Play On

  I, however, thought about the future all the time.

  I liked school.

  I was not content here.

  A feeling of claustrophobia crawled over me but I shoved it back. Sometimes it could feel like I had fifty people sitting on my chest, mocking me. Pushing through it, I grabbed my purse.

  Time to go home.

  Calling bye to Molly as I passed through the front of the restaurant, I inwardly flinched when I saw Stacey Dewitte sitting with a bunch of friends at the table near the door. She narrowed her eyes at me, and I looked away. My neighbor was a few years younger than me and once upon a time had been under the illusion that I was something I was not. I didn’t know who was more disappointed in me working at the fast-food place: Stacey or me.

  Needing this day to be over, I pushed the door open, oblivious at first to the two guys messing around, playfully wrestling outside.

  Until one shoved the other and he hit me with enough force to send me sprawling to the dusty road with a thud.

  I was so surprised to find myself on the ground, it took a moment for the pain to hit, to feel the ache in my left knee and the sting in my palms.

  I was suddenly surrounded by noise.

  “Oh fuck, am really sorry.”

  “Ye awright, lass?”

  “Let me gee ye a hand up.”

  “Dinnae ye bother, I’ll get her, ye fud.”

  A strong hand gripped my bicep, and I found myself gently pulled to my feet. I looked up at the guy holding me, held in the spot not only by his hand but by the kind concern in his dark eyes. He didn’t look much older than me—tall, with the wiry, lean build of youth.

  “Here’s yer bag. Sorry aboot that.” The guy with him handed me my purse.

  Understanding his words but confused by the way he’d said them, by their alien accent, I blurted, “What?”

  “Speak properly. She can’t understand ye.” The guy still holding my arm nudged his friend. He looked back at me. “Are you okay?”

  His words sounded careful now, slower and pronounced. I gently pulled my arm from his grip and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “We’re really sorry.”

  “I got that. Don’t worry. A scrape on the knee won’t kill me.”

  He winced and looked down at my knee. My work pants were covered in dust and grime. “Bugger.” When he looked up, I could tell he was going to apologize again.

  “Don’t.” I smiled. “Really, I’m fine.”

  He smiled back. It was cute and lopsided. “Jim.” He held out his hand. “Jim McAlister.”

  “Are you Scottish?” I asked, delighted by the notion as I shook his calloused hand.

  “Aye,” his friend said, offering me his hand too. “Roddy Livingston.”

  “I’m Nora O’Brien.”

  “Irish-American?” Jim’s eyes danced with amusement. “You know, you’re one of only a few people we’ve met in America who guessed where we’re from. We’ve gotten—”

  “Irish,” Roddy supplied. “English. And dinnae forget Swedish. That was ma favorite.”

  “I apologize for my countrymen,” I joked. “I hope we haven’t caused too much offense.”

  Jim grinned at me. “Not at all. How did ye know we were Scottish?”

  “A lucky guess,” I confessed. “We don’t get a lot of people from Europe visiting our small town.”

  “We’re on a road trip,” Roddy explained. He had a full head of wavy ginger hair, and he was taller than me (most people were) but shorter than his friend.

  Where Roddy was of medium-height but a burly build, Jim was tall and built like a swimmer. He had tan skin, dark hair, and thickly lashed, dark brown eyes.

  And he was staring at me intensely the entire time his friend explained where they’d visited so far. I flushed under Jim’s perusal, having never been the entire focus of anyone’s attention like this before, let alone a cute Scottish guy.

  “Actually,” Jim cut off his friend when he said they were leaving here tomorrow, “I was thinking we should stay a little longer.” He said the words to me, giving me a cute-boy smirk as he did so.

  He was flirting with me?

  Roddy snorted. “Oh, aye? After a five-minute meetin’?”

  “Aye.”

  Completely caught up in the idea of a foreigner delaying his departure from Donovan to see me again when we’d barely said a few words made me grin. It was silly and adventurous, and it appealed to my secretly romantic nature. It was so outside my humdrum life. I guess that’s why I threw caution to the wind. “Have you been to the lake yet?”

