‘The last thing my father said to me, before he left, was, “You’re the man of the house while I’m gone. Take care of your mother.” ’ I swallowed, or tried to. My throat ached, striving to hold back tears that weren’t going to stay dammed. I felt them rising as hers spilled over and ran down her face. ‘I didn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her.’
She pulled me close and held me, and I lost it, my face buried against her heart.
Minutes later, she said, ‘I’ll stay tonight. Will you do something for me, too?’
I took a deep breath, unable to deny her anything. ‘Yes. Whatever you need.’
‘Go with me to Harrison’s concert tomorrow night? He’s my favourite eighth-grader, and I promised him I’d go.’
I agreed to her request, too fatigued to wonder what she was up to – because I knew her well enough now to look into those eyes and see when she was up to something. I didn’t care. I would do whatever she asked of me.
It had been a long time since I’d been inside a middle-school auditorium.
The orchestra kids were all roughly Caleb’s size, although he would have been at the small end of the scale. The boys were humorously insufferable, swaggering around in their black tuxedos, leaning over auditorium seats to flirt with the girls – all in floor-length, matching purple dresses.
‘Miss Wallace!’ A blond, tuxedoed kid called out from within the group, waving eagerly until he noticed me. His dark eyes went wide. Jacqueline returned his wave, but he looked destroyed to see the love of his life sitting next to a guy. I couldn’t very well blame him.
‘I take it this is one of the ones crushing on you,’ I said, biting my lip, keeping my expression even. If Jacqueline liked this kid, I didn’t want to demean him by laughing at his mopey response to the reality that Miss Wallace was taken. Had been taken. Would be taken again in a few hours, if I had anything to say about it.
‘What? They all crush on me. I’m a hot college girl, remember?’ She laughed.
I angled a bit closer and told her just how hot she was, and I asked her to stay with me again tonight.
‘I was afraid you weren’t going to ask,’ she said. Silly girl.
Harrison was a brave kid, giving my girl a dozen roses after the concert. He was self-conscious as hell, blushing to match the flowers as he thrust them at her, but I admired his gallantry in the face of that fear.
Thanking him, she lifted the bouquet to her face and inhaled blissfully. She told him that he’d made her proud tonight and he stood straighter, swelling up like a puffer fish.
Beaming, he said, ‘It’s all ’cause of you, though,’ which made her smile.
‘You did the work, and put in the practice.’
I’d made similar statements to grateful students who thought they only passed econ because of me.
‘You sounded great, man. I wish I could play an instrument,’ I added.
The kid’s eyes sized me up, and I fought the juvenile impulse to tell him he didn’t really want a piece of this. ‘Thanks,’ he said, giving me an inquisitive look. ‘Did that hurt? On your lip?’
I shrugged. ‘Not too much. I said a few choice four-letter words, though.’
‘Cool,’ he grinned.
Jacqueline knew how to pick favourites.
So did I.
We packed her truck with everything she was taking home for winter break and she turned in her dorm key. She was spending her last night in town with me.
‘I don’t want to go home. But if I don’t go, they’ll drive down to get me.’ Wearing one of my T-shirts, she stood brushing her teeth at my bathroom sink. She rinsed her mouth and watched me in the mirror. ‘What happened yesterday was the last straw for Mom. She wasn’t this upset when I fell out of the tree.’
My arms slipped round her. ‘I’ll be here, waiting for you. I promise. Come back early, if you want, and stay here with me until the dorms open. But go, give her a chance.’
She looked straight at me in the mirror, tearing up, knowing the card I was playing, no matter how furtively. ‘And you’ll give your father a chance, too?’
Sneaky, Jacqueline.
I grimaced, staring into her eyes in our reflection. ‘Yes. I will.’
She sighed, pouting. ‘Now that you’ve bullied me into leaving you, may I have my proper send-off?’
