by Callie Rae
He turns toward the car and lifts his hands to rub the back of his head. The stress is radiating off of him. He was worried.
“Shady called you?” I ask, surprised.
“She sure as fuck did. The moment you showed up hammered.” Well, shit. Is no one fucking loyal these days?
“You good?” Shady walks up to me with a cigarette hanging from her hand, scanning me from head to toe.
“Fuck, man. She’s a goner,” Cason says as he lowers his hands and places them on his hips.
“Well, that’s a fucking shame,” Shady says, “I liked that car.”
“Jesse, are you okay?” Jade finally reaches me and gets all up in my space, running her hands in my hair and over my face, checking me over.
“I’m fine.” I try to push her hands away. “Stop, Jade. I said I’m fine,” I say as I grip her by the wrists and hold her hands away from me. Once again, I look over my car. It’s trashed.
“Not such a hot-shot now, are you?” Jordan says as he rounds the wreck.
“You little piece of shit,” Cason snarls as he rounds to face Jordan. “You probably had something to do with this, you slimy fucker.”
Jordan chuckles and nods to me, “As much as I would like to claim responsibility for the fall of the king of Cherry Creek, he flipped his car all on his own.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Cason asks and then turns to me. “What is he talking about?”
I shake my head and the world starts spinning. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or the wreck or just the thought there was a possibility I could’ve left everyone I love to fend for themselves. That I could fail them once again. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get out of here.”
I begin walking away.
“What the fuck dude? Where are you going?” Cason yells after me.
I just keep walking. I don’t let anyone stop me. I didn’t cause the wreck, did I? No, of course not. Something went wrong. I wouldn’t do that to my car; I’ve worked so hard on it. Besides, hurting myself wouldn’t help anything. And it definitely wouldn’t help Fallon.
I need another fucking drink. This time to not just numb the pain, but to numb my head. My heart.
I need to numb it all.
I left the Depot on foot, which is probably best considering the amount of vodka and scotch pumping through my veins. I’ve been seeing double as I walk down the road. I’ve been stumbling alone for a good hour now, maybe longer. Who knows? I don’t even know what time it is. I’ve been roaming the streets of Cherry Creek since I left the Depot.
My mind won’t stop racing. I’ll probably catch hell for leaving the game like that from Coach. I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes the whole team do suicides for a week. As captain, that should probably bother me, but as Jesse, the guy who has let down everyone he’s ever cared about, it doesn’t. And now I have Cason and Jade to worry about. I walked off the scene of my car in shambles. I’m sure that whole scene isn’t going to go well for them either.
I chuckle to myself because I can’t feel my lips any longer. That is probably a sign I should chill with the alcohol, but I have no chill. I need to keep going until my insides are just as numb, and I can’t feel the continuously growing ache in my chest. I’m not even sure it’ll work, but I’m desperate for it. Anything to numb the pain. Anything to numb the truth of how I failed her.
Kenny from the convenience store, a guy that turns a blind eye sometimes because we let him reminisce his high school days with us, hooked me up with a fifth of cheap whiskey. I didn’t care what poison I got as long as it did its job. Except it hasn’t, which is why I’m now following the two very wiggly, very blurry yellow lines right back to the same store for my next poison.
I reach in my pocket for my phone. I’d turned it off at some point because the constant, annoying buzzing was driving me crazy. Between Jade and Cason, they were keeping it lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks display. The road is starting to spin and it’s dark out—so dark that I can’t actually see more than three feet in front of me. I power it back on very carefully, my fat finger sliding off the button several times before I’m successful. When it finally comes on, the dinging and flashing from all the notifications assaults my senses and makes it impossible to get to the flashlight, so I just use the bright phone screen to light the way.
Jesus. They don’t have any chill either. Maybe they need to go see Kenny too.