  Jim’s whole face lit up. “No. Are ye offering to take me?”

  “Both of you.” I laughed, reminding him he had a friend. “Do you like to fish?”

  “I do.” Roddy suddenly looked much happier about the idea of staying.

  “I don’t. But if you’re there, nothing else matters.”

  Charmed, I flushed and he took a step toward me, startling me. It seemed to surprise him too, as if he hadn’t been in control of the movement.

  “Fuck, if I’m gonnae feel like a third wheel the entire fuckin’ time, then naw.” Roddy turned mulish.

  Jim’s expression clouded but before he could say something that might cause an argument, I intervened. “You knocked me on my ass,” I reminded Roddy. “You owe me.”

  He sighed but the corner of his mouth tilted up. “Fine.”

  “I need to get home,” I said, taking a reluctant step back.

  Jim tracked my movements, and I felt a little like a deer caught in his line of sight. He really did stare at me so determinedly. All of a sudden, I didn’t know whether I should feel thrilled or wary.

  “Where will we meet?”

  My shift didn’t start until the afternoon the next day. I’d have to lie to my parents and tell them I’d had no choice but to take on overtime. “Here. At nine a.m.”

  “Nine a.m.? I dinnae—”

  Jim clamped a hand over his friend’s mouth and grinned at me. “Nine is great. See ye then, Nora O’Brien.”

  I nodded and turned on my heel. My neck prickled, feeling his eyes on me the entire time I walked south down Main Street, which ran through the center of Donovan, about four miles long, split into north and south. Most businesses in Donovan were located on the north end, from Foster’s Veterinary Surgery at the very tip beyond the elementary and high schools. We had lots of small businesses in Donovan—Wilson’s Market, Montgomery & Sons Attorneys at Law, the pizza place—and then there were the recognizable chains like the gas station, the little red and white building I worked in, and so on. South Main Street was mostly residential.

  I walked down North Main and then turned right onto West Sullivan where I lived in a small one-story, two-bedroom house that I tried to keep looking as nice as possible. It took me fifteen minutes to walk there from the fast-food restaurant, and I sighed on approach because the grass was getting a little long on our small lawn. Ours was one of the smallest properties in the neighborhood, most being two-story houses with pretty porches. We didn’t have a porch. The house was a light gray, rectangular box with a darker gray overhanging roof. It had pretty white shutters at the small windows, though, and I painted them every year.

  Despite Donovan being the kind of town where every building was spaced out so there was room to breathe and lots of light, our house hardly got any out front because of the big-ass tree planted in our lawn. It blocked nearly all the light trying to shine in through my bedroom window.

  “You’re late.” My mom sighed heavily, brushing by me as I stepped into the house. I watched as she grabbed her coat from the hook on the wall, and yanked it so hard the hook came with it. She sighed again and cut me a look. “I thought you were going to fix that.”

  “I’ll do it tonight.” I kicked off my shoes.

  “He’s eaten, and he’s watching the game.” Mom shrugged into her coat, and her voice lowered. “He’s in a shitty mood.”

  When was he ever not in a shitty mood? “Ri
ght.”

  “There’s some leftovers in the fridge for you.”

  “I’ve got overtime tomorrow,” I said before she could leave.

  Her expression tightened. “I thought you weren’t going to take on overtime? We need you here.”

  “And we need this job. If I don’t do overtime, they said they’ll get someone who can,” I lied, for the first time ever. An ugly ache pressed on my chest at the deception. But the excitement of being away from here with a boy who looked at me as if I was something special was too big a feeling for that ugly ache to contend with.

  “Christ,” Mom snapped. “I’m working two fucking jobs as it is, Nora. You know I ain’t got time to be here.”

  I bit my lip, my cheeks flushing. I felt awful.

  But selfishly, not awful enough.

  “Fine. We’ll need to ask Dawn to check in on him from time to time.” Dawn was our neighbor—a stay-at-home mom who was kind to us. “You’ll be finished by six?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t have overtime yet this week so I’ll be done by two tomorrow.”