My brow arched and I moved my hands to the hem of that T-shirt, murmuring, ‘Hell, yes.’ I watched myself in the mirror – pulling the shirt up and over her head, cupping her lovely breasts in my hands, thumbs teasing the nipples. One hand slipped down to cover her abdomen, sliding into her panties, straight past the lace. Her mouth fell open as I stroked her, and her head fell back on my shoulder, but she didn’t shut her eyes. So beautiful. I loved watching her respond to my touch. I would never get enough of this.
She reached a hand behind her hips, fingers closing round me. I growled, pushing into her hand while I pressed her body closer with mine. I leaned to kiss her neck, closing my eyes and breathing her in. ‘Ready for bed, then?’
‘Bed, sofa, kitchen table, whatever you have in mind …’ she answered, and I groaned.
When I regained enough equilibrium to open my eyes, they’d darkened to the leaden grey-blue of a rainy day sky, contrasting with her deep, summer blue. My bathroom mirror had become the hottest interactive video ever. ‘All right, then,’ I said, sliding my fingers into her. ‘Let’s just start right here, baby.’
‘Mmm …’ she said, her eyes drifting closed.
She lay in the circle of my arms, both of us exhausted. Bathroom sink, check. Desk chair, check. Sofa, double check. I visualized waking with her in this bed in a few hours, though, and decided she had one more send-off in store.
Still awake, her eyes were on mine. Hmm.
‘What’d you think of Harrison?’ she asked.
‘He seems like a good kid.’
‘He is.’ Her eyes followed her fingertips as they caressed beneath my jaw.
I dragged her closer and asked what this was about. ‘Are you leaving me for Harrison, Jacqueline?’
I expected her to roll her eyes and laugh, but instead, she gazed steadily at me. ‘If Harrison had been in that parking lot that night, instead of you, do you think he’d have wanted to help me?’
The parking lot. With Buck.
‘If someone had told him to watch out for me,’ she pressed, ‘do you think they would ever, ever blame him, if he’d not been able to stop what would have happened that night?’
My lungs constricted. ‘I know what you’re trying to say –’
She wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily, though she trembled in my arms. ‘No, Lucas. You’re hearing it, but you don’t know it. There’s no way your father actually expected that of you. There’s no way he even remembers saying that to you. He blames himself, and you blame yourself, but neither of you is to blame.’ Her eyes were full, but they wouldn’t let me go.
I held her like I was falling off the face of the earth, and I couldn’t breathe – no gravity, no oxygen. ‘I’ll never forget how she sounded that night. How can I not blame myself?’ My eyes glassed with tears while hers spilled over.
Her right hand was still on my face. Pressed between us, her left hand gripped mine, grounding me. Her tears flowed into the pillow as she made me see the boy I’d been. I’d never asked my father if he blamed me; I’d assumed that he did. But Jacqueline was right about him – he was stuck in perpetual grief, blaming himself when no one else did. And I had followed his example.
‘What have you told me, over and over? It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.
She said I needed to talk to someone who’d help me forgive myself. I only wanted to talk to her – but I couldn’t ask that of her. Cindy had suggested therapy a hundred times, swearing it helped her grieve the loss of her best friend, but I’d become adept at insisting I was fine.
I’m fine. I’m good.
But I wasn’t fine. I was anything but fine. That night had shattered me. I’d wa
lled myself in to keep from breaking further, but no defence will protect you from every possible pain. I was still just as breakable as everyone else – the girl in my arms included. But I could hope. And I could love. And maybe, I could heal.
26
Landon
I hadn’t been afraid of anything in a long time.
I was scared shitless, but I wasn’t about to show it. This was nothing. Nothing.
‘You ready, Landon?’ Heller asked, and I nodded.
Everything I owned was piled in the back of his SUV. I didn’t have any luggage beyond a duffle and a backpack, so most of my clothes had been crammed into large black plastic bags like the trash they were. I’d scrounged up a few empty boxes from the Bait & Tackle for my books and sketchpads. They stank like fish. Which meant the interior of Heller’s truck and everything I owned would smell like fish by the time we got five miles from the fucking coast.
