The In-N-Out in Redding was the closest one we had that didn’t involve leaving the state. Normally if you wanted to score a Double-Double or some Animal Fries you had to hop over the border into Oregon and hit up Medford’s In-N-Out.

  Bethany and I sat together, the only noise between us was the munching of our fries and burgers. It was hard to control my cock from reacting to the moaning that came from her when she took a bite of her secret menu grilled cheese. I hadn’t known she’d appar
ently become a vegetarian on me.

  The glow of the setting sun reflected beautifully over our selecting dining area, the Sundial Bridge. The large white sundial captured the red and orange of the setting sun perfectly and so did Bethany’s face.

  “I bet you eat this all the time in LA,” I jibed her.

  “I wish. I’m too busy, and the lines are always crazy long and filled with tourists. I normally grab a salad at Whole Foods or my fiancé–” she paused. “Ex-fiancé I guess now. I just realized I hadn’t given him much thought since being here. I’ve been so focused on everything for Dad that it hasn’t really sunk in. I’m not engaged anymore.” She looked out onto the water of the Sacramento River that flowed beneath us.

  “I’m sorry,” I expressed. “Your dad always talked about how happy you were.”

  “And I was until the morning I got the call about Dad. I went home and there the jackass was in my bed with another woman. God, it broke my fucking heart, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I had to get up here and take care of everything I needed to do here. Going home will be something else. My home will so empty, but I suppose he was dead weight.” I could hear the heartbreak in her voice and I knew it wasn’t the first time. The way she talked about it sounded like she was a seasoned professional at dealing with broken hearts.

  We sat quiet for a few minutes as we finished our food. I took our trash away while Bethany sipped on her chocolate milkshake. I returned to our spot and took my place next to her. A guy had set up not too far from us and was strumming a soft melody on his guitar. I always loved the atmosphere around the bridge. The pedestrian path was always filled with people from various walks of life and it was a spot that seemed to bring people together, especially around sunset when it was at its most beautiful.

  “I can help, you know that,” I break the silence surrounding us. She nodded at my words. “Tell me what you need. I’ll get it to happen.”