  “What about tonight?” Mom was a bartender at Al’s five nights out of the week, and a part-time waitress at Geena’s five days a week.

  “I’ll be home by one-thirty.”

  Dad usually fussed when she got home, which meant she probably wouldn’t get to sleep until around three in the morning, and then she was back up again at seven for her shift at the diner at eight.

  It didn’t have to be that way. I could’ve worked full-time during the day while she did nightshift or vice versa, and we would’ve made it work. But she didn’t want to be here anymore than I did. She’d worked constantly my whole life.

  I watched her leave, remembering how much it used to hurt.

  It didn’t hurt so much now. In fact, I worried I was beginning to feel numb about it.

  “That you, kid?” my dad yelled.

  I found him in our living room, his wheelchair set up in front of the television. His eyes were glued to the screen, and he didn’t look up once, even when he snapped, “You’re late.”

  “I know. Sorry. Need anything?”

  His lip curled at the television. “Do I need anything? God decided long ago that I needed less than every-fucking-body else.”

  Inwardly I sighed, having heard him say the same thing over and over since I was eleven years old. My eyes dropped to his left leg. Or what was left of it. Seven years ago, it had been amputated at the knee.

  “Drink?”

  “Got one.” He flicked me an irritated look. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

  In other words, get lost.

  With pleasure.

  I found the leftover pasta Mom had stuck in the fridge and dumped it on a plate. I’d eat it cold. I stared at the kitchen door, left open in case he hollered.

  Before everything went to hell, I could barely remember a time when my dad yelled at me. Now he was always yelling about something.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t call for anything, and I was able to eat my cold pasta in peace. After doing the dishes Mom had left for me, I got out my tools and screwed the coat hook into another part of the hallway wall. I filled the previous hole with Spackle.

  After showering, I got Dad another beer. “Last one for today,” I reminded him. The doctor said he shouldn’t have more than two in any twenty-four-hour period.

  His eyes snapped up at me in outrage. “If I want another beer, I’ll have another fucking beer. I got nothing. I just sit here rotting away, looking at your lifeless fucking face, watching your mom’s ass walk out the door more often than walk in, and you want to take away the only pleasures in life I have. I’ll have a fuckin—don’t you walk away, girl!”

  When he threw a tantrum, there was nothing else for it. Sometimes when he spoke to me like that, I wanted to cut him off by screaming continuously in his face. If I didn’t run out of breath for five whole minutes, it still wouldn’t equate to the many times I’d felt that man’s spittle on my cheeks.

  I didn’t close my bedroom door the whole way in case he called for me again. The TV got louder. Much louder. Still not enough for me to walk back out there and ask him to turn it down.

  Having gotten good at drowning him out, I turned and faced my sanctuary. My bedroom was small. There wasn’t a lot in it except a bed, a small writing desk, and a closet for the few clothes I had. There were a few books, not many. I got most of my reading material from the library.

  Most.

  Not all. Like the stuff hidden in my room.

  I crouched down and pulled out the old shoebox I’d hidden under my bed and gently lifted it onto my bedspread. I savored opening it, like it was a treasure chest. Calm moved through me at the sight of my stash. I had a bunch of secondhand plays and poetry books in there, books I’d bought online and hidden so my mom wouldn’t see what I’d “wasted” my money on.

  I didn’t think they were a waste. Far from it.

  Pulling a pile out, I stroked the peeling cover of The Crucible. Underneath it was Dr. Faustus and Romeo & Juliet. Underneath those, Twelfth Night, Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. I had a thing for Shakespeare. He made even the most ordinary feelings, un-extraordinary thoughts, sound so grandiose. Better yet, he spoke of the most complex, dark emotions in a way that was beautiful and absorbing. I wanted so badly to see a live production of one of his plays.

  I wanted so badly to be in a live production of one of his plays.

