Pass me By (BFF Series Book 1)

by Kyra Fox

  “I guess it’s a far cry from California ambiance.” I start looking for parking. “But it has its charms. I love it here, especially during the fall.”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “Yeah, mostly.” I smile at the memories of my childhood. “I spent some time in DC because my dad lives there, but he came back here more often than I went to visit him there.”

  “Did Eric really meet your dad?” He sounds genuinely skeptical.

  “A couple of weeks ago when he was here for work.” I spot available parking and speed up to catch it.

  “Your mom?” he presses, and I sense it’s important to him for some reason.

  “No, she’s on a research expedition in New Zealand for a few more months.” I park the car and turn to Philip, wondering where he’s going with all these questions.

  “Did you meet our mom?” he asks in such a quiet voice like it almost scares him to know.

  “No.” I take a deep breath, not able to meet his eyes, and not knowing what else to say. Philip’s lips form a thin line. He unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of the car faster than I can turn off the engine and release myself.

  “Philip!” I call after him as he walks to the pub, his long legs and hurried pace making it impossible for me to catch up. “Stop, please.”

  “It wasn’t all bad, you know.” He stops in his tracks and turns to face me. “Her good phases may have been few and far between, but she had good phases, and when she did, she was the best mom in the world.”

  I place a calming hand on his forearm. “You know, Eric took me to the place you used to go camping in the woods. He seemed fond of those memories.”

  “We would go there when she’d get scared of someone taking us away from her.” A small part of the tension seems to evaporate from Philip’s body. “I’m surprised he took you there; some of our best times with her were there.”

  “It seemed like a special place for him.” I smile when I remember that night.

  “I know it isn’t fair of me to be mad at him.” All the anger dissipates from Philip’s face, replaced by pain. “I have so many good memories of her, more than bad, but I know it’s because I had him to protect me. Eric had no one.”

  “He had Miss Audrey.” Philip shakes his head and offers his arm. I take it, and he leads me into Baron’s, my non-question hanging in the air between us.

  “Baby Mac!” Bitsie throws herself at Philip when we walk inside, and I don’t miss that he uses it as an excuse to bury his face between her boobs. “And the one that got away.”

  “Hi, Bitsie.” I laugh and hug her, though I feel the blush creep up my neck.

  “Tell me about it,” Philip huffs. “How did a grumpy ass like my brother land an angel like this?”

  “He one-upped you there, Baby Mac.” Bitsie sighs with mock resignation, patting Philip on the head as if he were a puppy. “Goddess trumps angel.”

  “He seriously calls you goddess?” Philip can’t stop the laughter bubbling up from deep in his gut.

  “That’s the short of the nickname, actually.” Bitsie smiles at me with an evil grin as I shoot her a menacing glare. “I’ve heard him call her his little sex goddess.”

  Philip is doubling over now, and I’m pretty sure my cheeks are burning red.

  “Bitsie!” I scold her.

  “What?” She looks at me with wide eyes filled with innocent wonder and walks away as if she hadn’t just done something wildly inappropriate.

  Philip is wiping tears from the corners of his eyes and sighs happily.

  “I’m not laughing at you, Zo. You are little, and I don’t doubt for a second you are a sex goddess.” I swat his arm with a scolding glare, but he just gives me that panty-melting grin that seems to run in the Mackenzie gene pool. Though it does nothing to me when coming from Philip. “But Eric being so sappy is just too good, and I’m giving you fair warning—there will be shade thrown.”

  “Whatever,” I grumble, still staring daggers at Bitsie.

  “Hey.” Philip touches my arm gently to get my attention. “He’s never been like that with any girl, not even his high school girlfriend.”

  “Edith?” I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “The way he describes her, he seems to remember her as perfect.”

  “No.” Philip smiles at me. “The way he describes her is his seventeen-year-old-self remembering any girl who wanted him as perfect, but just the way he says your name… I knew you were the one the first time he told me about you just by how he said your name.”

