“You get your damn girlfriend out of my bed, get dressed, and wait on the sofa. I’ll deal with you after I find my sister.” I stalked into the main house and heard sounds coming from my mother’s room. Oh hell no.
The noises were clearly sex sounds, and I was going to pummel that bastard if he had his hands on my sister.
It wasn’t Nat. Hannah sat astride some young punk, naked, and riding him like he was her favorite pony. I held out my hands to cover my line of sight so that I only saw the girl’s face. “Hannah you little tramp. Get your ass out of my mother’s bed, get dressed, and get the fuck out.”
She cringed and pulled the covers over her and her sex partner. “Oh my God, Luke!”
Oh shit. I should probably call her mother. Yes, I definitely should. “Stay here. I’m calling your mother. Where is my sister?”
“Luke, please—”
“Where is my sister?” I yelled, biting off each word.
“She was asleep on the sofa,” she answered.
I rushed back to the living room. The sex noises had distracted me and I hadn’t even bothered to look. “Nat?”
Nat was face down on the new couch. On the floor next to her was a two-liter bottle of coke and a half empty jug of cheap rum. Oh shit.
“Nat??”
She wasn’t asleep. She was passed out. In a puddle of vomit. Just like our mother.
Fear turned my blood to ice. I grabbed for her and rolled her over. She groaned.
She was alive. Thank God. I shook her violently. Now I was going to kill her.
“Damn it, Natalie. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Luke?” she said, squinting up at me. “Luke, I don’t feel good.” She jerked and then started retching. She must have gotten it all out the night before, because she didn’t bring much up.
“Jesus, Nat. What the hell is wrong with you?! Did you have a boy here? Who is it? Where is he?”
“No,” she moaned. “I didn’t. It’s just me and Hannah and Katelyn and their boyfriends.”
“Do you now they were in my bed? In Mom’s bed? What the hell, Nat!”
My sweet, innocent little sister pulled herself up to a sitting position. Her head in her hands, she groaned. “Don’t freak, Luke. Damn.”
“Don’t you fucking cuss at me, Natalie Grace!”
“I don’t feel good, Luke. Quit yelling at me.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to strangle her for doing this to me or scoop her up and hold her tight so she’d be safe.
The pain seared through my chest as I took in my little sister with vomit matted into her hair. Jesus. How fucked up was this?
This was our mother’s fault. She had screwed up our lives again, and Natalie wasn’t dealing with it well. She was decompensating. Shit. I didn’t even see this coming. I hadn’t been there for her. I’d been so wrapped up in my own life, in Savannah. Damn it. I’d failed her. I’d let my dick take control. I’d panted after Savannah like a mindless horndog. I’d let myself forget the reality of my life. I didn’t get to date. I didn’t get to spend my nights with a woman or wake up with her in my arms. I didn’t get a life. I’d gotten distracted from my only priority. Nat needed me, and I had to be there for her.
Shit. “Nat, go get in the shower. I’m calling Hannah’s mother.”
“No, please, Luke. She’ll get in trouble.”
“She should get in trouble, Nat. She was in there fucking her boyfriend in our mother’s bed. If her mother knew you were doing that, she’d tell me. I have to tell her. I have to be the goddamn parent here.”
Nat started crying and covered her eyes with her hands. I could tell when she felt the vomit in her hair. She jerked her hand away and then touched it again. Then she started to gag as realization dawned. “Oh God.”
“Get in the shower, Nat. And then you are going to scrub the puke off this sofa.”
She stood and rushed down the hall.
I grabbed the bottle of rum and chucked it at the wall. Damn it, Nat. The plastic bottle bounced off the wall and then hit the floor and bounced into the arm chair before skidding to a stop.
Fuck!
I pulled out my phone and texted Bill that I had to deal with a situation at home. Then I looked through my contacts for Hannah’s mother. I took a deep breath and hit send.
“Hi, Luke, I hope the girls aren’t giving you trouble.”
“Actually, Jenny, I have some news. They weren’t supposed to be here. They lied to me and said they were staying at your place. I didn’t know they were here until I came in this morning.”
“Oh no. What are they up to now?”
“Drinking and, um…” How did I tell her what I’d seen? “There are boys here, Jenny. I think maybe you should come over here and look into it.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Hannah came slinking out of my mother’s room like the little tramp she was.
“Your mother is on her way.”
She raised her eyes to meet mine. Despite her smudge make-up and mussed hair, the girl gave me a defiant look.
“Don’t push me, Hannah. You don’t want to see what happens if you push me.”
She lowered her eyes.
“Get your fuckbuddy and get in the garage with your friends. Tell them to call their parents.”
She turned and went down the hall.
I glanced over at the puke-covered couch. The new couch that I had bought to replace the debauched one. The couch that was only a bit newer than my relationship with Savannah. I’d let myself hope for something beautiful, something real. And life had vomited all over it.
This time I wasn’t numb. This disappointment hurt. I couldn’t have Savannah. I couldn’t have love, and I couldn’t even have a lover.
Before I could succumb to the all-encompassing misery, there was a knock on the front door.
Jenny was here to deal with her daughter.
