Bitter End

  The television sat, facing us, on an old-fashioned aluminum stand at the other end of the room, by the fireplace. An old sitcom from the seventies was playing on it, the sound blaring. Directly in front of us, pointed toward the TV, was a set of recliners. One was in the reclined position, and a pair of bare feet—definitely male—stretched out on the footrest. The other chair, from the back, anyway, looked empty.

  Cole pulled me between the chairs and into the room. “Hey, guys,” he said in a flat voice. “I wanted you to meet my girlfriend, Alex.”

  I turned and saw the owner of the reclining feet. He was a large, gut-heavy man wearing boxers and a ribbed T-shirt. He held a beer against his stomach. He looked like Cole, only older and fatter. It was hard to believe that this was Cole’s dad. I’d imagined someone handsome and successful. This guy almost looked like a caricature of the exact opposite of the way I would have pictured Cole’s dad. Something you’d see on a cartoon—a spoof of a dad.

  “Hi,” I said, starting to raise my hand in a wave, but he cut me off.

  “What the hell you doin’, Cole? I can’t see the TV, dammit!”

  Cole and I shuffled a few inches to the side. “Dad. This is Alex,” Cole tried again, and this time the man at least acknowledged that I was in the room, even if he didn’t exactly look at me.

  “’Lo,” he said distractedly, waving his beer in my direction.

  “Nice to meet you,” I practically whispered.

  “That’s my dad,” Cole said. “And this is my mom. Brenda, this is Alex.”

  I turned to the other recliner, where Cole was pointing, and almost jumped. I’d thought nobody was in the chair, but sitting, curled practically into a ball, was a wafer-thin woman with giant, vacant eyes. Her head laid against the armrest, her legs pulled up into the seat, her hands holding her shins tight. She looked like a toddler, hiding, frightened by a thunderstorm. She blinked slowly, taking us both in, but didn’t say a word.

  The TV switched over to a commercial, and Cole’s dad shifted in his chair.

  “So,” he said. “Alex, you say? You a girl?” He laughed, like he’d made a particularly funny joke. “When I was your age, Alex was a boy’s name. You not datin’ a boy, are ya, Cole?” Again with the laughter. “Hell, I’d have to kick your ass if you were datin’ a boy.”

  Embarrassment flooded my limbs, and I was actually glad for the dark. I opened my mouth to say something but wasn’t sure how to respond.

  Cole tugged on my hand a little.

  “Just a joke,” he said in a low voice. Correction: a defeated voice. “He doesn’t mean anything.”

  The woman blinked her giant eyes and shifted them back to a space of linoleum about three feet in front of her.

  I heard the other recliner shift again, and Cole’s dad’s voice boomed so loud I actually did jump this time. “Brenda, Cole’s got company.” He gave a bark of laughter that made me inch closer to Cole. “She’s not so good with people. Woman’s scared of her own shadow. Ain’t that right, Brenda?”

  The woman pulled herself up to sitting and peered over the arm of the recliner at her husband. She made a noise in the back of her throat and mumbled something I couldn’t make out. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to Cole or to Cole’s dad, and I shifted uneasily. Fortunately, the TV show came back on, and Cole’s dad was engrossed once again.

  “We’re going upstairs,” Cole announced, and began pulling me out of the room. I felt relief wash over me. Even in the dark, that room may have been the most uncomfortable room I’ve ever set foot in.

  “You want me to bring you some sodas?” came a meek voice at our backs. So small and nasally it might have been mistaken for a meow or an electronic squeal. I saw a shadowy lump hanging over the side of Cole’s mom’s—er, Brenda’s—chair that I took to be her head.

  “Nope, Brenda, just stay there,” Cole answered. I detected something in his voice. Annoyance, maybe? Embarrassment?