It was worth it. Good riddance. I never wanted to come back.
Holding his chipped Fishermen Do It Hook, Line and Sinker mug, Dad stood, feet braced apart, on the front porch – every piece of timber comprising the whole sagging and weather-beaten to all fuck. It was a miracle that anything made of wood could survive here, and yet this place had endured, somehow, for decades – defying wind, rain, tropical storms and the relentless salt water that permeated the whole town with its brackish scent day in and day out.
As a kid, when this place was my grandfather’s house, I’d loved the annual summer visits that my dad had loathed, but Mom insisted on. ‘He’s your father,’ she’d tell him. ‘He’s Landon’s grandfather. Family is important, Ray.’
Now Dad was staying, and I was leaving.
Within the dilapidated house on the beach, waves from the gulf were audible at all times of the day and night. When I was little, spending time here was like living in a tree house or a backyard tent for a week – lacking most of the comforts of home, but so poles apart from my real life that it seemed incredible and otherworldly. Roughing it, desert-island style.
After a day of exploring the shoreline and baking in the sun, I’d spread one of the towels Mom always bought before our vacations and left at Grandpa’s place. The soft bath sheets were long enough to accommodate my entire childhood frame and wide enough to stockpile and sort the shells I collected during long, hot days on a beach that was anything but the white coast I let my friends back home in Alexandria imagine.
Staring at the huge expanse of dark sky and the thousands of stars winking in and out as though they were communicating with each other, I’d dream about who I’d be when I grew up. I liked to draw, but I was good at math – the kind of good that would have got me labelled a nerd if it wasn’t for my skill on the ice. I could be an artist, a scientist, a professional hockey player. Surrounded by that seeming infinity of sky and sand and ocean, I thought my choices were wide open.
What a naïve fuck I’d been.
Those bath sheets were like everything else here, now. Worn out. Used up. As close to worthless as something can be without being entirely worthless.
Dad looked older than his years. He was just under fifty – a bit younger than Heller – but he looked a good decade older.
Salt water and sun will do that.
Being a tightlipped, heartless asshole will do that.
Too far, Landon. Too far.
Fine.
Grief will do that.
He watched me load my shit into his best friend’s vehicle, as though it was normal for a father to reassign his parental obligations – like the day his only kid left home for college – to someone else. But he’d been doing that for a while now. It had been up to me to fail, flail or claw my way out of wanting to end myself since I was thirteen. Five years of surviving from one day to the next. Of choosing to get up or not. Go to school or not. Give a flying fuck about anything or anyone or not.
Heller had given me one shot at getting out, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to apologize for taking it.
‘Hug your father goodbye, Landon,’ Heller murmured as we shut the hatchback door.
‘But he won’t – we don’t –’
‘Try. Trust me.’
I huffed a sigh before turning and walking back up the front steps.
‘Bye, Dad.’ I delivered the words dutifully – something I did for Heller’s sake, nothing more. He’d set his cup on the railing. His hands were empty.
I was leaving him to his silence and his solitude, and suddenly I wondered how different this moment would have been if my mother was alive. She would have cried, arms looping round my neck as I bent to hug and kiss her goodbye, telling me she was proud of me, making me promise to call, to come home soon, to tell her everything. I would have cried, holding her.
For the sake of the only woman the two of us had ever loved, I reached my arms round my father, and he wordlessly put his arms round me.
I stared into the side mirror, watching the town grow smaller. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Despite an uneasy curiosity, I wouldn’t look back to see if this was true. That bullshit town and the years I lived there would be out of view in five minutes and erased from my conscious mind as soon as I could forget it.
‘Do what you want with the radio,’ Heller said, and I snapped my attention forward. ‘As long as it isn’t any of that screaming crap Cole abuses his ears with. Can’t stand that noise pollution he calls music.’