  No one knew that. Not even Molly. No one knew I had wild dreams of being an actress on the stage. They’d laugh at me. And rightly so. When I was a kid, I’d been part of an amateur theater group, but had to stop when Dad couldn’t take care of himself anymore. That was the extent of my experience on the stage. I’d loved it, though. I loved disappearing into someone else’s life, another world, telling stories that held the audience enthralled. And the way they’d clap at the end. Just clap and clap. It was like a giant hug in place of all the hugs my mom had forgotten to give me.

  I slumped against my bed, berating myself for that thought. Mom wasn’t a bad person. She kept a roof over my head, food in my belly, shoes on my feet. She didn’t have a lot of time for me. She worked hard. That was my mom’s life. I shouldn’t be angry at her for that.

  A roar from the crowd at the game my dad was watching made me flinch.

  Now, for him … I don’t know if what I felt was anger.

  Maybe more like resentment.

  It was horrible to resent him. I knew that. Sometimes I thought maybe I wasn’t a very nice person.

  I put everything back in the box, closed it, and tried to shut out the ache in my chest and that horrible gnawing feeling I’d had in my stomach for a long time now. To help, I grabbed a book I’d checked out and got comfy on my bed.

  For a while, I was lost in a story about another world and a girl who was in a prison that made mine look like a constant vacation. Finally, I glanced at my watch, and reluctantly put my book down.

  Back in the living room, I found my dad with his head bowed, sleeping. When I switched off the TV, his head flew up and he looked around, disoriented. When he was like this, sleepy and confused, he seemed so vulnerable. It made me sad to remember how my dad used to be.

  He’d never relied on anyone before the wheelchair. That’s why he was so pissed off all the time. He hated being dependent.

  “Hey, Dad,” I gently touched his shoulder, and he blinked up at me. “Time for bed.”

  Dad nodded, and I stepped out of the way. Walking behind him slowly, I followed him into my parents’ bedroom. Mom always helped him change into bottoms he could sleep in so I didn’t have to. Dad removed his shirt, leaving only his T-shirt. Once, his shoulders had been broad and his biceps strong from working construction. They’d lost a lot of definition over the years.

  He was still strong enough to help me get him into bed.

  “Warm enough, Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Night, then.”

&nbsp
; “Nora.” He grabbed my hand and I felt my stomach sink, sensing what was coming. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  His sad eyes pleaded with me to understand. “I get so hacked off and I don’t mean to take it out on you, baby girl. You know you’re the best thing your mom and I ever did, right?”

  Tears threatened and my throat felt tight and hot. “I know,” I whispered.

  “Do you, though?” His grip tightened. “Love you, baby girl.”

  I fought back the sting in my nose and blew out a shaky breath. “Love you too, Dad.”

  It wasn’t until I got back to my room and into bed that I pressed my mouth into my pillow and sobbed.

  I hated the nights he reminded me of what I’d lost.

  Life would’ve been so much easier if I didn’t have the memories of a dad who’d given me all the affection my mom hadn’t. He was free and easy with hugs and kisses, and he’d filled my ears with his grand plans for my future. I was going to college—I was going to take over the world.

  And then everything changed.

  For as long as I could remember, my dad worked his ass off, which was one of the reasons I didn’t understand why Mom worked so much. Dad owned the largest construction company in the county. He had lots of guys working for him, and we lived in a nice big house he’d built on the outskirts of Donovan. However, he had diabetes. As his company got more successful, Dad got more stressed. He stopped avoiding the wrong foods and alcohol until finally, he got gangrene in his leg and they had no choice but to amputate below the knee. I was eleven. Just a kid.

  Dad lost work and Kyle Trent bought his company off him for a pittance and turned it into a success again. The Trents even bought our old house. I had to assume it was mortgaged up to my parents’ ears because there was no money from it as far as I knew.

  Mom started working more. Somehow, I ended up being my dad’s caretaker. It wasn’t an easy job, but he was my dad. His life was hard and so was my mom’s, so I did what I had to do to help. It meant, however, that I was tired a lot and I didn’t have the same time to dedicate to school. Yet I was determined I was going to keep up my grades. Even when Dad became a different man and crushed my dreams of the future. He made it clear college was no longer an option for me. I reminded myself there was still community college.