  “For God’s sake, Brenda, they’re going upstairs. They can get their own sodas. They want to be alone,” Cole’s dad boomed again. And I could hear him continue as we climbed the stairs back to the kitchen. “Jesus, do you always have to smother people?… So what if they’re up there alone?… Leave him alone, dammit…. This is why you’re always…”

  Cole pulled me through the kitchen and back into the front room. But instead of heading for the front door, he turned and pulled me up another short staircase. We climbed the stairs into a hallway that was so dark I put my free hand on Cole’s back to follow him.

  We plunged into a bedroom, and Cole shut the door behind us. Up here, we couldn’t hear the TV. It was like stepping into an isolation booth.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, and I did. I heard a click and saw light streaming in through my eyelids. “Okay, you can open them,” he said. I opened my eyes and squinted. The lamp he’d turned on was low-light, but it still hurt, and I blinked a few times to get used to it. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “This place is a mess. Brenda never cleans anything.”

  He bent and picked up some dirty clothes and then tossed them into a chair by the window. I studied the room while he tidied. An old wicker chair next to the window, a small amp and guitar on the floor in front of it. Shabby dresser on the far wall, the top of it a dense forest of trophies. Bed, unmade, facing the dresser. A modest nightstand next to the bed, holding a few empty glasses, a grungy-looking alarm clock, and a photo of me that I’d given Cole on our third date. I picked up the photo, feeling warm inside.

  Nobody had ever kept a picture of me next to their bed before.

  “Sit down, if you want,” Cole said, motioning with his head toward the bed while he picked up a pair of shoes and tossed them in the closet. I thought about Bethany and Zack waiting for me at Zack’s house. They were expecting me. I checked the clock—I was definitely late, but there was still time. I considered telling Cole that I needed to get to them. That I had to make it up to them, and the later it got, the harder it would be. But something about his face told me he’d be in no mood to discuss Bethany and Zack tonight. Something about the blackness that still rolled off him, even in the light, told me he needed me to stay. I sat on the edge of the bed and set the photo back on the nightstand, hoping Bethany and Zack would be understanding for a few more minutes.

  “So,” he said, scooping up a towel and hanging it over the back of the chair. “What’d you think of my mom and dad?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Do you always call your mom Brenda?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Pretty much. You saw her. My dad says if she can’t act like a mom, she shouldn’t have the title. He started calling her Brenda around me as far back as I can remember. I guess I just picked it up.” He kicked some books under his bed while he talked.

  “Does she always, um…” I trailed off. How did I say what I was thinking? Does she always look like a zombie? Does she always talk in squeaks and lay curled up in her chair like she’s trying to disappear?

  But Cole finished for me. “Act like she belongs in a mental ward? No. Only when she’s having one of her pity parties. Most of the time she’s just really annoying. Always wanting to do stuff for me. Always wanting to be up in my business. Always being pathetic. My dad’s no saint or anything, but at least he tells her when to leave me the hell alone. Don’t worry. She won’t bother us tonight. Not with him home.”

  I was silent. I’d never thought about it before, being annoyed by a mom who’s “too there.” Would I think it was irritating to always have someone prying into my personal life? I didn’t know. One thing about my dad—I could have all the privacy in the world, if I wanted it.

  Cole sat next to me on the bed and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling between his legs. He let out a big sigh.

  “I just… I wanted you to meet them,” he said. “I wanted you to see that I understand what it’s like to wish for a mother. To wish for a family. I always wanted it, too.” He reached over and pushed my hair behind
my ear. “I think this is what brought us together,” he whispered. “We both need each other. We both get it.”

  I nodded. He was right. I knew at that moment, in every part of my body, that Cole was right. We were destined to be together. He understood. Just because there was a physical body of a mother in his house didn’t mean he had a mom. He understood what it was like to wish for something perfect, a fairy tale. He understood what it was like to be lonely in your family. He understood me. And I understood him.

  Bethany and Zack… they could say they understood. They could be there for me on the Meltdown Days. They could plan the trip to Colorado and say they would be there for me when I reached the mountaintop. They could appreciate the story of my family. But they’d never actually known what it felt like to be me. They had happy families. They had whole families. They never pined for love—it was always just there for them to take.

