by Claire Raye
This all happened the year Reid and I left for college and Caleb took over. I think my father assumed with Caleb’s engrained business sense and his ability to manage pretty much anything that the bar would bounce back and re-paying Raymond wouldn’t be an issue. But like all best laid plans, the bar was in far deeper than Caleb could dig it out.
Our idiot father put both of them in a precarious situation, dangerous even, and never once clued Caleb in until it was too late. Now it’s Caleb and me who are left to pick up the pieces and to try to navigate our way out of all of this. Living in perpetual fear that Raymond Bowen will kill both of us is not something I wanted to come home to. Hell, I didn’t even want to come home in the first place.
But the thought of me not returning home forces hot tears to burn in my eyes. Had I stayed in California no one would’ve found Caleb and he would’ve died too. Imagining my life without him is not a scenario I’m comfortable with.
He climbs into the car next to me and I look away. I’ve cried so much over the last few days that I can’t let him see me crying again. He’s struggling with all of this too, even more so than me. He’s the one whose life is constantly at risk. He’s the one who’s forever trying to secure a way out of this mess but coming up short every time. In my eyes there’s only one way out, but it’s the riskiest of them all.
“What did he want?” I ask, trying not to sound desperate, but knowing being away from him is killing me. My words are said with a bite to them, an attempt to hide what I’m really feeling from Caleb. He still knows nothing about what happened on our road trip back home and I don’t ever intend to tell him. What happened between Reid and me is over, gone and long since dead. He’s dead to me.
“He just asked how I was doing,” Caleb says. “Keeps saying he didn’t know anything about what his dad did.”
“And you believe him?” I demand, accusingly as if Caleb is the enemy now too.
“Yes, Sie, I believe him. He was away at school. How could he have known? I don’t think he’s ever really known. ”
“Stop defending him!” I yell out in the confines of the car. “He ruined our lives!”
“His dad ruined our lives. Our dad ruined our lives, but it wasn’t Reid,” Caleb now asserts, and I hate it.
I can’t continue this argument without the waterworks starting again, so the car falls silent. I can feel both of us processing and trying to understand where we go from here. We’re far more broke than I ever realized, honestly. We’re just fucking broken all around.
We pull into the driveway of our childhood home, a home that means nothing, but still somehow holds more than either of us realize. There are memories here whether they’re good or bad, we still have them and almost all of them include Reid.
“Where is the money coming from to pay for the funeral?” I ask, the thought weighing heavy on my mind. I have a total of two thousand dollars left from my student loans, which is supposed to last me till I get my next check for the spring semester.
“I don’t know, Sie. We are.” He sounds annoyed as he drags a hand through his hair and lets out an exasperated sigh. “You know you could help a little more with this shit,” he now mumbles, exiting the car and slamming the door.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Caleb?” I yell as he walks away. “You don’t get to pull that shit after you insisted I go away to school. I could’ve stayed here and helped you. I could’ve easily gotten a job.”
He storms into the house, leaving the door to swing on its hinges. Caleb and I don’t fight, we don’t do this blame game, but right now we’re both falling apart.
The house looks as big of a disaster as we do. It’s an oversized Colonial with a red front door and peeling paint, but when the damn thing was built in the early nineteen hundreds, it was stunning. Now it just looks like a sad reminder of what can happen to wealth.
It needs to be painted and the windows need to be cleaned, there are weeds in the yard and the bushes need trimming, but none of this is important when you can barely keep the lights on. But I need a distraction and I can’t bring myself to argue with Caleb right now.
I go into the garage, my heels clicking against the unlevelled concrete as I navigate my way through things, trying to find what I need. I pull out a shovel, a small trowel and the lawn mower. None of these things look like they’ve been used in the last three months, and it’s not that I blame Caleb for not maintaining the house, but he could’ve done better.
I take trowel to the front yard, kicking off my stupid shoes, I begin to dig out the weeds that dot the yard and the landscaping in front of the house. Despite the still cloudy sky I’m warm in my black clothing, making me sweat, but I don’t care. Right now, I don’t care about anything and being in the house with Caleb seems like a mistake.
I’m outside for at least a half an hour, consumed with pulling weeds so my thoughts don’t eat me alive, when Caleb opens the front door. Standing in the doorway, he watches me and I don’t bother to acknowledge him.
“We don’t even fucking own the house, Sienna! The bank does!” he yells from the doorway and it only adds to my rage.
“Fuck off!” I yell back, not bothering to care who’s listening. I jam the trowel into the ground, prying hard at the weed. My vision blurs, hazy and clouded as I swipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. I’m covered in dirt, my pants crusted, my fingernails dirty. The tears begin to silently stream down my face and when Caleb walks over to where I’m crouched down, I can’t look up at him.
“Seriously, Sie, you look ridiculous. At least go inside and change your clothes,” he says, but the sympathy permeates his words making things worse. My tears fall faster and harder now until they turn into sobs, deep guttural sobs and I want the earth to swallow me whole, to make this all disappear.
Caleb reaches for me, his free hand hooking under my armpit as he hoists me off the ground.
