But I don’t have to wonder long when Mrs. Fritz, another English teacher, knocks on the already open door. “Mr. Andrews, do you have time to talk?”
She walks over to his desk, and I sling my backpack on to go about my normal routine of hiding away in the stacks of the library instead of going to lunch.
As I leave his room, I give a quick look over my shoulder and catch David staring at me before turning his attention to Mrs. Fritz.
Swim practice comes and goes, and I’m blow drying my hair when Taylor sidles up next to me. She leans forward, staring at herself in the mirror, and smears a hideous shade of red onto her lips.
I shut off the dryer and start pulling my hair into a knot on top of my head, and when she pops her mouth open after blending the lipstick, she zips her makeup bag, and talks into the mirror, saying, “It’s a shame Coach ended our morning swims.”
I scoff, shaking my head as I tuck a few loose strands of my hair behind my ears.
“Oh come on. Don’t pretend you haven’t drooled over his ripped body.”
“The guy is in his thirties,” I respond in feigned disgust.
“So?”
“So he’s old.”
“Like that’s a bad thing?” She turns to me and leans her hip against the sink as I toss my hair dryer and brush into my bag.
“You know, it’s a shame you can’t cover up that thing with some makeup.”
“What’s your problem, Taylor?”
“I’m only trying to help,” she says, lifting her hands up in defense. “People talk, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I snap, grabbing my bag before hightailing it out of here and straight to my car. I put my seatbelt on and then close my eyes and toss my head back, wondering why society forces teenagers to the torture of high school. I swear it’s a cover for some twisted social experiment, like mice in a maze with big brother watching, wondering how we’ll adapt to the bullies and bitches.
I’m so sick of dealing with the pettiness.
My phone vibrates on the seat next to me.
David: Saw you storm out. What’s going on?
Me: Oh, you know, just another day filled with wholesome kiddie shit.
David: Care to ditch the sarcasm and tell me what happened?
Me: Not really.
David: What are you doing for the rest of the afternoon?
Me: Wasting my youth away.
David: Care to waste it away with me?
Me: Okay.
David: Head over in ten minutes. I’ll leave the garage open. Close it as soon as you pull in so no one sees your car.
Like a dirty secret.
Me: See you in a bit.
He then texts me his address so I know how to get to his place, and after driving in circles to pass the time, twenty minutes later, I’m walking into his house.
The moment David spots me, he strides in quick steps toward me, saying, “Come here,” before grabbing my face and kissing me on a caught breath. He’s urgent and tense, and I’m forced to grip his wrists to steady myself on my feet.
“You have no idea how hard it was for me to keep my distance from you today,” he says with his hands still holding me.
“Is this how this is going to be? Us avoiding each other until we can sneak away?”
“It’s not how I want it, but it’s how it has to be.”
With a deep sigh, I drop my head to his chest, and his hand comes to wrap around the back of my neck.
“What is it?”
“Why is it that the one good thing in my life has to be complicated?”
“Tell me what happened at the pool. Why did you run out so fast?” he asks, not wanting to focus on the difficulty of our situation.
“Taylor’s got a hard-on for you.”
His chest vibrates against my face with quiet laughter. “That’s what has you all pissy? A schoolgirl crush?”
“No.”
He lifts my head. “Then what is it?”
“She’s just a bitch and takes every opportunity to remind me of it.”
“She’s stressed,” he says, and I slant my eyes at his attempt to make excuses. “Her parents are divorcing, and it’s been hard on her.”
“You’re kidding, right? That girl isn’t a bitch because her parents are separating, she’s a bitch because it’s wired in her DNA. And why is she coming to you about this anyway?”
“Because I’m her coach.” He sends me a sly smirk before adding, “And apparently, because she has a—what did you call it? A hard-on for me?”
I laugh and playfully push him away. “I should have never stroked your ego by telling you that.”
“I didn’t need you telling me. Subtlety isn’t her strong suit.”
“Should I be worried about you being her shoulder to cry on?”
“Not a chance,” he tells me. “And she isn’t crying on my shoulder.”
“She’s gross.”
“Can we not talk about her?” he says, chuckling slightly, “Because you’re here, and the only hard-on we should be talking about is the one I’ve been struggling with all fucking day.”
I burst into laughter at his crude humor, and it feels so damn good. I’ve missed laughing. I’ve missed a lot of things I’m finding he’s capable of giving me.
He picks me up, and I sling my arms around his neck as he carries me over to the couch before laying me down on my back. I take my time running my hands up his solid arms of roped muscle as I get lost in his deep kisses. He moves with confidence, and when he drops more of his weight down on me, I grip his shoulders and savor the pressure.
Dipping his tongue into my mouth, he glides it along mine, and I swear he’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Without breaking our connection, he slips his hand down to the hem of my shirt, and the moment he tugs it up, my heart freezes. In a flash, my hand latches around his wrist, and I yank him away.