I opened the door to the forty-something, financially stable woman who actually had a shot at doing a decent job of raising her fifteen-year-old daughter. She didn’t have a mentally unstable, bank-account draining, manic and promiscuous, irresponsible mother to take care of. The fact that her daughter wasn’t any less screwed up than my sister didn’t help.
“Thanks for calling me, Luke.”
I stepped back to let her in. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to prevent this.”
“It isn’t the first time Hannah has pulled this, and it won’t be the last.” Her eyes went to the mess on the sofa. “Who?”
“Nat. The other kids probably didn’t drink quite as much. They had other things on their mind. They’re in the garage, and theoretically have their clothes on by now. ”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah,” I said. I knew she understood that I’d seen way more of her daughter than I wanted. If I hadn’t, I would have offered her some reassurances.
“Lead the way,” she said. “We may as well get this over with.”
When I held the garage door open, she walked in front of me and went to stand in front of the four teens crowded on the couch.
“Seriously, Hannah? Dylan? I thought you were dating Stephen.”
Hannah squirmed under her mother’s censure.
“And Katelyn! I wouldn’t have expected this from you.”
Katelyn, a girl I had only met once, turned a bright pink.
“Did you at least use birth control? Or do we have more ugliness to face later?”
“Mom!”
“You were either safe or you weren’t.”
“I was safe!” Hannah said.
“And you, Katelyn?”
“I, um, oh, Mrs. Schultz. I’m a virgin.”
Jenny rolled her eyes. “You can’t tell me nothing happened.”
“Well, no. We didn’t have sex.”
“Did you give him a blow job without a condom, Katelyn? Because that isn’t safe.”
Katelyn started crying.
I guess that answered that question.
“Hannah and Katelyn, we’ll discuss this at home. As for you boys, did you call your parents?”
“No ma’am,” one of them said.
“I’ll handle them,” I said. “If you want to get the girls out of here, I’ll call the mothers of these little delinquents before I send them home.”
“Thank you, Luke. Come on, girls. We’re going.”
The little motherfuckers on the couch looked like they wanted to run after Jenny and throw themselves on her mercy. Good. They were terrified of me, as they should be.
“You,” I said, pointing at the one who’d been screwing Hannah. “Get one of your parents on the phone. Now.”
He pulled out his phone and did as I commanded.
When he got an answer, he stammered, “Uh, Dad, I’m sorry. Somebody needs to talk to you.”
He handed the phone to me, and I started the arduous process of explaining to a complete stranger that I walked in on his under-aged son with his dick in a fifteen-year-old.
Natalie continued to sniffle on the couch in my room. She’d been crying for hours now. I’d taken her phone away and grounded her for the next year.
I couldn’t sit still. I needed to go for a run, but I couldn’t risk letting her out of my sight.
“Please let me go to my room, Luke.”
“No. You can stay here where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I want to be alone!”
“Well tough. You don’t get want you want. Neither do I. You betrayed my trust.”
“I’m a teenager, Luke. I’m supposed to screw up.”
“You aren’t just a teenager. You’re a kid with a mentally ill, out of control mother, who is still on the psych ward, and I just found you passed out in your own vomit just like I found our goddamn mother not two weeks ago.”
“I wasn’t in bed with two strangers.”
Damn. How’d she know that? She must have seen more than I’d realized.
“Not this time.”
“God, Luke. I’m not Mom.”
“No. You aren’t. It’s my job to make sure you get raised right.”
“Luke, I got drunk. I passed out. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”
“I’ll be the judge of how big a deal this is, Nat.”
Her angry eyes bored into me. “It’s not like I haven’t seen you drunk off your ass. You were so mean to Hannah. And you have no room to judge. You’re spending all your time doing Savannah!”
All I felt at this point was defeat. “Not anymore. That’s going to change.”
The troubled teen morphed back into my little sister before my eyes. “What do you mean, Luke? What happened with Savannah?”
“It’s over,” I said.
She started toward me, her anger forgotten, arms held wide to hug me.
“No,” I said, holding up my hand to stop her. “I’m fine.”
Nat stood there, watching me.
“Go to your room. You can come out at six and we’ll find something for dinner.”
“But you said—”
“Now!”
She nodded and walked to the door. She stood, with her back to me, as if considering whether to press me about Savannah. Then she opened the door and slipped through it without saying another word.
I got up from the table and went to the bed. I stretched out and stared up at the ceiling. I had to tell Savannah we were over. I’d turned off my phone hours ago when my mother’s counselor had started calling. We’d missed our scheduled visit. I didn’t want to hear the hurt in my mother’s voice or the mock concern from her counselor. I had enough to damn deal with right now.
I powered the phone on and texted Savannah. “Can’t talk tonight. Can you come by tomorrow around noon?”
I turned it off again. I didn’t need her answer, and I didn’t want to deal with any questions.
With all this missed work, a financial shit-storm was brewing. It was just like my mother to fuck up my life. She’s never been so successful as she was this time. Nat had been passed out and either of those ugly ass boys could have done anything they wanted to her. I was lucky the other two girls had kept the fuckers busy. I was lucky they hadn’t brought anything worse than the rum. I was lucky my sister hadn’t choked to death on her own vomit while the others were screwing.