  We finally sit at the bar, and Bitsie slides up shots of rum.

  “I’ve always wanted a big sister, you know, and I couldn’t think of a better person than you.” I feel tears well up in my eyes at his words, and I’m about to answer when the moment is interrupted.

  “Oh my God, are you and Mac getting married?!” Bitsie squeals and a few patrons clap, thinking Philip and I just got engaged.

  “No!” I bury my head in my hands.

  “Dumbass.” Bitsie tosses back her shot. “I would have married you within a week.”

  I giggle and throw myself across the bar to hug her.

  “I would have said yes.” I wink at her, and we all laugh.

  We order our beers and sit in silence for the next few minutes.

  “Thank you for getting me out of there,” Philip finally says. “I know Eric wasn’t entirely on board.”

  “Anytime, Baby Mac,” I tease, and he grimaces at the nickname, drinking as he ponders and mulls things over in his head.

  “Audrey was our foster mom.” He just throws the information out there, as if it’s completely insignificant.

  “I thought she was your neighbor.” I put my beer back on the bar, forgetting I had just lifted it for a sip.

  “No.” Philip shakes his head. “She lived in the building next to us, sure, but she wasn’t some random neighbor to take us under her wing. Eric was assigned to her because when shit hit the fan, she was close enough for a small child to easily reach.”

  “Eric said he convinced her not to call child services.” There’s a chill running through my body, my mouth is dry, and I can’t seem to gather my thoughts, which never happens to me.

  Philip let’s out a dark snicker, shaking his head in disdain as he picks at the beer label with the fingernail of his index finger.

  “He was up for adoption most of his childhood. But every time someone would come along, they would back out once they read his adoption file or suddenly our mom would show up promising she’d stick to her treatment. Then Eric got too old to interest anybody. Same story happened with me.”

  Philip gives up on his mission to remove the label and looks at me. “Miss Audrey made sure we wouldn’t be separated when all the adoptions fell through, but we still had to be placed out of home.”

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.” I place my hand on his, and he squeezes it.

  “She got him the job at Lenny’s, as well.” Philip looks ten years older all of a sudden. “She really tried, Zoe, but she couldn’t protect him from our mom, not the way he protected me.”

  “Why couldn’t she?” I can feel myself struggling to breathe, the weight of Eric’s pain crushing me.

  “I lived with Miss Audrey until she died, but Eric would go home every time our mom came back, until the next time she’d disappear or be hospitalized. He felt like he had to take care of her, he never stopped feeling that way.” Philip takes a long sip from his beer. “And when Miss Audrey died, he felt like he had to take care of me, too. You think I don’t know how much he’s given up just so I can be where I am today?”

  “And he’s so proud of you.” I didn’t think my heart could break any more than it had when I found Eric in the hospital, but I was wrong.

  “I asked Eric once if Miss Audrey adopted us. We were there all the time, and she would come to all our school functions. I was sure she was my grandmother for the longest time. He said she didn’t want to so I went to her in tears and asked w
hy. I was probably five or six.” He chuckles at the memory, but there’s something dark in his eyes. “She said she desperately wanted to, but she’s old and alone so they wouldn’t let her. She did the next best thing and became our permanent placement home so she could take care of us where our mom couldn’t. She did some legal backflips and found loopholes on that merit so she could pass her rent control to Eric.”

  “Does he know all this?” I struggle to come to terms with what I’ve just learned, realizing that even as he was revealing his soul to me, Eric had still hidden so much, still only trusted me to handle the embellished version of the truth.

  “Most of it, I guess.” Philip shrugs, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “He learned that no one can protect him from the bad things in life. You have to understand, Zoe, Eric—he’s programmed to survive, but the more time he spends with you, the more he sees there are things worth really living for. I think it scares him, both having that feeling and the thought of losing it.”

  I take a deep breath under Philip’s meaningful gaze and smile.

  “Do you?” I lean on the bar and peer at him. “Know there are things really worth living for?”