I laugh. But that moment doesn’t last long—a searing pain rips through my chest. It’s the same sharp pain I’ve felt since the night she went missing. And she was right under my nose, just two blocks from home. From the bed that we share. I failed her, I failed her mother, and I failed my family. I failed everyone who’s ever counted on me, who relied on me. I failed at being the man they needed. The knowledge stabs at the open wounds left by her disappearance. How I can hurt this much and still be alive? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I round a corner, and the lights from the store come into view. It’s suddenly so bright that I stumble with one eye open trying to minimize the pain the light creates behind my eyes. No. No, a headache means that I’m losing my buzz, and I can’t let that happen. I don’t want to feel anything. I need my buzz to stay, to keep me numb. I need to drink more.
I stumble up to the store, concentrating only on getting to the door. The world is spinning, so my focus is zeroed in on it. Because right now, making it from point A to point B seems to be an issue.
“Yo, is that big bad Callaway?” A face appears in my view, and I try to stumble around it. I have to get to the door. “Yo dude, where you going?”
I look up. I think I might know him, but his face won’t stop spinning long enough for me to tell. I keep walking, trying really hard to get to that door. The door that will numb it all.
“Woah, now. Where is your sidekick?” he asks as he steps into my view again.
“Go away. I need to get to the door,” I slur. I bat at him and try to push around him.
“Nah, man. You aren’t going anywhere.” Suddenly I’m moving, flying into the air, and I hit the hard ground with a loud smack. It didn’t hurt . . . enough. I don’t think anything could hurt worse than my chest.
“Ain’t big and bad now without your crew, huh?” the guy spits out as he kicks my face. I taste the blood before I feel it ooze into my mouth.
I start laughing. The pain in my face took the edge off. I roll onto my back. “Do it again.”
The request makes him pause. “The fuck? Are you asking for me to kick you again? Are you fucking crazy?”
Tires squeal and I hear my name being called out. “Touch him again I’ll pound your face into concrete this time.”
Is that Cason? What is he doing here? I need another drink. I really need another drink . . .
“Nah, your dude came up here on his own. I ain’t got to do nothing. Ya feel me?”
“Enough, Ty.” Another voice interrupts in the slew of voices that I’m losing track of. “Get back.”
“The fuck? Him and his crew need to pay. His girl is the one who smashed you with a pipe!”
“I said enough.” Jax’s face replaces the view of the swirling night sky.
“Jax, ol’ buddy. You came to play too?” I ask. “Kick me again, and I’ll buy you a drink. Kenny’s working.”
“The fuck is wrong with your boy? Is he drunk?” Jax asks Cason. “Y’all got five minutes to get him out of here before I let Ty loose.”
I feel arms reach under my armpits and lift me to my feet. I rock a little, trying to focus on anything. Cason voice is in my ear as I lean into him, “Can you at least try to help me out here? Shit, now I know how you’ve felt all these years dragging my drunk ass around.”
“Payback is a bitch,” I laugh. “I need to go inside. Kenny has something for me.”
“Fuck that, dude. You’ve had enough. Besides, Jade would kill me if I let you go in there.”
He drops me in the
backseat on my side. I let out a huff as the ache hits me hard.
“Oh, Jesse,” Jade says sadly from the front. I sigh. I hate letting her see me like this. I’m supposed to be strong. I’m supposed to protect her.
“Hey, Jade,” I groan.
“What were you thinking?” she asks quietly.
“I wasn’t. I didn’t want to anymore,” I say as I bury my head into his leather seat. “How did y’all find me?”
Cason’s door closes, and the car jerks as it begins moving. “Little Callaway here is stepping up her game.”
“I tracked your phone. About time you turned it back on,” Jade says. “I was starting to worry.”
“Damn, Jade. You traced my phone?” I chuckle but the act sends a sharp ache shooting through my side. I tense, trying to hold off the pain. The alcohol isn’t numbing the outside anymore. Cason’s Jeep has shitty suspension, and every bump we hit sends another bout of pain through me. But it feels better than the gigantic hole inside me.
“Impressive, right? Who knew little Callaway had it in her.” Cason laughs as I groan.
“Jesse?” Jade asks, “Are you ok?”