Savannah was a dangerous distraction. I couldn’t afford to leave Natalie without supervision. I couldn’t really be in love with the woman anyway. Not this soon. She couldn’t love me either. Things didn’t happen this fast. Love didn’t. We’d folded under the romantic ideal of love. It was a lie. An illusion that wouldn’t have lasted.
I sat up and reached between the mattress and the foundation for the small bottle of Jägermeister I’d hidden there months ago.
Twisting the cap until it fell off onto the bed, I vowed never to get involved with a woman again. At least not until Nat was grown and out of the house.
I turned the bottle up and took a big swallow. If I drank enough, I could numb the pain piercing my heart. I took another shot, forcing myself not to care about Savannah’s reaction tomorrow. Numbing myself to the pain the only way I knew how.
Chapter Fourteen
Savannah
Luke hadn’t been able to see me, much less talk to me yesterday. He’d sent a cryptic text, and he was ignoring all my replies.
I finished up my research paper after work. Then I proofed it this morning and turned it in online.
Thrilled to have finished what I was almost sure was another A, I was ready to celebrate. Maybe I’d take Luke and Nat out for a late lunch.
I tried calling one more time. His phone went straight to voice mail. Maybe he lost his charger. Although it didn’t sound like him. He was responsible, almost too responsible.
Since I couldn’t reach him, I texted Nat. Hey girl, are you guys home?
Yes, Nat answered. You should come over. Things are bad.
What had his mother done now to muck up his life? I texted that I was on my way. Then I grabbed my purse and keys and headed for the car.
If Luke was stressed, he may not want to go out to eat. I could grab some Subway sandwiches on my way over. If they weren’t hungry, the sandwiches would keep. The bowl of cereal I’d had early this morning wasn’t doing anything for me at this point.
After I pulled up at his house, I grabbed my purse, the three flimsy plastic bags with sandwiches and chips, and the ridiculously heavy drink carrier and headed around the side of the garage. I knocked with my foot.
“Hurry up, Luke. I’m going to drop all this any second.”
I was about to give up and set everything down on the sidewalk when Luke pulled the door open.
“What took you so long? Here.” I thrust the drink carrier into his hands and moved to step inside. He and the drinks were in my way. “Move silly.”
He finally stepped back, and I went over to lay the sandwiches on the table.
“Where’s Nat?” I turned to look at Luke.
He stood by the open door looking like somebody had just killed his dog.
“What happened?”
He shook his head.
I went over and took the drinks from his hand and set them on the coffee table.
“Luke, what’s wrong. You’re starting to scare me.”
After closing the door, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tight.
He didn’t return the hug. He stood stiff and withdrawn. I looked up into his eyes. He wasn’t even looking at me. His bloodshot eyes were focused on a spot behind me.
I reached up to touch his cheek. “Luke, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Come sit down, Savannah. We need to talk,” he said in a strained voice.
We walked over to the couch and sat.
“I can’t see you anymore.”
“What?” Had he really just said that? “Are you kidding me?”
“I need to focus on Nat.” He wasn’t even looking at me as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have let myself get distra
cted.”
Distracted? Fear clawed at my throat as I realized he might be serious about not seeing me again. “I don’t understand. Did something happen with your mother?” I reached for him.
“No.” He stood to avoid my touch. “It isn’t my mother. It’s me and Nat. I have to put her first. I don’t have the luxury of playing around at a relationship. I came home yesterday and found her passed out in her own vomit.”
Oh no!
“She’d been drinking, and her friends were fucking their boyfriends here in my house.” His voice broke. “I wasn’t here for her.”
“Luke.” I stood to comfort him.
“Savannah, stop!” He stepped back again to avoid me.
My stomach sank to my knees. He wasn’t just rejecting me. He was avoiding me like I disgusted him.
Please don’t let me cry. I didn’t want him to see how hurt I was. The shock was starting to wear off, and the truth was penetrating my mind and shattering my heart.
“We have to terminate our relationship a couple of weeks early. It won’t matter to you because you only wanted a one-night stand in the first place.”
If I looked at him, I would lose it. I needed to see his face. I needed to search his eyes for the love I knew he felt. I raised my eyes to see his hard, cold gaze.
I couldn’t stand it another second. I rushed toward the door.
“Savannah,” he croaked.
Oh thank God! I stopped, expecting the old Luke back. Expecting this horror show to end.
“You forgot your purse.”
The loud sob escaped as I grabbed my purse. I ran for the door and left the garage where I’d first realized I was in love with Luke. We were in love, dammit. How had we gone from in love to me being a distraction? How could he do this to me?
On the third try, I got the key in to unlock my car. I was full-on sobbing now as my heartbreak swept through my chest as searing pain. I struggled to breathe as I moved behind the steering wheel. Grief rolled through me with a wail as I realized I was stuck here in Luke’s driveway until I could stop crying.
At the sound of a tap on my window, I turned to see Nat watching me. Not Luke seeing me like this. Not Luke caring enough to come after me.
She pulled open the door. “Savannah? If you hand me your phone, I can call Madison to come get you. Luke took my phone.”
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