  The way he immediately averts his eyes is the only answer I get and the only one I need.

  “I’m always so afraid I’ll end up like her,” Philip whispers and I can’t say I blame him. Research suggests that the risk of bipolar disorder is five to ten percent higher for a close relative of someone with the disorder, much more than in the general population.

  “You know, most people who have a close relative with bipolar disorder won’t develop the condition themselves.” I place my hand on his shoulder, hoping it gives him some comfort. “Trust me, I’m a scientist.”

  That earns me a laugh that reaches Philip’s eyes.

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you to run away to Berkeley with me?” He leans over and bumps his shoulder against mine. “Just the sea and the sky.”

  I lean back and study him. He still seems a bit somber, and I can’t help but think about all the conversations we’ve had and the little bits of information I’ve heard from the people who know him. His chipper mask falls so easily when the right buttons are pushed.

  “I’m sure.” The numbers running through my head aren’t those of the likelihood for bipolar disorder in first degree relatives, but the much more concerning statistics of a secondary mental disorder, such as depression. “But maybe if you call me every day to tell me about the sea and the sky, you’ll manage to change my mind.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I will.” His smile seems genuine. “Change your mind, that is. But I will call, thank you.”

  Just then Bitsie shows up with more shots, spinning tales of her most eccentric patrons and making us both double over with laughter. I immerse myself in the moment, making this evening about Philip.

  But a couple of hours later, when I crawl into our bed and lay my head on Eric’s chest as he sleeps, I can’t help but think that there’s so much I don’t know about him, so much of himself he’s hiding from me because he thinks I’ll run away if he tells me.

  I need to make him see he’s worthy of my love because of the man he is, even the parts harboring darkness. Make him understand that nothing will ever make me walk away from him.

  MAC

  Nothing prepares you for this.

  It sounds dramatic, I know, just like I know I’m not the first or last person to bury a young parent.

  Shit happens all the time—heart attacks, cancer, accidents.

  Suicide.

  But still, nothing prepares you for that moment where you’re standing in a fancy suit at the entrance to a funeral house with your mother’s enlarged picture smiling down at you from the stage where her open casket is placed. Where her cold dead body is on display.

  People are a blur as they walk by and shake mine and Philip’s hands with a mix of pity and sympathy, offering their condolences. Something I can only nod to as it all feels empty and undeserved.

  I vaguely register the arrival of Lenny and his wife, Martha, who gives me a big warm hug, the first human contact to stir anything in the apathy I’ve been in since this morning. Philip receives a similar embrace, and I can see him melt into it, willing to take any bit of real warmth provided to him.

  He needs me to be strong, I remind myself. To do what I’ve been doing our entire lives and push away the dark memories, as fresh as they may be, and see he gets through this in one piece.

  A hand slipping into mine causes me to startle. Zoe’s standing between Philip and me, her other hand on Philip’s arm, his head bent low as she speaks to him in a hushed voice. I can see his facial features soften, his eyes are moist, but they don’t seem as desperate as before.

  My heart expands, and I squeeze her hand in a silent thank you, feeling some of the weight lift off my shoulders. A sliver of hope that maybe things can still be okay once this is all over worms its way into my mind, but it’s no match for the darkness that roars back in once I don’t have Philip as an excuse to keep it squashed down.

  “Don’t go there.” Brian comes to stand on the other side of me, his gaze sympathetic but not filled with pity like most of the other people here.

  He’s been here with me since this morning, helping me make sure everything is in order while Zoe stayed with Philip. We also spent most of last night together when Zoe took Philip out to get some fresh air and vent, and Brian came to babysit me. We didn’t really talk, just drank beer and watched a game, but somehow, he sensed the distress and the pain more acutely than others had and his presence was oddly calming.

  Something about our shared experience of being abandoned by our biological fathers, despite how differently our lives unraveled after, connects us through a dark channel most people aren’t tuned into. A place someone as good and pure as Zoe should never know exists. The place I’ve spent most of my life trying to ignore but somehow still ended up spiraling into without control.

