by L. D. Davis
“Overdosed?” I snickered and shook my head. “On what? On life?” I laughed. “No, that’s impossible since he was barely living one.” I shook my head again. “My dad wasn’t on drugs.”
Sam and Fred exchanged a look but remained quiet.
“Don’t have a private conversation with your eyes that I’m not privy to,” I snapped, pulling out my adult words like ‘privy’.
“Honey, your dad overdosed on heroin,” Sam said.
“But…” I looked into all of their faces. “My dad didn’t do drugs. I’ve never seen him do drugs.”
“He hid it from you very well,” Sam said sadly.
Of course, he hid it from me very well. He was never around. By the time I was thirteen, I would sometimes go days without seeing him. He would show up, pay the bills, ask me about my life and listen just long enough to get the bare minimum and when I’d wake up in the morning, he would be gone again, leaving me to deal with my mom. When I called him on it, he said he was working long hours, and it was easier to stay closer to work since it was an hour plus drive away.
I pulled my hands out of Emmy’s and wiped my palms on my jeans.
“I’m going to go to my mom’s house,” I said, suddenly feeling as if all of the energy had been zapped from my body.
I picked up my skateboard and backed up until my hand was on the door behind me.
“I’ll drive you,” Emmet said.
“It’s a few blocks away,” I said, with an annoyance I didn’t even understand. “I’ll be fine.”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Emmy said.
I laughed and looked at her. “When I get to my mom’s house, I will be alone. I’m always alone there. I think I can handle the few blocks alone to the house that I will be alone in.”
“Then I will come with you,” she insisted. “I’ll stay with you.”
“I wouldn’t want you to get sucked into the black hole with me,” I said, my voice wavering.
“You are my best friend, D. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
She ran upstairs to get a few things, leaving me the center of attention in the foyer. I felt like I was one of the objects I had looked at in the museum.
“I’d really appreciate if you all stop looking at me as if I’m going to fall to pieces because I’m not. My dad left me a long time ago, so this really…” I took a deep, shaky breath. “This really isn’t a surprise that he found a way to leave permanently.”
Without warning, without any kind of shudder or whimper, I was hit full force with grief. I hated to cry in front of anyone. I wasn’t a crier, despite the tears I had shed earlier in the day after kissing Emmet. I did fall apart. Suddenly and brutally I was sobbing as I dropped my board on the floor with a loud clatter.
Emmy was halfway down the stairs when the onslaught started, but it was Emmet that wrapped his arms around me and held me. I held on to him fiercely. I was afraid if he let me go I would melt to the floor and just die myself. I cried in his arms for several minutes before I was able to pull myself together. He released me reluctantly, pushing my hair off of my face for the second time that day.
I convinced Emmy that I needed to go home alone. I didn’t know how my mom was going to be, and I didn’t want her there if it was bad. Emmet looked at me knowingly, but I didn’t elaborate to anyone else. After some further discussion, Fred convinced me to let Emmet take me home, and I finally agreed. Sam and Fred, the parents I wish I had all along, hugged me and kissed me and promised to be a phone call away. Emmy wiped my tears and promised she would be over bright and early no matter what. She walked out to the car with us and stood in the driveway as we pulled away.
We were quiet for the three or four minutes it took Emmet to drive me home, but he drove with one hand and stroked my hair with his other hand. I was never able to find the words to explain how comforting that small gesture was.
When we pulled up in front of the house, I noticed cars of the relatives that rarely stopped over, that never helped out, and it made me angry. Emmet saw the cars too, and his eyes narrowed a bit.
“Just try to be patient,” he said, picking up on how I was feeling.
“I’ll try,” I said without any commitment. I put my hand on the door to let myself out.
“Donya,” he said my name quietly. I looked at him expectantly.
He brushed the hair off of my cheek and even in the lightly dimmed car I could see his eyes drop to my lips. Then he took a breath and pulled his hand away.
“Call me if you need me,” he murmured.
“Okay,” I said and then my eyes dropped to his lips.
We sat staring at each other for probably almost a full minute before I finally made myself look away. I pushed open the door and got out to face some demons.
Chapter Six
I kissed Emmet again the night of my dad’s funeral. My mom had locked herself in her bedroom, and my dad’s siblings and a few other random relatives were sitting in our home saying terrible things about my mom and my dad. The things they were saying were true, but they weren’t trying to be helpful. They were putting themselves on pedestals, separating themselves from us as if they were somehow better people. There aren’t better people. Just better circumstances. I was only nearly fifteen, and I got that. Why didn’t they?
“I’m going out for a walk,” I had said as I walked through the living room with my board under my arm. “And when I come back I want you all out of my house.”
“Who is she talking to?” I heard my Aunt Amanda snap. “Oh, I know you’re not talking to me, little girl.”
I whirled around and looked at the gossipy, hypocritical bunch.
“None of you ever came over here to help before,” I fired back. “Don’t sit there and pretend that you give a shit when you don’t. No one ever came over here to make sure I was okay or to make sure mommy was eating and none of you ever came over to check to make sure she was still breathing. Get out of our house. You don’t belong here.”