I don’t answer right away, and Cason speaks up, “You good, man?”
“Yeah. Fine. I’ll be fine,” I tell him as I breathe through the pain, in and out. It hurts, but not as bad as my heart. That pain is different; it’s suffocating.
“What about my car?” I ask.
“Crank has it. He took it to his shop to assess the damage. It doesn’t look good though.” Cason grips the steering wheel tightly.
“Jesse, what is going on?” Jade asks quietly. “This isn’t like you. You aren’t reckless like this, even in the worst situations.”
“I’ve never had Fallon before. She changed everything,” I whisper and close my eyes. My body is finally feeling the full effects of tonight’s damage.
“Look man, I know shit’s hard right now. But I need you to tell me the truth. Did you wreck on purpose? Jordan’s got everyone thinking he saw you spin your back side,” Cason says.
I know I’ve let everyone down, but I would never do it on purpose. “I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t make sense. You’re the best driver I know. I’ve never seen you lose control, and I’ve watched you long enough,” Jade mumbles, deep in thought. “I saw the ending. You were in control of your car. Jordan let up right at the finish line, almost like he knew.”
“Wait, what did you just say?” I ask as I slowly sit up, trying to avoid any unnecessary pain.
“Jordan. At the last minute he let off the gas,” Jade says again. As she says it, the memory of him backing off comes crashing into my mind.
I meet Cason’s eyes in the rearview. I don’t have to tell him what I need. He knows. With a nod of his head, he lets me know he’s in agreement.
Cason turns his Jeep around quicker than I can get the words out of my mouth.
“Jade, grab my phone and call Crank,” Cason says.
“What? Why? Where are we going?” Jade asks.
With a voice as hard as steel, Cason says, “We’re going to figure this shit out.”
Jesse’s arms around me make me feel safe, protected. Invincible. Or maybe they just feel so right that it’s impossible to feel anything other than amazing.
“How do you feel about a real date?” Jesse murmurs in my ear, shocking my entire body with the slightest touch of his lips.
“What do you mean? We’ve been on a date.” I say. I mean, we kind of have. I guess with everything going on maybe we haven’t done things the usual way. It’s not every day that the girl you’re sort of dating has a crazy ex stalking her.
“No, we haven’t. Not on a real one. I mean going out for dinner, just you and me,” Jesse says as he holds me just a little closer. “No Cason or Jade. No Marcus. Just us, alone together.”
“And how are you going to do that with Jade and Cason across the hall? We haven’t exactly told them about us, this, whatever this is.” I turn in his arms to face him.
Jesse chuckles, “Like they don’t already know. It’s not like we’ve been hiding it. And I’ll tell them the truth—that we’re dating.”
“They suspect. They don’t know for sure,” I say. I pause and look into his eyes before saying hesitantly, “And is that what we’re doing?”
“Well, maybe it’s time for them to know,” Jesse says, “and yes, that’s most definitely what we’re doing.”
“And what makes you think that?” I ask with a smirk. These teasing moments with each other make my heart skip.
“Because I’m pretty damn sure I’m in love with you and I don’t care if the whole fucking world knows it,” Jesse states. He’s so serious, so honest. Like it just is what it is. Like he’s said this to me a million times before already. He’s shown me with his body that he cares, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard those words from his mouth.
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am in this moment.
“Get up.” Marcus pulls the covers off of me, but I have no plans on moving from this spot in this filthy bed. I’m pretty sure there are bed bugs, but I’d take that over facing my reality with Marcus in it any day of the week.
“Fuck off,” I say as I roll onto my stomach, pulling the covers back up. They come up over me a little too easily, and I look up to my cuffed wrist. The cuff is still there but it’s no longer attached to anything on the other end.
“Get up, I said,” Marcus barks.
I sigh and close my eyes again. I’m not doing anything, especially not for him. Bastard.
The covers are pulled off of me again. “What the fuck Marcus?”
His arms encase me, and I’m lifted into the air. I squirm and try to get loose but it’s no use. He’s still stronger than me. “Put me the fuck down!”
