That fucker.
Delete it, some part of my brain instantly said. Delete it and pretend you didn’t see it. Nothing he says is anything you want to hear.
Which was true.
His last email was an example.
There was literally nothing I needed to hear from him. Nothing that would benefit me. Nothing I wanted other than to possibly hear him admit that he had gotten to where he was, at least in part, thanks to me. But honestly, I would have gotten a hell of a lot more satisfaction hearing those words from his mom’s mouth than his.
Everything that needed to be said between us had been laid out almost a year ago.
I hadn’t heard from him until recently.
Fourteen years and he’d dropped me cold turkey from one day to the next.
But the nosey motherfucker that lived in my body said, Read it or you’re going to wonder what he wanted. Maybe someone had cast a curse on his dick that made him impotent and he wanted to see if it had been me so I could remove it. (I wouldn’t.)
Then the smug inner voice inside of me that had reveled in how poorly his last two albums had been reviewed, reared her pleased face up and said, Yeah, you know what he really wants. I knew damn well what the most important thing in his life was. The voice in my head had a point. I did know. I’d been imagining this happening, even while we’d still been together, when he had first started to pull away. When I was pretty sure his mom had decided to start phasing me out slowly.
They had no idea what they’d done, what they’d almost completely taken from me, even though I didn’t feel any grief over it.
Delete it.
Or… read it first and then delete it?
Maybe get mad if he was being an asshole? If that was the case, it wouldn’t be unexpected and it would only be a reminder that I was better off now than I had been. I was a winner anyway, right?
I was here. I was without people who hadn’t contributed to my happiness in too long. I had my entire future ahead of me, ready and waiting for me to take it.
There were a lot of things I wanted and nothing stopping me from them but patience and time.
But…
Before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked on the message and braced myself, pissing myself off so that whatever he said couldn’t make me angrier.
But there were only a few words in the email.
Roro,
Call me.
And for one microsecond, I thought about replying to him. Telling him no. But…
No.
Because the best way to get under his skin would be to just not reply.
Kaden hated being ignored. More than likely because his mom had spoiled him every day of his life and gave him just about everything he ever asked for, and everything he didn’t. He’d gotten too used to being the center of attention. The pretty boy everyone fawned over and fell over to please.
So instead of deleting the email, knowing I wouldn’t be tempted to reply to him, I left the message where it was because Aunt Carolina would ask to see it. Yuki would too so she could cackle. Nori would tell me to keep it so one day when I was feeling down, I could look at it and chuckle to myself at how the mighty had fallen. I set my phone back into my pocket.
Yeah, he wasn’t asking for me to call because he couldn’t find his social security card or had a hex on his dick, and I knew it.
I smiled to myself.
“What’s that smile for?” Clara whispered as she came around the counter where the register was.
The family she’d been helping waved as they went by. “We’re going to think about it, thank you!” one of the two moms said before leading her loved ones out.
Clara told them to call if they had any more questions, waiting until they were out before turning to me.
I couldn’t help but smile again and shrug. “Kaden just emailed me. He asked me to call him.” I had thought this situation over in my head a few times since we’d reconnected, and I’d decided that sticking to the truth was the only way to go.
She knew about our relationship because I’d told her about him before he’d gotten famous, back when I’d been able to post pictures of us online, before his mom had come up with the idea of painting him as an eternal bachelor. Before they had asked me, so sweetly, so kindly, to please remove all the pictures I had up of us together.
Clara had noticed.
She’d contacted me and asked if we’d broken up, and I’d told her the truth. Not saying what the “plan” was but just that we were still together and things were fine. But that was all she’d known.
And I knew I had to explain it all to her, if I was planning on staying here.
Lies had fragile, little legs. I wanted a foundation.
Clara raised an eyebrow as she leaned a hip against the counter, stretching her dark green, collared shirt with the name of the business above her breast. She’d brought me one of her old ones and promised to order new ones. “Are you going to?”
I shook my head. “No, because I know it will bother him. And there’s nothing he would need to tell me anyway.”
Clara scrunched up her nose, and I could see the questions in her eyes, but there were too many customers still around. “Did he try calling you?”
“He can’t because”—this was all part of Things She Could Know—“his mom disconnected my line the day after he said things weren’t working anymore.” Didn’t even give me a warning or anything. I had been packing up to leave when it had happened. “He doesn’t have my new number.”
She winced.
“My family and friends would never give it to him either; they all hate him.” Nori had said she knew someone who knew someone who could make me a voodoo doll. I hadn’t taken her up on it, but I’d thought about it.
Clara’s expression was still troubled, but she nodded seriously, flicking her gaze around the building quickly, like a good business owner. “Good for you. What a jerk—his mom, I mean. Him too. Especially after how long you were together. What was it? Ten years?”
True. Too true. “Fourteen.”
Clara grimaced just as the door opened and an older couple came in. “Hold on. Let me go help them. I’ll be back.”