I slammed the door behind me. Before I could skate away, my aunt was at the door yelling at my back about how she was going to kick my ass if I ever spoke to her like that again and that I was in no position to tell her what to do, and I was just as crazy as my mom. With restraint I barely had, I skated away without looking back.
I had found myself back at that parking lot where I had kissed Emmet. It was dark at nearly eight-thirty in late October. There was a soft hum from the tall lampposts that bathed the lot in soft light. I really shouldn’t have been out there by myself in the dark. It was set back away from any main roadways, and there were few houses or open businesses in the vicinity, but I wanted to clear my head.
I had been moving in slow, lazy arches for some time when I saw the headlights of a car. I started to worry that it was going to be some psychopath out for his nightly killing and violating, but when the car stopped a few yards from where I stood on my board, I realized that it wasn’t a psychopath at all. It was just Emmet. I looked on with curiosity as he got out of the car, reached inside and then produced his board. Did he know I would be there, or was it coincidence?
“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself in the dark,” he said, stopping in front of me.
“I’m not by myself,” I said pointedly.
“You were before I got here,” he said, dropping his board to the pavement.
I gave him a little shrug and pushed off and away from him. We rode in a comfortable silence for a long time. It was getting very cold, and I was mad at myself that I had forgotten my gloves in my haste to get out of the house. I pushed my hands into my pockets, but it wasn’t quite enough to keep them warm. Every few minutes I would take them out and rub them together and blow warm air on them before pushing them back into my pockets. I stopped for a moment to adjust my jacket and pull my knit cap over my ears. Emmet stopped in front of me just as I started to rub my hands together again.
Startling me, he grabbed my hands. He put them together as if I was about to pray, and then he ru
bbed his hands over mine. I sighed happily as my hands began to heat up with the friction of his hands rubbing on mine. He bent over slightly and cupped his hands around mine and blew. My hands warmed, but so did my whole body.
What the hell was that feeling? What was with the tingling that started in my fingertips and radiated throughout my entire body?
“Better?” he asked softly as he slowly rubbed my hands.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Not with the way he was looking at me. Why did he have to have such beautiful eyes that made me feel like I was happily drowning in a green sea?
“Did you know I was out here before you got here?” I blurted out after a few moments.
Emmet nodded slowly as he again blew hot air onto my hands.
“How did you know I was here?”
He shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
He had said that when I fell and hit my head years before. He had told me he’d always find me, and he had said that to me the week before, the day he first brought me to the lot and kissed me, the night my father died.
“You didn’t find me after you found out about my dad,” I murmured more to myself than him, but, of course, he had heard me.
“Not exactly,” he said with a half of a shrug.
“What do you mean not exactly?” I had never told anyone where I had gone. It was still my secret place, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“I could…feel you,” he said carefully. “I can’t explain it. Sometimes I know…I just know you’re close by and sometimes I know when you’re not. I knew you weren’t. I knew you weren’t very far, but you were…out of my reach.”
I stared at him with an open mouth. That was deep. Too deep for my teenage mind to understand. It was scary. Maybe it was scary because…well…I kind of always felt Emmet too. Even when we were little kids, I always knew when Emmet was near without having to look. That didn’t scare me back then. I didn’t think much of it then, but at almost fifteen years old, I began to understand how rare that was, and how utterly freaky it was.
We met half way. Freaky or not, his lips were so close, and we were alone. I was feeling a little miserable, and I knew Emmet could make me feel better. His lips crushed against mine and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He held me close, his hands shifting up and down my back as he kissed me. His mouth was so warm and perfect. I was getting better at using my tongue with his and I could tell he liked it. The same soft moans that I made, he was making too. I took a page from his book and pulled his bottom lip between my lips and gently sucked, then nipped, and then soothed it with my tongue.
Oh, yeah. I was learning.
Emmet pulled away suddenly and took a couple of steps back. I was left unbalanced on my skateboard. I wobbled madly for a moment on weakened knees and fell backward on my ass. He was helping me up before I even had time to process that I had fallen. Once I was firmly on my feet, he backed away again.
“I have to stop kissing you,” he said and let out a long breath.
Embarrassed, I picked up my board. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m going to head home. I’ll see you…whenever.”
“Donya,” Emmet said with a frustrated tone. His hand was on my arm, stopping me. I let him. “I want to kiss you, but…I’m older with…more experience, and you’re making my head all cloudy. I don’t want to…disrespect you.”
Ohhhh, I get it.
Emmet was telling me that he wasn’t a virgin and that he didn’t want to do something crazy like feel me up or lure me into losing my virginity in the backseat of his car. I almost snickered at how quickly I caught on to that. Sometimes I thought I was just a naïve kid, but I got that. I understood it so fast, and I didn’t want that to happen either.
“Okay,” I said to him. “We probably shouldn’t kiss anymore then.”
“I like kissing you,” he said, cupping my cheek. “I love you because you’re part of my family, but I have…other feelings for you too.”
