This novel is entirely a work of fiction. NAMES, CHARACTERS, BUSINESSES, PLACES, EVENTS, AND INCIDENTS are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including mechanical photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.
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Copyright © 2021 Worthington
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This book is dedicated to those still battling the disease of addiction. Those who have already won and those we have lost. May their deaths bring awareness to this epidemic?
To my mom, dad, and all the parents who love their weird kids and let them be weird.
To my love story, Danny, you have taught me the meaning of love and though life has thrown us curve balls, we have overcome them all and became stronger.
To my family, I love you all and appreciate your support but bypass this book. Thanksgiving can be awkward itself, no need in knowing how deranged my mind really is.
Prologue
I ’ll never forget that day.
The day twelve minutes altered our entire existence.
Every memory more vivid than the next. The way your chest no longer moved with each intake of your breath. The thoughts of the sunrise you’ll never get to see. The hard grasp I had of the material that covered your stomach, the foam coming from your mouth, and the pills scattered across the floorboard haunt me.
I yelled out your name and used every amount of muscle I had to roll you over.
For twelve whole minutes, I pounded your chest and forced my breath into you.
For twelve whole minutes, I screamed how sorry I was, and please don’t die.
For twelve whole minutes, time didn’t move.
For twelve whole minutes, every memory came flooding back.
Memories that splintered and disintegrated into fine dust, falling through my fingers —
Chapter 1
1980
H ow could a single moment change the trajectory of all my tomorrows? It all started when I was lying out in my grandparent’s backyard. By looking at the surrounding trailer park, my Pawpaw was the only one who knew how to work a lawnmower.
If the ghetto and farmland had produced a child, it would be the town my grandparents lived in. I avoided visiting as if the eighth plague of the Bible would attack me if I did. I never dreamed instead of a plague; I would meet the boy I would love forever.
My eyes darted over every surface to avoid the silvery eyes of the boy, tapping out the beat of a familiar tune on his pants leg. He had the talent of Phil Collins or someone of that caliber. Not that I was paying attention to him or anything.
He had to have been a few years older than me. I would later learn he was fifteen and the drummer of his own band. The band should have been a dead giveaway by the way he wore his hair. The dark black locks were longer than most boys, and he had it tucked behind his ears, which only highlighted the stone cut of his jawline.
I twisted on to my side when I heard who I assume was his mom screaming from the front yard, “Myles O’Conner, if you don’t answer me.”
Myles O’Conner—Hmmm Mrs. Emma O’Conner had a nice ring to it.
He was too busy with his own thoughts even to realize anyone else was on planet earth.
I sat up and crossed my arms. “Myles O’Conner, are you going to answer the lady who is calling your name?” I asked, knocking him out of whatever daydream he was having. “She’s been hollering for about ten minutes.”
The screaming lady came around the corner of the house and rolled her eyes. From the black hair to the rare gray eyes, she was an older, female version of Myles. “Quit slacking. I’ve been yelling forever. Go clean your room.”
“Coming,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Who are you?” he asked as he bored those silver eyes into mine.
“Emma… Emma Murphy.” How I could talk with my mouth gaped opened was a mystery even to me.
“Emma… Emma Murphy. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He shoved off the doorsteps with a little assist from the handrail. He struck his fist against the porch post and said, “Hey, Blue Eyes, your nipple is showing.”
He laughed. Out loud. I hated how my body responded to his laugh. It gave me the warm and fuzzies. Even more, I hated the fact he laughed at me.
Adjusting my bikini top, I counted to calm the heck down. Impossible, he walked. He had to have run to his room because, by the time I counted to five, he was looking out his window at my clearly mortified reaction.
Sure, he would never speak to me again after seeing my prepubescent body, I vowed to live inside the whole summer.
I would spend my days watching soap operas with my Granny, game shows with my Pawpaw, then go to bed before the sunset in the west. That should have done the trick.
It didn’t.
The more I stayed inside, the longer the days got, and the more I thought of Myles.
The morning sun glared through the window as I lay distracted and only able to think of one thing, the thumping of music coming from one of the twelve trailers in the park.
My Granny barged into the room, unannounced. I rolled my eyes and tugged on the blanket to cover up any exposed skin I had showing.
“Can you go out back and tell Sawyer and Myles to tone it down before they wake up your Pawpaw?” The part of Granny’s profile, I could see, highlighted her pursed lips.
I scratched my fingers through the rat nest, some called hair, and retreated further under my covers.
Yeah, sure, Granny, I so want to bump into the hunk next door. Didn’t you realize I was ignoring him? I should tell him about the dream I had, too, was on the tip of my tongue.
“Sure, the last thing we need is a grumpy Pawpaw.” I evened out my voice to appear unaffected.
Granny yanked the covers and demanded, “Now!”
Hurling the covers off me before I chickened out, I slipped on a pair of pink unicorn slippers. I covered my stained camisole with an orange pullover. I should have finished off my style with a few of the curlers Granny had her shiny silvery hair rolled up in.