My reaction jars him, and he jerks his head up. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just—”
The ringing of his cell phone saves me from trying to conjure up a lie. I don’t want him to know I’m the self-mutilating freak I am.
He reaches above my head to where his phone sits on the end table and looks at the screen. “I have to take this.”
When he gets off the couch and heads to his bedroom to answer the call, I breathe a sigh of relief and sit up. I don’t know how I would explain all the scars if he were to ever see them. But how the hell do I hide them when they are all over my stomach? It’s not like I can cut anywhere else when I spend every day in a swimsuit.
I wander through his house while I fret over what I’ve done to myself. But when I walk into his study and see a wall covered in plaques and certificates from the United States Army, my attention takes a shift. I walk over to his framed Honorable Discharge Certificate, where his dog tags hang from the corner. I reach out and touch them, running my finger over the raised stamping as I read his name, social, blood type, and his religion marked as Catholic.
“Here you are,” he says from behind me, causing me to startle. “What are you doing?”
I look around the room that’s filled with memories of his time in the military, time I know nothing about.
“What exactly was it that you did when you were in the Army?”
“I collected intel and negotiated with tribe leaders in order to find terrorists.”
He offers me his hand, and when I take it, he pulls me down to sit on his lap in his leather chair.
“So you were overseas a lot?”
“Nearly four years over three different tours.”
“That’s a lot of time away.”
“There wasn’t much here for me at the time,” he says.
I want to know what he means by that, but I also don’t want to push, remembering how quickly he closed down the last conversation we had about his past. So I err on the side of caution when I ask, “What was it like there?”
“Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I sp
ent a lot of time with children.”
“Children?”
“I’d go into the villages with soccer balls and other toys. We would kick the ball back and forth, and I’d make them feel like I was a friend, someone who could be trusted so I could get information about their families in order to find our targets. I basically bribed them so I could manipulate them.” He takes my hand and threads his fingers through mine. “I knew I was putting them in danger. If ever their families were to find out the information those kids were giving me . . .”
“Did any of them get hurt?”
“Never stayed long enough to know, but I don’t doubt that some wound up killed because of me.” His hand clamps tighter around mine, but I still feel the jittering he’s trying to mask.
“And what about you? Did you ever get hurt?”
“I was at war for almost four years. You don’t come out of that unscathed.”
I look into his eyes, wishing to know everything they’ve seen. He’s lived years beyond me, has seen more, experienced more, loved more, and hurt more. I feel juvenile with my earlier complaints about petty high school rifts.
“You told me the other night that since your dad died, you’ve struggled to find the common ground you once had with your friends.” I nod, recalling that conversation. “I know what that feels like. When I returned, I realized how drastically the events I went through reshaped me. And now here I am, back home, and there isn’t a single familiar place I fit into anymore.”
Not allowing a single second to slip, my lips are back on his.
His fingers press into my soft skin, and in some morbid way, his pain comforts me. Maybe it’s the fact that he gets what no one else does. He understands what I feel because he feels it too. A shared ache that shakes us both to the core, letting me know that I’m not alone. He’s told me that I wasn’t time and again, but understanding it through him, I now believe it as truth instead of some guy simply attempting to pacify me.
I kiss him even more as we hold each other, licking wounds we don’t fully understand in the other, but understanding enough to know we need to tend to them. And in a world that we are both struggling to fit into, what if this is where we are supposed to be?
Right here.
Right in this very moment.
Because this is the place where our broken pieces have settled, connecting perfectly without any gaps.
THIS MORNING, FOR THE FIRST time since his funeral, I visit my father’s grave. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone for five months.
Five months.
It hasn’t even been that long, and yet nothing—absolutely nothing—is the same as what it was when he was alive.
I sit on my knees in front of the headstone, his name etched in the marble on one side as the other awaits for my mother’s descent. A part of me wonders if he’d even want her laid to rest next to him knowing that she’s already in bed with another man.
What if she finds someone new?
Will the other half of his marker remain empty—forever incomplete?
“She didn’t deserve you,” I whisper into the breeze.
I tug my wool coat tightly around me, holding the lapels with one hand as I reach out and lay my other upon the stone and pretend it’s him I’m touching. “I miss you so much, Dad. It isn’t fair. None of this is.”
Another gust of air sweeps by, rustling dead leaves in its wake.
I’m burdened by a thousand pounds of confliction and anger and sorrow, and I surprise myself when the words, “Please, don’t be disappointed,” fall from my lips without thought. “He’s the only one who understands me right now.”
I pray for his words to speak to me through the wind, to tell me it’s okay, to assure me that what I’m doing with David isn’t as bad as what society deems it to be. I pray for him to tell me that everything will be fine. No such confirmation comes though, and I know I’ll have to go through this relying on faith alone.
With all the uncertainty that surrounds me, the one thing I do know is that my father wouldn’t approve. The irony is that had my father not died that day, I never would have found David or needed him in my life.