  Cole knew. Cole was the only one who truly knew.

  So when he leaned over and kissed me, I let myself forgive him for what happened the night before. Not just say it, but truly believe it. And when he pushed me back on the bed, whispering, “Alex. You’re my soul mate,” I felt it too. It felt like falling, only there was no landing to this fall.

  And when he turned out the light and kissed my eyelids and bare shoulders and fingertips, I opened myself up to him completely. I was never wanted by anyone before. I never really belonged to anyone before, not in this way. Cole had me, heart, soul, body. And it felt right.

  It almost felt like standing on a mountaintop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bethany and Zack were standing at my locker when I turned the corner after final period on Thursday. My stomach dropped when I saw them. I’d been dreading this all week. I felt so guilty for standing them up Saturday night, I’d been avoiding them since. But next week was Thanksgiving, and Dad and Celia and I always had dinner at Zack’s house, and after dinner Zack and I always went to Bethany’s to help decorate her Christmas tree, so I knew eventually I’d have to face them. I just wasn’t sure yet what to say when I did.

  Zack was looking ultracool, with his back pressed to the locker next to mine passively staring out the side doors of the school, where the stragglers were piling into their cars and screeching out of the parking lot. Bethany faced me, her arms crossed across her chest uncomfortably, her giganto-purse pulling one shoulder down a few inches lower than the other. A few wilting leaves poked out the top of the bag. Most likely Bethany rescuing a sapling from a sidewalk crack or something.

  From the look on Zack’s face, this wasn’t going to be pretty. I didn’t blame them for being pissed that I never showed up for our “meeting,” but I also knew that they’d never understand why I couldn’t just up and leave Cole after what had happened between us.

  I wanted so badly to tell Bethany that I’d had a “first time” and that it felt amazing and surreal and that I was scared but so in love and so sure I’d done the right thing.

  But I knew she wouldn’t approve. I knew she’d not only still blame me for not showing up at Zack’s like I’d promised, but would think I’d made a mistake, especially since it was with Cole. She wouldn’t be happy for me.

  And there was something else, too. Something that happened the very second I nodded when Cole asked if what he was doing was okay. I changed. I would never be “their Alex” again. They had to share me with Cole, because he now had a piece of me that they never had and I would never ever get back. And there was no way that Bethany or Zack, both virgins, despite Zack’s repeated attempts to convince us that he’d “three-quarters done it” with Lynesia Mahan at the movie theater in seventh grade, could ever understand that.

  I was different now.

  But Cole hadn’t come to school today—he’d texted me that he had “fam stuff” to take care of—and I was having to face them on my own.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to look and sound cheerful.

  Zack didn’t turn to face me.

  “We missed you on Saturday,” Bethany said. She uncrossed an arm long enough to push her glasses up on her nose, then tucked her hand back under her arm. She didn’t look angry anymore, but she still had that red-eyed look, like she was upset. Maybe that look was permanent on her now.

  “I know,” I said, opening my locker, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. “I’m really sorry. I just… couldn’t get away.”

  “From work? Or just too busy hanging out with Mr. Universe?” Zack said, finally turning to look at me. “Unlike you, we don’t really travel in the same circles as the Big Shits.”

  “Zack,” Bethany said, reaching out and touching his arm. He rolled his eyes, popped a toothpick into his mouth, and resumed his pose.

  “We just… well, you didn’t show up after you said you would,” Bethany said.

  I pulled my English book out of my locker and slipped it into my backpack, which was resting on the floor at my feet. “I’m sorry, guys. I just got busy with stuff.”

  “Stuff?” Bethany said, her face flushing. She pushed at her glasses again, even though they hadn’t slid down her nose at all since the last time. “You mean Cole.”

  I paused and looked at her, my arm frozen in midreach to the top shelf of my locker. “Actually, yeah. Cole. He is my boyfriend, you know.”