His oldest kid was fifteen now. Whenever we were together, he’d ape how I dressed and what type of music I was into, following me around and mimicking whatever I said or did – not always a great idea, I’ll admit. His attitude on life seemed to be: if something irritated his parents, he was for it.
I blinked like I was surprised. ‘What, no Bullet for My Valentine? No Slipknot?’
I laughed at Heller’s agitated scowl, sure he didn’t believe or care whether or not those were real band names. That was all the answer I got, besides his usual stoic sigh. I plugged my iPod into the stereo console and dialled it to a playlist I’d made last night titled fuck you and goodbye. The tracks were a lot less violent than the title implied, in deference to my road-trip companion. I might share Cole’s attitude when it came to my own father, but not his.
I didn’t see the Heller kids often – though that was about to change, since I’d be living in their backyard. Literally. My new home would be the room over their garage that had been storage for boxes of books and holiday decorations, exercise equipment and old furniture. My memories of it were vague. When I’d visited the Hellers, I’d slept on an air mattress in Cole’s room. Backing out at the last minute every damned time, Dad would stick me on a bus with my duffle bag and strict instructions not to do anything stupid while I was there.
I wasn’t a kid any more, and this wasn’t a weeklong visit. I was a college student who needed a place to live for four years. A legal adult who couldn’t afford a dorm or an apartment along with tuition. Heller told me I’d be paying him rent, but it wasn’t much. I knew charity when I got it, but for once in my pathetic life, I was grabbing it with both hands, like the knotted end of a rescue rope.
LUCAS
‘I’ll take the first couple hours, and you can take the last two.’ Jacqueline slid her dark sunglasses over her eyes and grinned at me from the driver’s side of her truck. ‘But don’t nap, or we could end up halfway to El Paso. I need you to navigate.’
As she backed her truck down the driveway, I waved goodbye to Carlie and Charles, sliding my sunglasses into place. ‘That’s a completely different highway.’ I chuckled. ‘You aren’t that bad.’
She shook her head and sighed. ‘Seriously. Don’t tempt fate. You’ll be sorry. We could end up lost and driving aimlessly for our entire spring break.’
When I stopped to consider the fact that Jacqueline was coming home to the coast with me, driving aimlessly for a week instead didn’t sound so bad. I shook my head. ‘I guess I should have gotten you a new GPS for your birthday.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘That sounds like a sensible gift.’
‘Ah, right, I forgot – we don’t do sensible gifts.’
She’d told me that her parents had always bought each other (and her) sadly pragmatic gifts, but they’d hit a new low – buying their own gifts. ‘Mom got herself a new StairMaster and Dad got himself a grill,’ she told me when we’d talked Christmas night. ‘It’s a big grill, with side burners and warming drawers and, who cares, because holy cow – buying your own gift for Christmas?’
I didn’t tell her that seemed like a great idea to me. If she believed practical gifts were out, then I was destined for a lifetime of impracticality. Bring it.
We’d each had a birthday in the past two months. My gift from her: driving a Porsche 911 for a day. Massively impractical. Heller and Joseph were both massively jealous. I texted a pic to Boyce and he texted back: Fuck the bro code. I am stealing your woman. You have been warned.
For Jacqueline’s birthday, I’d chosen one of my mother’s watercolours – a rainy Paris skyline – from Dad’s attic stash when I was home over winter break. I had it mounted and framed for her. She went very quiet after she opened it, tears coursing down her face. I was sure my aptitude for gift-giving had just crashed and burned, and I should never be allowed to choose a gift again for anyone.
And then she threw herself into my arms, and an hour later, I shoved my fingers into her hair and kissed her. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘My next birthday is eleven months away. How did that just happen?’
Jacqueline was curled in the passenger seat, asleep, as I confronted the fact that we were fifteen minutes away from the coast. That I was taking my girlfriend home, where she would meet my uncommunicative father and my frequently inappropriate high-school best friend. And oh hell, were we sleeping in the pantry? Shit. I should have reserved a hotel room.