He yanks me into the bathroom as I continue to kick at him. He reaches into the shower, turning on the water just as I try to get in one good kick with my uninjured foot. My aim was perfect too, at least until I was drenched by freezing cold water.
I scream and try to get out of the way of the cold stream hitting me from all angles, but Marcus’s grip on me is so hard that I’m stuck in place. I freeze in place, shivers already starting to wrack my body. “What do you fucking want from me?”
“I want you to listen, for fuck’s sake,” he says.
“I’m never going to comply. Don’t you get that? I hate you. You disgust me. Why am I still here?” At some point, I’d started yelling at him. I’m stunned but not surprised when his hand slaps my cheek hard. He’s made it clear none of that matters to him, but will he ever get tired of fighting me?
Marcus reaches up and grabs my face in one hand. He pulls me towards him and says in a low, menacing voice, “Take off your top and turn around.”
“What? I’m not doing that,” I say as I look at him. I knew he was crazy, but has he lost his damn mind?
“Turn around and take off your top, or I will do it for you. Do you really want me to do it?” he growls. “Since I disgust you so?”
I reach down and yank off my top and throw it at his face. He catches it before it hits him and reacts by pushing me against the shower wall. Once I’m officially pinned and unable to move, he whispers in my ear. “You can make this easy or hard. It doesn’t have to be hard, you know. But this kinda shit is only going to hurt you, not me.”
“What the fuck is this? Why am I standing half dressed in a shower, Marcus?”
He pulls back and smirks. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He gets out of the shower with wet clothes and reaches into the cabinet next to the shower. He pulls out a plastic grocery bag and hands it out to me.
I grab the bag but don’t look in it right away. I have no idea what’s inside, or what it will mean.
“Come on now, look.” Marcus nods toward the bag.
I roll my eyes and open the bag. When I look down, I find two boxes of hai
r dye—but it’s not just any hair dye. When Marcus and I were together we had a particular date night that, to be honest, was one of the only nights we spent together I can genuinely say was good. He took me to a movie and dinner, and afterwards we aimlessly wondered around the local boardwalk talking. Somehow, we got into a conversation about dying my hair. I hated my natural color—it was so plain and mousy—and had always wanted to dye my hair. So, Marcus took me to the nearest drug store, and we picked out this dark plum color. We went back to his place, and Marcus dyed my hair. We ended up not having enough dye to cover it all, and it turned out to be a total disaster. But it was a sweet disaster—we laughed most of the night about it. I had to have it color corrected the next day. My mother was livid with me, and it took an entire day in the salon to fix it. After that, I swore I would never dye my hair again.
Now I’m looking down at that same color and wondering what on earth he’s thinking. “What is this?”
“What does it look like?” Marcus replies.
“It looks like hair dye that isn’t touching my head,” I say. My whole body has become stiff, rigid. Between the cold water and Marcus’ insane ideas, I’ve become frozen in place.
“I thought you would like it. I remembered,” he says as he motions to the bag.
Does he think this changes anything? The thought makes my blood boil. The heat rushing through me unfreezes my muscles, and I snap. “What the fuck is there to like about it? Because you remembered the color dye from one night several years ago?” I’m yelling now, and my voice gets even louder as I scream at him, “Did you really think a box of fucking hair dye would fill the hole you left in me when you killed our daughter?” The anger in me is so strong I’m seeing red. Before I realize what I’m doing, one of the boxes of hair dye is flying at Marcus’ head.
Marcus just barely dodges the box, and he shoves me so hard that I slam back against the shower wall. It knocks the wind out of me, and by the time I get my breath back, he’s already grabbed the contents off the floor and begun to assemble the pieces of the kit. He does it with a tick in his eye, a vein protruding in his neck, and tensed shoulders. When he finally has the dye ready, he looks up to me, eyeing me like I’m prey. I have the sudden realization that to him, that is exactly what I am. I’ve challenged him, but he sees me as weaker. And he’s ready to prove how much weaker I am.