“I don’t fucking care what I look like,” I tell him, tugging at my hair with my dirt-covered hands, leaving brown streaks among the blonde. “Don’t you get that, Caleb? I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.”
My face is only inches from his and the emotions between us waver from burning hot rage to wanting to cling to each other in comfort. His eyes take me in, the same deep blue, the same wide-eyed concern, and my head falls to his shoulder. I stand there, with my arms hanging loosely at my sides as he wraps his one arm around me, pulling closer.
“We’re gonna be okay, Sie,” he whispers, but I don’t think even he believes his words. There’s no way we’ll ever be okay.
He doesn’t even know the half of it. The betrayal and lying, and now my stupid broken heart because I was dumb enough to fall for Reid Bowen.
I don’t cry for the loss of my father, he was lost years ago, but what hurts more than anything, what makes me think I’ll never be okay is that I lost my friendship with Reid. We can never go back to what we were before. When all else failed, Reid was there. He was mine and Caleb’s constant and the one friend we knew we could count on. Relationships like that take years to build and my heart is shattered over this loss.
Caleb pulls back, looking at me and laughing a little as he shakes his head. “You look like a mess. You need a shower.”
I wipe at my face, my hands probably just smearing more dirt around, making me look like an even bigger disaster than I already am.
“Yeah, I’m sure I do and like always, the neighbors are gossiping about us.” We both laugh a little and I look around to see if anyone has caught a glimpse of us. “And to think, I thought once I landed myself a college education life would change. I guess we’ll always just be trash.”
“Don’t say that. Dad dying may be one of the best things to happen to us. The bank is foreclosing on the house, the bar has so much debt it isn’t even funny and Dad left us nothing. There’s no money, Sie. This is our chance to start over.”
He’s always been the eternal optimist with me balancing him out as the black cloud of reason; the one who c
an’t possibly think things will go as smoothly as he likes to believe.
“What? Are you going to run from Raymond Bowen? Dad owes him money, a lot of money would be my guess, and after the way he came after you, it says he isn’t backing down. He could’ve killed you.” My last sentence comes out high and filled with worry, the panic grips my chest, clenching as I think about how both of us are now at risk.
“He didn’t want to kill me,” Caleb says. “He wanted to scare me. He wanted me to know that Dad’s debt doesn’t die because he did.”
“Exactly, Caleb, so he’s going to keep coming back.”
“I have a plan. I need to talk to Reid…”
I’m shaking my head before he can even finish his thought. I don’t want Reid involved in any of this. “No. Do not get Reid involved. He’s done enough damage. And if your plan involves anything other than going to the police, then don’t include me.”
Again with the hard sighs and worried expressions, the running thoughts and all the what-ifs. We both know what could happen should we choose to go the police route. Raymond is powerful and putting him away won’t stop him, if anything, it could make it exponentially worse.
“Did something happen between you and Reid?” Caleb suddenly asks and I’m caught off guard. It’s only a matter of time before he realizes his sister slept with his best friend, only adding to this fucked up mess.
“No,” I reply, the lie falling from my lips as easily as a person takes in air. I look away from him and walk into the house before he can question me further. I can’t even begin to have this discussion with him, because I can’t even process it myself.
Chapter Three
Reid
I pull into the driveway at home, the house looking as empty as the day we got back to Providence. I hadn’t even planned to come back here. I wasn’t even going to bother telling my parents I was back. I figured I’d just stay with Sienna at her place as she figured things out with Caleb and we told him about what was happening with us.
But that had all been blown to shit within minutes of getting back here and after Sienna had pushed me away when both of us went to see Caleb in the hospital, I’d reluctantly come home.
The house had been empty, no signs of life and when I’d texted my mom to see where she was, she’d replied that she was in Paris of all fucking places, with some friends. She didn’t ask why I’d asked or how I knew she wasn’t home, and I hadn’t bothered telling her.
I wasn’t sure where my father was though. It was normal for him to disappear for long periods of time, usually claiming he was in Boston working. Despite the rumors we’d all heard about my dad, I’d always been told he worked in finance and I guess in a way that was true, even if it wasn’t of the legal variety. A part of me wishes I’d questioned him more about his work and the rumors earlier, but what the fuck could I have done anyway?
Now though, after everything he’s done, I have to wonder if he isn’t laying low somewhere, just in case his beating and threats to Caleb aren’t enough to keep him quiet.
“Fuck,” I breathe out, switching off the ignition.
I walk inside, the house still empty, my boots echoing off the polished hardwood floors. I shrug out of my jacket before wandering into the kitchen, where I open the fridge, which is barely stocked, and grab a beer, twisting the cap off and taking a long pull.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I check for a reply from Sienna, but of course there’s nothing. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do. I want to see her, need to see her, but Caleb told me to give her some time, some space.
How much fucking time?
I have no clue, but I do know I’m not leaving Providence without her, no matter how long it takes. At this rate, we’ve both already missed nearly two weeks of school. It’s going to be a bitch trying to catch up and who knows what this will do to my scholarship, but I really don’t care anymore. Until she is sitting in the car beside me, there isn’t a chance in hell I’m driving back to California.