I nodded, and I was lingering over my hope that his mom was sweating his career when I happened to glance up to find Jackie staring at me strangely.
Very, very strangely.
But just as soon as we made eye contact, she smiled a little too brightly and looked away.
Huh.
* * *
I spent the car ride back to my garage apartment thinking more about everything that had gone wrong in my relationship.
Like I hadn’t already done that enough and sworn not to do it again after almost every time. But some part of me couldn’t move on from it. Maybe because I’d willingly been so blind, and it bothered some subconscious part of myself.
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been signs leading up to his declaration that things weren’t working anymore. The highlight of that final conversation had been when he’d looked at me seriously and said, “You deserve better, Roro. I’m just holding you back from what you really need.”
He’d been fucking right that I deserved better. I had just been in some serious denial back then, asking him to stay, to not give up on fourteen years. Telling him I loved him so much. “Don’t do this,” I’d pleaded in a way that would have horrified my mom.
Yet he had.
With time and distance, I now knew exactly what I’d dodged in the long run. I just hoped my ultra-independent mom would forgive me for having stooped so low to keep someone around who obviously didn’t want to be there. But love could make people do some crazy stuff, apparently. And now I had to live the rest of my life with that shame.
Anyway, done again thinking about it, I followed my navigation carefully back to the garage apartment because I still didn’t have every turn memorized and the driveway to the house wasn’t exactly well marked. A couple nights ago, I’d tried to drive back witho
ut it and had gone about a quarter of a mile farther than necessary and had to pull into someone’s driveway to turn around. After that final turn off the dirt road, the crunch of gravel under my tires sang me a song I was slowly becoming familiar with. For one brief moment, it felt like a word started to take shape on my tongue, but the sensation disappeared almost instantly. It was fine.
I frowned as the main house came up through the windshield.
Because sitting on the steps was the Amos kid.
Which wouldn’t have been a big deal—it was a nice day out, especially now that the sun wasn’t directly overhead baking everything under its rays—but he was hunched over, arms crossed over his stomach, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know that there was something wrong with him. I’d seen him yesterday on the deck again, playing video games.
I watched him as I parked my car off to the side of the garage apartment, tucked in as close as I could get it to the building so that his dad wouldn’t be inconvenienced.
I got out, nabbing my purse and thinking about how the man, Mr. Rhodes, didn’t want to be reminded that I was staying here….
But when I got to the other side, the boy had his forehead pressed to his knees, curled into a physical ball about as much as someone who wasn’t a contortionist could be.
Was he okay?
I should leave him alone.
I really should. I’d been lucky not to have gotten busted the day he’d shared aloe vera with me or the other times we’d waved at each other. Leaving them alone was the one thing his dad had asked of me, and the last thing I wanted to do was get kicked out ahead of time and—
The kid made a sound that sounded like pure distress.
Shit.
I took two steps away from the door, two steps closer to the main house, and called out, hesitating and ready to hide around the back of the building if the game warden truck started coming down the driveway. “Hi. You okay?”
Nothing was exactly the response I got.
He didn’t look up or move.
I took another two steps and tried again. “Amos?”
“Fine,” the kid choked out, so raggedly I barely understood him. It sounded like there were tears in his voice. Oh no.
I sidled a little closer. “Usually when someone asks me if I’m okay and I say I’m fine, I’m not fine at all,” I said, hoping he understood I didn’t want to be annoying, but... well… he was curled up in a ball and didn’t sound right.
Been there, done that, but hopefully for very different reasons.
He didn’t move. I wasn’t even positive he was breathing.
“You’re kind of scaring me,” I told him honestly, watching him as fear rose inside of me.
He was breathing. Too loudly, I realized when I took another two steps closer.
He grunted, long and low, and it took him over a minute to finally reply in a voice I still barely understood. “I’m good. Waiting for my dad.”
My uncle had said he was “good” when he’d had kidney stones and had tears streaming down his face while he sat on his recliner, ignoring our pleas to go to the doctor.
My cousin had once said he was “good” when he’d jumped out a moving truck—don’t ask—and had whatever bone consisted of his shin sticking out of his leg as he bawled in pain.
What I should do was mind my own business, turn around, and go inside the garage apartment. I knew that. This stay here was already on a rocky road, even if Mr. Rhodes had been decent and helped me with my dead battery—I still hadn’t gotten the corrosion off, now that I remembered. I needed to do it on my next day off.
Unfortunately, I had never in my life been able to ignore someone in need. Someone in pain. Mostly because I’d had people who hadn’t ignored me when I’d felt those ways.
Instead of following my gut, I took yet another two steps to the teenager who had gone behind his dad’s back and given me the opportunity to stay here in the first place. It’d been a crazy, sneaky thing to do… but I admired him for it, especially if he’d done it to buy a guitar. “Did you eat something bad?”
I was pretty sure he tried to shrug, but he tensed up so violently and grunted so loudly, I wasn’t positive.