I walked down the narrow front doorsteps and traipsed into Myles’s backyard in all my disheveled glory. A loud wolf whistle interrupted my self-doubt. “Hey unicorn, you must be the girl staying with the Priddy’s?”
My eyes locked with a deep blue pair that seemed to laugh at a hilarious joke only they knew. The long thick dirty blond hair tumbling down past his shoulders needed a good trim. He was close in age with Myles, and judging by the guitar slung over his shoulder, I would assume the source of part of the noise Granny had sent me to silence.
“They’re my grandparents,” I said, slumped, and crossed my arms. “And you are?”
“The cute neighbor.” He flashed a smug smile. “Sawyer Bennett at your service.”
Cute he could pass for, but the cutest title went to Myles.
“You’re Emma?” He tapped a finger over his bottom lip. I nodded. “That’s a very predictable and safe name.”
Was he for real?
“Gee, you think?” I said, letting sarcasm dripped from my lips.
“No, I didn’t expect to have an Emma in this neighborhood. Your parents probably check all the boxes and dot all the I’s. You know they want to be leaders, but they’re more followers. The kind of people who keep up with the Jones’s. No offense, but am I correct?”
Wrong. My mom is the town junkie, and my dad was who knows
.
“Totally nailed it,” I said and held up my thumb. “But listen, my pawpaw is trying to sleep, and Granny was wondering if you could turn down the music?”
“I don’t have a problem with it, but he might.” Sawyer pointed to a rickety shed tucked between the corner of Myles’s backyard and my grandparent’s.
“Thanks.” I dropped my head and shook it.
Pawpaw, I hope your sleep is worth this.
I scraped the heavy wood door over gravel, listening to the small stones crunch underfoot, and before I even raised my head, I heard.
“Hey, Blue Eyes.” Myles’s formidable voice hit me, sending shivers down my spine. “Why did the Priddy’s send a little girl over?”
I tucked my red hair behind my ear. “I’m no little girl,” I deadpanned. “And this noise you call music is interrupting the entire neighborhood. So.” I pretended to zip my lips shut. “Let’s just say silence is golden.”
“Listen, I’m leaving tomorrow for the two weeks I spend with my father every year.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Fun? I guess it’s fun. If your idea of fun is to get beat daily.” His face forced my stomach to do a cartwheel.
I don’t get beat, I thought. Just forgotten.
My mother’s absence was nothing new. My mother had checked out on life when my father left when I was only two. It didn’t bother me. She was the type of mother to ignore what I was doing or care if I even came home or—that I had run away to spend the summer with my grandparents. She only cared about her next fix.
“Listen, Emma… Emma Murphy, we will lower the volume,” Myles said, mockingly. “Don’t want to bother the princess’s beauty sleep. Lord knows she needs all she can get.”
I stormed out so fast; I didn’t see Sawyer smoking right outside the outbuilding. His arms wrapped around me when I bumped into him. “Ignore him. He is always a jerk when he has to go to his father’s. He is usually a nice guy.”
“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.” I started to leave but turned back. I would see how nice they both were. “Granny is baking some butter cookies. Since dipstick in there was nice enough to agree to turn it down, how about I award y’all with some?”
Sawyer patted his chest and smirked. “I think I’m in love. Do you want to get married now or later?”
“Later. Right now, I’ve got to finish my beauty sleep,” I said and flipped him a peace sign.
Sawyer burst into a deep, hearty laugh. It was such a pleasant and warm sound; it would have caused me to smile if he didn’t come off as a major tool.
An hour later, I sat at the bar in Granny’s kitchen, laughing at some story Pawpaw told. All about the men who met down at Gus’s service station to have coffee every morning when Sawyer and Myles barged through the front door.
Hasn’t anyone taught you how to knock?
“I don’t have to go to my dad’s, and someone said there were butter cookies over here,” Myles said with an ear-to-ear smile on his face, sending my chest into a double back handspring.
“When did you learn about that?” Granny asked as she slid the fourth cookie sheet out of the hot oven.
“The cookies?” Myles asked and pointed his thumb over to me. “When this one here told hothead over there. My dad?” he said and pulled an empty barstool over beside me, then straddled it backward. “My mom just informed me. It seems his girlfriend booked a cruise; he didn’t know about.”
“Never understood this one and his hatred for his dad.” Sawyer came over and shoved an entire cookie in his mouth. “But his love for your cookies, I understand,” he said with a mouthful of food and went to grab another cookie.
Granny swatted at his hand lightly with a spatula. “Let them cool down first.”
“Do you do this often?” The question erupted out of my cracked voice.
“What?” Myles asked and started tapping his fingers rhythmically along the bar top. His silver eyes had tiny flecks of blue floating in them and were framed by long dark lashes.
Stop staring, Emma, and answer his question.
“Storm my Granny’s house?”
“Daily,” Myles replied and looked over at me and winked. I wasn’t sure what the wink was for.
But he winked at me! That inner little girl in me did three back handsprings and two pirouettes.
“Especially now that you’re here,” Sawyer added with a still full mouth.