Exhaling, I open up the photo app, scrolling through the photos from our road trip. From that first selfie I took of us up on the rock at Pikes Peak to the later photos, when she actually posed for me.
There are so many of her, photos where she’s smiling, and laughing, and just so fucking happy. There are tons of selfies too, in which both of us are laughing, somewhere I’m kissing her cheek, her lips, somewhere she’s kissing me. There’s even a photo of her getting her first tattoo on our second night in Chicago, the four tiny symbols I drew for her that symbolized the trip we were taking together; a wave, a car, a mountain, and a music note.
Symbols that are now permanently inked onto her ribcage, just below her right breast.
The same symbols that are also inked onto mine.
When I get to the last photo though, my heart flips in my chest at the memory of that morning.
We’re lying in bed in a hotel in Cleveland on our last morning before we got back to Providence. She’s pressed against me, her head on my shoulder and her arm draped across my stomach, just like she was that morning we woke up in the back of my truck. Only in this photo, we’re naked, my arm curled around her back as I hold her against me. My other arm is outstretched, holding the camera as I snap the shot.
Sienna lies with her eyes closed, a smile on her face and her hand splayed across my chest. She looks so fucking beautiful, but more than that, she looks happy.
She’d opened her eyes right after I’d taken the photo, lifting her head to smile at me, kiss me and tell me how happy she was. How happy I made her.
God, I long to go back to that morning, to see that look on her face again.
Fuck, I’d thought back when we were at school and I had to watch her from afar, knowing I could never have her, that it was bad. But it’s nothing compared to now. To having had a taste of her, only to lose her. This is so much fucking worse.
On a whim, I try calling her, but it goes straight to voicemail. I have no idea if she’s even listening to my messages, but I leave her one anyway.
“Sie, baby, it’s me,” I start. “Please give me a call. Or come over, or let me come and see you, whatever you want. I need to see you, need to explain. I had no idea, Sie, I promise…”
I trail off, not saying anything more until the beep signals the end of my recording time and I reluctantly hang up.
Taking another sip of beer, I scroll up until I reach my dad’s name and open up the message function. My thumb hovers over the letters, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to say to him. We rarely talk as it is, so any attempt at communication is definitely going to be out of the ordinary.
But fuck it, what have I got to lose.
Me: where are you? I’m back in Providence.
The bubbles pop up almost immediately, shocking me. I hadn’t expected a response this quickly or at all, and I find myself holding my breath until the reply dings.
Raymond: Why are you back?
I exhale, my head falling back as I stare up at the ceiling. Of course this is his response. Not, is everything okay? Or is something wrong? It fucking pisses me off, his indifference toward me, even though I should have expected it because this is the way it’s always been.
Me: you know why.
It’s a ballsy thing to do but my patience disappeared the second Sienna walked out of my life. Something which I attribute to being solely my father’s fault. And I’m fucking done being without her and I’m done tiptoeing around my father’s absence…or knowledge of what he has done.
My phone rings out with a call, startling me. Glancing at the screen, I see it’s him, doing something he never does.
“Yeah?” I answer.
“What do you mean, ‘you know’,” he immediately asks, his words firm, although I don’t miss the edge to his voice.
Exhaling, I finish off my beer before I answer. “I know, Raymond,” I tell him, knowing it pisses him off when I call him by his first name. “What
I want to know, is why? Actually no, what I really want to fucking know is how could you?” I spit the words out, my heart pounding with a fury I haven’t felt in a long time.
“Watch your language, Reid,” he spits back at me. “And cut the Raymond shit, I’m your father.”
“Whatever,” I say, pacing the kitchen. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? Do you realize how much you’ve fucked up?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Reid,” he says. “And you’d do well to keep your mouth shut over whatever it is you think you know.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad!” I shout, my anger boiling over. “You fucking killed someone, you nearly killed Caleb. How the fuck could you do this?”
“Reid!” he shouts into the phone, the sound of my name like a poison on his tongue.
I don’t say anything, my chest heaving as I try to catch my breath. Silence surrounds us, neither of us saying a word. Finally, I hear him exhale.
“Look, I’ve got to take care of a few things,” he says, an air of frustration in his tone. “I’ll be back home in a few days, we’ll talk then.”
I open my mouth to tell him I might not be here in a few days, but he hangs up before I have a chance to.
“FUCK!” I shout, throwing my phone onto the kitchen counter, where it bounces a couple of times before coming to a stop hanging halfway over the edge.
I pace the kitchen, both hands shoved in my hair as I try to figure out what the fuck to do. A part of me just wants to go to the police and tell them everything but I know that will get me nowhere because I literally have no proof he’s done any of this.
Not to mention, Caleb isn’t saying a damn word about any of this, so right now, it’s just my word against my dad’s and I wasn’t even in the fucking state when any of this happened.
No, that wasn’t going to work. I need to fucking think, to come up with a plan for fixing this. Not just so my fucking asshole father gets what he deserves, but also so I can go some way toward earning Caleb’s forgiveness and Sienna’s trust.