“Do you want me to get you something?” I asked, eyeing him closely, alarm still bubbling inside of me at the noises he was making. He had another big, black T-shirt on, dark jeans, and worn, white Vans. None of that was alarming though. Just the shade of his skin was.
“Took Pepto,” he gasped before I swear on my life he whimpered and clutched his stomach closer.
Oh, fuck it. I cut the distance and stopped right in front of him. I’d had the stomach flu more than a few times in my life, and that shit was something, but this… this didn’t seem right. He was scaring me now. “Did you vomit?”
I barely heard his “no.” I didn’t believe him.
“Did you have diarrhea?”
His head jerked, but he didn’t say anything.
“Everybody gets diarrhea.”
Okay, what stranger—especially a teenage boy—wanted to talk about diarrhea with someone they had literally met less than a month ago?
Maybe just me.
“You know, I got food poisoning from a sandwich I bought at a gas station in Utah a month ago, and I had to spend an extra night in Moab because I couldn’t stop using the bathroom. I swear I lost ten pounds that night alone—”
The kid made a choking sound that I couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a groan of pain, but he sounded a little quieter as he muttered, “I don’t.” He made the savage, painful sound again.
Apprehension gripped the back of my neck as the kid hunched over even more a moment before he started panting through his mouth.
All right.
I crouched down in front of him. “Where does it hurt?”
He gestured toward his stomach somehow… with his chin?
“Have you farted?”
That choking sound rattled from his throat again.
“Does it hurt on the left, right, or the middle?”
His words were gritted. “Kinda right.”
I pulled out my phone and cursed at the fact that I only got one bar of cell phone service in this spot. Not enough to use the internet but hopefully enough for a call. There was Wi-Fi, but… I wasn’t going to ask what the password was when he could barely speak.
I hit the contact for Yuki, thinking she was the only person I knew who constantly had her phone on her, and fortunately she answered on the second ring.
“Ora-Ora-Bo-Bora! What are you doing? I was just thinking about you,” one of my very best friends answered, sounding pretty damn chipper. But of course she should. Her album had hit the number one spot three weeks ago and was still hanging in there strong.
“Yuki,” I said, “I need your help. What side is your appendix on?”
She must have heard the distress in my voice because the humor disappeared from hers. “Let me find out. Hold on.” She whispered something to what had to be her manager or assistant before putting the phone back to her face after a few moments and saying, “It says mid-abdomen, right lower abdomen, why? Are you okay? DO YOU HAVE APPENDICITIS?” she started to shout.
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself.
“ORA, ARE YOU OKAY?”
“I’m fine, but my neighbor is sweating big-time and looks like he’s going to puke, and he’s clutching his stomach.” I paused. “He doesn’t have diarrhea.”
The boy made another choking sound I wasn’t totally sure was appendix-related and more than likely just me talking about diarrhea again. I had enough nephews to know that as savage as they could be, they got shy about bodily functions sometimes. And the way he’d been talking to his dad a couple weeks ago, how he’d talked to me too, I had a feeling that maybe he was just shy in general.
“Oh thank God. I thought it was you.” She whistled in relief. “Take him to the emergency room if he looks that bad. Is he bloated?”
I pulled the phone away from my fac
e just a little. “Do you feel bloated?”
Amos nodded before he let out another whimper and pressed his face closer to his knees.
Of course this would happen to me. I was going to get kicked out for talking to this kid, and I wouldn’t even be able to regret it.
“Yes. Say, Yuki, let me call you back. Thank you!”
“Call me back. Miss you. Good luck. Bye!” she said, hanging up immediately.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket with one hand, my free one went to the boy’s knee and I gave it a single pat. “Look, I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like it might be your appendix. I don’t know though, but honestly, you don’t look well, and I think you’re in too much pain for it to be, I don’t know, something else.” Diarrhea. But I think he was fed up with me saying the d-word in front of him.
I was fairly positive he tried to nod, but he groaned in this way that had my armpits starting to sweat.
“Is your dad on his way?”
“He’s not answering.” He let out another grunt. “He’s at Lake Navajo today.”
I knew the lake wasn’t far from Pagosa, but service was sketchy all over Colorado, I was starting to learn. Is that why he thought his dad was on his way? “Okay. Is there someone else we can call? Your mom? Another parent? Family member? A neighbor? The ambulance?”
“My uncle—Oh fuck.” He let out a cry that somehow went straight into my heart and brain.
I couldn’t hesitate anymore. This wasn’t good. My gut said so. The only thing I knew about appendix issues was that, if one ruptured, it could be deadly. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was something. But I wasn’t willing to screw around with his well-being.
Especially not when his dad wasn’t answering and couldn’t make an executive decision.
I stood up and then bent back over to slide my arm under his shoulder blades. “Okay, okay. I’m taking you to the hospital. You’re scaring me big-time. We can’t risk waiting around.”
“I don’t need to—oh fuck.”
All Rhodes Lead Here Page 7