Myles held his pointer finger against his lips; then, he slipped next to the stool Sawyer was sitting on. He looked like he was going to kiss Sawyer’s cheek, but then his tongue flattened against it in a big sloppy lick. Sawyer jumped up, yelling, “Damn, I knew you had a thing for me, but this is ridiculous!” Sawyer violently wiped at his face. “Gross, man.”
A lazy lopsided grin sneaked onto Myles’s lips. “Only in your dreams are you lucky enough to get your hands on me.”
“Even my nightmares aren’t that horrifying,” Sawyer added.
Dimples indented both of Myles’s cheeks as he rolled with laughter.
Myles was not being a jerk. Small miracles do happen.
Myles palmed five or six cookies in his hand. “Come on, Blue Eyes. I’m going to show you the benefit of having a band stationed in your backyard,” he said before balancing another cookie between his lips.
Chapter 2
H e serenaded me with I want you to want me, by Cheap Trick and edged himself deep into my subconscious. For the first time in years, my chest warmed. I liked this Myles. More than I wanted to admit. Even to myself. I felt myself sinking and prayed it was a fluke.
Later that day, I sat slouched under a dying elm tree, trying to solve my Rubik’s Cube. Myles stopped playing long enough to come over and sit on the grass beside me. “What did that game do to piss you off?”
I noticed I had been trying to solve the cube for two hours and was no closer than when I started. “Ugg,” I said and tossed it onto the nearby ground. “I shouldn’t let such a childish game get to me.”
“Well, you are a child,” he said, then laughed.
I looked up at his haunting gray eyes. He tilted his head to the side as he thought about how I would respond the cliché butterflies in my stomach took flight and blocked the signal between my brain and my mouth.
He handed me a guitar pick he was holding. “Come on. It’s summer. These will be the days you tell our kids about.”
I was too nervous to realize he even said OUR kids. It didn’t matter. A broken soul like me shouldn’t have children.
That summer, Myles spent every minute not playing the drums with me. He made me forget the girl running from her life, but mostly, the dweeb he was the first day I was in town.
At twelve, I wasn’t a stunning beauty, but I wasn’t an ugly duckling either. I appeared more childlike than anything else. I was tall for my age, already measuring in at five feet six, and a little rounder in my hips than my liking. And red! Most described me as a red firecracker. Red hair, red freckles, and most of the time, my skin was the color of a lobster too. The only thing about me that wasn’t red was my eyes; they were a pale china blue.
My mother was of Irish descent. She was average height, about five feet four, and I believed she was stunning once, but the years and drugs had stolen any looks she had been born with away. Her dark auburn hair was dull and lifeless from her lack of care. Her eyes were the same color as mine, but they too had lost any light. My mom had gone dim not only in appearance but in life as well. My father who knew? He left before I had time to form any memories.
Myles didn’t seem to care about any of it. He liked me hanging around and watching him perform his music.
A rush of adrenaline coursed through me, thinking about Myles O’Conner playing. He played with his heart, his mind, and soul.
If he didn’t wind up signing a major music contract one day, it wouldn’t be for lack of talent or belief. However, teasing him about playing had been the highlight of my summer until he kissed me. It was August eight
, nineteen eighty, four days before I had to leave for school, and Myles wanted it to be special. It was not only mine but his first kiss too.
Or he led me to believe it was.
I could tell he had wanted to kiss me for days. Myles was never good at hiding his emotions. Another reason I loved watching him play. He wore his feelings in those silver-colored eyes, and you could see them in each beat of his drums.
We had been watching a movie, or something was playing on the TV. I was too nervous to pay attention to anything other than his hand holding mine. He hadn’t tried anything until I got ready to leave. He put his arms around my waist and led me out to his porch swing. It was a little awkward because I knew his mood was different.
We watched our feet as they rocked back and forth over the peeling gray paint on the decking. Myles sang the Glen Campbell song, Rhinestone Cowboy. I fought back a laugh. It was one of my grandfather’s favorite songs, not something I would ever think about Myles singing.
He said, “Shit.” Then he leaned in to kiss me. His lips were pink and full, and his tongue darted out before our lips met. His were so much softer than I had ever dreamed. The tip of his tongue slid along my bottom lip, nudging me to open up to him. I closed my eyes and could see fireworks going off behind my eyelids.
“Wow,” Myles whispered as he pulled away.
I felt myself blushing.
Wow was correct.
In such a daze, I tripped down the stairs when I left to go home.
He acted like he was on top of the world, but I never saw him again. Sawyer told me; Myles had been forced to visit his dad finally. Why he didn’t tell me himself was a story for another day, I guess.
The only day I worried about had finally arrived. The day I had to tell my grandparents goodbye.
After a breakfast of pancakes and bacon, Granny handed me a tin of her famous butter cookies. “I’m going to miss you. Honey, I know life isn’t easy with your mom. It’s not easy for her either. But I love you, and I’m here if you need me.”
“Mom’s fine. I just like it here.”
Her First, His Last Page 1