  “I’m not sure it can be helped.” It’s a lie. I know it can’t be helped because I’m already there.

  “Well, if you have to go there then go.” He looks at me with a meaningful glare. “Just make sure you can come back.”

  I want to tell him I don’t know how to come back, how to escape the guilt and helplessness, but I just nod. He can tell I’m bullshitting him; I can see it by the way his lips purse together forming a thin line. He’s about to say something, but at that exact moment, the funeral director signals us that the service is about to begin.

  It’s all a blur from that moment on. The director says a few words to kick the whole thing off. I give my eulogy, Philip gives his, then there’s a parade of people walking over to the casket, most never knew her and seem taken aback by how much we look like her, especially Philip.

  Eventually, it all dwindles down to the important people—Lenny and Martha, Bitsie, Tim, Brian, and Zoe.

  The director closes the casket and starts barking out orders to his staff to get it to the hearse, turning to us and gently steering us out to our own cars.

  It’s almost surreal, putting her in the ground after all this time. I spent years waiting for this to happen and now that it finally has it’s a worse blow than I had ever prepared myself for.

  Philip has tears streaking down his cheeks as Zoe holds his hand firmly. I move to the other side of him and rest my palm on his shoulder. He looks between us and a small smile breaks through the tears, the corner of his mouth tugging up as if he has some wise-ass crack ready to throw at me and the only thing stopping him is the fact that we’re at our own mother’s funeral.

  Somehow it makes me feel better, knowing that despite the grief Philip is still Philip. That I managed to keep him relatively away from the dark place I ended up in. And it makes it all worth it, knowing he has a chance at true happiness, even if I don’t.

  After it’s all over, we walk silently back to our vehicles.

  “How about you all come over for dinner?” Martha offers ou
t of the blue, but I seem to be the only one surprised.

  “Sounds good.” Philip is already halfway to Brian’s car.

  “Aren’t you driving over with us?” Though I really don’t feel like company, I’m not leaving Philip alone.

  “We’re going home.” Zoe’s hand slips into mine, and she gives it a light tug in the direction of my truck. It doesn’t escape me that she’s referring to her apartment as our home, nor does it escape me that I automatically thought of her apartment when she said the word.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of Phil.” Tim claps his hand over my back, and Bitsie kisses my cheek before giving Zoe a long hug.

  I realize they planned this. To give Zoe and I some much-needed alone time. But I’m still not comfortable with the thought of Philip not having me around if he needs me. I hear laughter, and I realize Philip must have told his wisecrack joke to Brian because they’re both chuckling and staring at Zoe and me with pleased bemusement.

  Brian looks back at Phil and nods at me, reassuring me he won’t let anything happen to him. It calms me a bit but still doesn’t put my mind at ease. In the end, I decide to let go. Philip is nineteen, he can make his own choices, and as far as those go, dinner at Martha and Lenny’s with some of my closest friends isn’t a bad one.

  “How are you feeling?” Zoe asks me once we’ve started driving.

  “Overwhelmed,” I admit. “And I haven’t even started processing the cost of it all, just the service is around seven grand.”

  “Wow.” Zoe’s eyes widen at the number.

  “Yeah.” I sigh. “The guys at the shop collected some money, it helped a bit, but there are still the medical bills.”

  “We’ll deal with it all tomorrow.” Zoe’s hand is on my arm, reassuring me. “We’ll figure it out, Babe.”

  “Thank you.” I take her hand in mine and kiss it. “But it’s not yours to figure out, Zo.”

  I can see my statement upset her, and she wants to argue but decides against it. Probably figuring that now isn’t the best time to pick a fight.

  “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Zoe.” I look at her profile, amazed by how strikingly beautiful she looks with natural makeup and her hair softly falling around her face. It’s longer now than when we first met, the length only serving to make her gentle features even more appealing.