  “Oh, we know!” Zack cried out in this sarcastic voice. He pushed away from the lockers and started down the hall. “We definitely know. But thanks for reminding us. Just in case we forgot,” he spat over his shoulder. “Bethany, I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  I watched him go, then whirled on Bethany. “What the hell? I said I was sorry. What’s his problem?” I pulled out another book, shoved it into my backpack angrily, and slammed the locker door shut.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Bethany said. “Maybe it’s because your boyfriend treated us like shit? Maybe it’s because he probably treats you like shit, too? Or maybe it’s because ever since you’ve been going out with him you’ve had nothing to do with us. Your best friends.” The word “best” was dripping with sarcasm, and I think I actually winced when she said it that way.

  I shook my head. “You’re wrong,” I said. “He treats me like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him. And he understands me. Unlike my best friends.” I tried to saturate “best” with sarcasm, too, but failed miserably. I only sounded needy. Because deep down I think I knew she was right.

  Bethany set her jaw, then silently turned and started walking briskly the same way Zack went. Immediately I felt bad. I didn’t mean to take this out on them. I was the one who should be sorry. I did blow them off. Even if I had good reason for it.

  I went after her.

  “Beth,” I said, catching up to her and grabbing her elbow. She stopped and turned, her eyes slits behind her glasses. “Beth, c’mon. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve been a bad friend lately. It’s just… it’s just that Cole and I have gotten so close and you know how he feels about Zack and… I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  She considered this for a second, her body slowly losing some of its rigidity. After a while she sighed, rolling her eyes dramatically, and then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I get it. I’m still mad, but… I know how I’d be if Randy knew I existed. I get it.”

  I smiled and hugged her. “That’s why you’re my best friend,” I said.

  “Zack used to be your best friend, too,” she said into my hair. I noticed she wasn’t hugging me back.

  “He still is,” I said, pulling away. “I just have to figure out how to have both of them in my life, you know?”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  We started walking again. “He really does treat me like a queen,” I said.

  She nodded but didn’t respond. Subject closed.

  “Hey,” she said after a while, “you know that RV we were talking about?”

  I groaned. “Don’t tell me…”

  She grinned and nodded. “Zack’s grandpa—you know, Grampy Big Bucks?—said he’d f
eel better about us in one of those than in the crapmobile, so he offered to pay for the whole thing. We’re gonna be ridin’ in style!” She snapped her fingers and did a funky little slide down the hall, leaves falling out of her bag and leaving a trail on the floor. I laughed.

  “I can’t believe you pulled it off,” I said between chuckles.

  She breathed on her fingertips and brushed them on her shoulder. “Baby, I can do anything.” She got a serious look. “Cole isn’t going to try to talk you out of going on this trip now, is he?”

  “No way,” I assured her. “He couldn’t even if he tried. Don’t worry about that. Okay?”

  We plunged out into the parking lot. Zack was stretched out on the hood of his car, arms folded behind his head, toothpick in mouth, eyes shut. He looked like he was sleeping.

  Bethany glanced at me deviously and put her finger over her lips. I nodded, turning my lips in on themselves to hold back a laugh. She snuck around the car, reached in the open window, and laid on the horn.

  Zack looked like someone had Tasered him. He jumped, cursing, and rolled off the car.

  Bethany had run back to my side, and we leaned into each other, holding our stomachs because we were laughing so hard.

  “Oh, okay,” Zack said, getting to his feet and bouncing over toward us, using his cocky walk. “Okay, girls. Go ahead. Laugh it up. Payback is a bee-yotch, just so’s you knows.”

  Bethany sucked in a great gasp of air. “I’m sorry; I couldn’t help myself. You looked so cozy.”

  “But too bad,” I added between giggles. “I was hoping you’d pee your pants.” I snapped my fingers in an aw-shucks move. “Maybe next time.”

  “Oh, really?” Zack said, launching at us suddenly. We squealed, trying to dodge him, but he got both of us, grabbing each of us under our arms, and was squeezing tight. “Let’s see who tinkles. Won’t be me.”