Everything shifted the moment he died. I didn’t want to believe it, a part of me still doesn’t. Some nights I dream that it was all a mistake and that he’s really alive. Somehow, in some unexplainable circumstance, he’s found.
But then I wake up, and I’m reminded that life doesn’t work in miracles the way fables would have you believe. The world is much too unforgiving, and I can’t go on making decisions based off the hypothetical wants of someone who doesn’t bear any weight in this world anymore.
No element is the same, so who’s to even say whether my choices are right or wrong. Because in the end, it’s just me. I’m responsible for myself, no more a dependent of anyone who nurtures me with an unconditional loving heart. I’m left to walk through life on my own, to make decisions on my own, and to find a new path now that my old one no longer guides me.
I stay a while longer, reflecting on past memories that swell my emotions before the chill in the air becomes too much.
I arrive home with nothing to do as I wait for the hours to pass.
David is returning this evening. He’s been in Florida for the past five days. An old Army buddy of his got married, and since a bunch of his combat friends were there as well, they decided to make a long weekend out of the trip.
Not having him around to distract me has ignited an anxiousness inside of me that hasn’t been treating me well. Although we’ve been texting incessantly and talking on the phone every chance we can, it isn’t the same as having him here. I don’t say anything about it though, because the last thing I want is for him to see me as some needy kid—but truth is, when it comes to him, I am needy.
David: Just got home.
Me: On my way.
I grab my keys and the garage door opener to his house, which he gave me last week before he went out of town, and then I head out to my car. The grief lifts, and my anticipation grows the closer I get. I turn down his street, and when I’m tucked out of sight in his garage, I rush inside.
“David?” I call out when I don’t see him at first.
“In my room.”
The air is filled with the aroma of his shower, and when I walk into his bedroom, my breath catches. He’s unpacking, wearing nothing but a pair of running pants, and his chest, darker than before he left, is bare with drops of water dripping from his still wet hair. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen him without his shirt, but to see him like this, in the privacy of his room, does something unexplainable to me.
He takes his suitcase from the bed and drops it on the floor before grabbing me in his arms. The dampness from his skin seeps through the thin fabric of my shirt, and when he spins me around to lay me on the bed, a tiny squeal sneaks out of me.
“Tell me you missed me,” he says as he braces himself above me.
“I missed you.”
He smiles, and it’s perfect, and the moment I return it, he steals it. His kisses are deep, robbing me of the breath in my lungs. I slip my hands around the knotted muscles in his shoulders and hang on as I lift my head slightly, needing my own sense of control to kiss him back.
His body slides roughly against mine, and when we are forced to come up for air, our lips part. I run my fingers through his over-grown hair and fist it softly in my hands as he stares down at me.
“How was your trip?” I ask after a long moment of quietness.
“Good. Spent most of my time at the beach.”
“Must be nice. I’ve never been.”
“Where? To a beach?”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“So where do you vacation?”
He backs off me and stands.
“My family is more into the mountains. We did go to Disney World once, but we never made it to the shore.”
He steps over to his luggage to finish unpacking. “I actually lived down in Key West for several
months while I was in combat training. I was deployed to the desert soon after. I love sand, but I’ve gotta have the water too.”
I stand and offer to help him. The smile on his face is a bit wistful, but then his eyes flick back to me, and when they cast down, his lips lose all their mirth. “You’re bleeding.”
“What?” I look down to see that a little blood has seeped through my shirt and instantly go numb. He must have opened a scab while he was on top of me. Quickly covering it with my hand, I mutter, “I must’ve brushed up against something or . . .”
My words drift, not knowing what to say as he eyes me suspiciously. He reaches out for my wrist, and I take a step away from him, terrified he’s about to find out my secret.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Just, leave it alone.”
“Leave what alone?” he questions in a serious tone.
Taking another step away from him, I hold on to the hem of my shirt with my other hand as my heart races in fear. My whole face heats, and I flinch away when he comes toward me.
“Lift up your shirt.”
“David, don’t,” I warn, my voice shaking as I do.
“I want to know what has you freaking out right now.”
He reaches his hand out again, and I swat it away, snapping, “Don’t touch me,” but his next attempt comes much too fast. Grabbing ahold of the fabric, he yanks it up, ripping it out of my hand.
“Jesus,” he mutters, and I fight against him, shoving my top back down.
My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach when I see the confusion and horror on his face. Tears spring from my eyes, and I ball my hands, throwing them against his chest, yelling, “You’re such a jerk!”
I push against him and run toward the garage, but he’s quicker than I am, grabbing me by the arm and pulling back.
“Let go of me!”
“Calm down,” he demands, but I don’t. All I want to do is get the hell out of here.
“Let go!” I struggle against his hold, but he refuses to budge.
“You’re not leaving. Not until you tell me what those cuts are all about.”