Okay, now that was just too much for me. My brain was getting overloaded. I know teenage girls fall in love all of the time, but I didn’t romanticize life like they did. I wasn’t in any hurry to fall in love and be anyone’s girlfriend and to have regular make-out sessions. I wanted to skateboard and get through school and get through life before all of that. Falling in love or lust or becoming infatuated as girls did at my age changed them. One day they were carefree and maybe a little broody because hormones do that to kids, but life wasn’t…heavy. Then the next day they would be all dreamy eyed and head over heels for some guy, and then life got complicated.
I saw Emmy already headed down that path with Reed, even if she said it was just flirting. Since the party, their just flirting turned into a “just making out,” and in a matter of days she had that dreamy-eyed look and started fantasizing about her future with him. I was way too young for any of that, despite how my heart seemed to beat harder for Emmet than for anyone or anything else in the world. Despite the fact that I also felt that invisible tether between us.
“I’m not ready for all of this,” I said to Emmet, and gently pushed his hand off of my cheek. “You were right. I’m too young and dumb for this, and I’m okay with that. I want to be young and dumb for a while.”
I stepped away from him and waited for his reaction. He looked pained, and I felt bad. I loved Emmet too, and I would never want to hurt him, but I had to do the right thing. Not many girls my age were able to think clearly like that, especially after kissing a guy.
“Okay,” he breathed. He looked so disappointed. “I get it. I’ll take you home.”
He picked up his board and walked to his car without looking back to see if I would follow.
*~*~*
Several months passed by and it had felt like a lifetime had slipped past us since Emmet had given me my first kiss in that empty parking lot, the same day my father overdosed and died. Much changed since that day. My dad’s death did something to my mother—like a good something.
The day after my dad’s small funeral service, my mom checked herself into a hospital. She was in there for a month, and when she came out, she returned there three times a week for therapy. She began to take care of herself, and she tried to take care of me. I spent more time at home and less time at the Graynes’ as I tried to get reacquainted with the mother that had been absent most of my life. I could have been a bitter teenager and rebelled against her, but I was a grateful teenager. I had a mother that did care about me underneath all of her grief and self-loathing, even if she was unable to verbalize it, and I had another family that loved me like a daughter and sister, and whatever I was to Emmet.
That tether never did go away, and though we weren’t physically closer, as in we weren’t kissing, I felt closer to him on other levels. I could read him very well, sense his emotions without any words or looks passing between us.
We still hung out and skated together from time to time but we talked about trivial things, or we were completely silent. Sometimes he looked at me like he wanted to kiss me, but he didn’t try. At least we were friends, and for some time, we evaded the teenage angst that accompanied the relationships with the opposite sex, but we did not escape unscathed. Eventually, the angst caught up to us.
*~*~*
I could feel him coming down the hallway before I even looked up to see him. I told myself I wouldn’t look. I pulled my locker open and then I turned my head and looked, of course. Through the crowded hallway and dozens of other students’ big heads, I met Emmet’s eyes.
How does he do that? How do I do that?
It took him a little while to get to me. Guys stopped him to shoot the shit. Girls stopped him to flirt and toss their stupid hair. A teacher stopped to flirt and toss her hair. Gross. Guess that’s the problem with being good looking, athletic, and intelligent.
The tether slackened some as I felt him approaching me. Even though I was chatting with a couple of girls in my class, I turned around and looked in Emmet’s direction expectantly. I wasn’t waiting for him to
come flirt with me like he did with the other girls; he was my ride home. Emmy and I had strong-armed him into driving us to and from school when the weather started to turn cold in the fall. I felt that he only said yes because I had tilted my head and batted my eyelashes and stuck out my bottom lip. His eyes had glazed over for only a second, and only I noticed it, but he did give in right after.
He was moving through the thinning crowd of students to get to me, and he was only a few feet away when Stella Cramer bounded into my perfect scene of Emmet smiling and eyes shining as he walked towards me. Stella was petite with big boobs, naturally blonde, and had big blue eyes. On top of being irresistibly adorable, she was also extremely nice and smart. Stella Cramer was the All American Girl. I would have bet cash that it was probably printed on her college applications.
Emmet seemed a little surprised to look down and see Stella in his path, but he stopped to talk to her. She smiled as she talked to him in a soft murmur, and he unconsciously leaned in close to her. I watched as he grinned and said something back to her and the pair laughed soft, secret laughs. The whole thing just seemed rather intimate. I couldn’t stand to watch it, and I couldn’t stand to look away.
My friend Amy snickered beside me.
“What?” I asked absently as I watched Emmet with Stella.
“Nothing,” she said, though I could tell it was something.
“What?” I pressed, turning my gaze on her. She was looking at Emmet and Stella too, with a mischievous smile on her face.
I glanced at the couple and back to Amy with one arched brow.
“What?” I demanded.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she whispered.
“Tell anyone what?”
“They’ll know I told, and my brother will kill me.”
Amy’s brother Aaron was a senior and pretty good friends with Emmet. He was a nice guy, but I could totally see him putting Amy in a headlock and torturing her for opening her mouth.