“Just getting a lift,” Dre clipped. “I wanted to thank you for my AUDITION,” she said, stressing the word, “to be one of your club girls, but something came up and I decided to go another route."
“Okay to give her a ride?” Wolf asked Bear.
“Shame, beautiful. Could have had a lot more fun,” Bear said. He nodded to Wolf, who revved his engine in response. The look on Dre’s face said everything and made me feel small.
I’d broken everything into so many pieces there was no way in fuck it would ever be able to be put back together again. So I guess you could say my plan worked.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t tearing my fucking gut in two.
I stayed the course, shifting on my Preppy mask for Bear. I took a deep drag of my cigarette, casually blowing smoke rings into the air. “Real shame,” I drawled. I grabbed my dick through my jeans. “Guess all this man meat scared her off.” Bear laughed and turned back toward the house.
I felt Dre’s eyes on me until the bike was well out of sight, the engine nothing but an echo through the trees.
And then she was gone.
For good.
Of course, fate is a nasty evil bitch, because it was in that moment, one of the shittiest of my life, after a confusing, yet fucking hot, unexpected threesome with one of my best friends, that I realized that the girl driving away wasn’t just some girl I was saving from my twisted ass.
She was the girl I was in love with.
The girl I would always be in love with.
Until my very last breath.
Thirty-Eight
DRE
Hatred is easy.
It’s love that’s hard.
It wasn’t the betrayal that hurt the most. It wasn’t the lies or the deceit. It wasn’t even the way he’d made me feel more used than Conner or Eric ever had.
The way I felt had nothing to do with the bitterness that settled in my throat, so thick I was practically gagging on it.
No.
The thing that hurt the most wasn’t the way things ended at all.
It was the way it all began.
It was the love.
I didn’t want it anymore. It shouldn’t of even been there anymore so I wished it away with everything I had, but no matter how much wishing and praying or meditating I did, nothing worked. Even though betrayal had moved in, love refused to pack its bags and get out.
Fucking squatter.
I wanted so badly for anger and rage to be my primary emotions and so I focused on his bitter words that ended us. The way he looked at me with no remorse in his eyes. The way the door echoed as he slammed it shut. But I couldn’t stay in the darkness too long, the light always finding its way inside my thoughts, and soon I was remembering the warmth of his skin against mine the first time he touched me, the way he looked at me before he finally kissed me, the way he made me laugh in a time in my life when not a god damn thing in the world was funny to me anymore. No, love didn’t magically turn into hate just because we want it to, because it’s easier.
I learned very quickly that it turns into something else. Something much much worse.
A broken heart.
Little did I know that the real breaking was yet to come and the greatest lesson of all about love, I would be learning all too soon.
Love never dies.
Thirty-Nine
PREPPY
Mirna’s house had been sitting vacant since that night it all went to shit. I’d still come by from time to time, although I hadn’t used it as a GG since Dre left. All of the furniture was gone. All of the pictures. It had been over a year since Dre set foot in the place, yet I swore I could still smell her there.
She was happy. She had to be. That’s what I told myself anyway, in order to go through the motions and pretend like nothing was wrong. Her happiness was what kept one foot in front of the other, and the sometimes-fake smile plastered on my face.
Real smiles came in the form of King getting out of prison and him actually getting a girl. Or stole a girl. However you wanted to look at it. Doe was her name. She didn’t have a memory but she had a great set of tits and an attitude to boot, and I think that she was my friendship-soulmate in a way, although I never told her about Dre. I never told anyone. I told myself I was fine and the plan was to try to believe my own lie until it became true.
After Dre left town I’d come for my plants. There on the counter was my folder. She’d done it. She’d forged every single document I needed, but it was all for nothing. The judge assigned to the case denied my petition before a hearing was even called. Before I could utter a single fucking word. When the lawyer I was using told me the judge’s name who wouldn’t even grant me a hearing, it all became clear. I actually knew him. Well, I knew his sister. All I did was fuck her in a pool. A public one. With people around, but apparently word had gotten back to him and the cock sucker must not like voyeurism because the gavel crashed down on my case, crushing any hope I had left of saving Max from the system.
I was high as a kite when I got in my car, and filed the fake docs with the clerk’s office. It wasn’t necessary. It wouldn’t change a damn thing. But I did it, anyway. Maybe because it made her work not for nothing. Maybe because filing the documents made her more than just a memory, it made her real because her time with me seemed more and more like a fading dream.
But it was all too late.
In the movies the end of a person’s life is slow moving, each fraction of a second drawn out, seeming more like hours as they take their last breaths and watch the highlight reel of their lives play out before their eyes while some kind of Titanic-esque violin music plays in the background.
It’s all bullshit.
Death is quick.
Too fucking quick.
I remember walking with my friends to go into the meet with Isaac. On the way I saw this dark haired girl with innocent cheeks, and for a second I thought she was Dre. She was staring at me too, but when Dre’s face faded it was replaced by the wide eyed look of another girl. One I was pretty sure had been on the sharp end of a Preppy/Bear fuck session a time or two.
The reality of my own death was a searing pain ripping through my gut, followed by a sense of doom as I bled out onto the concrete.
I didn’t fade away, I dropped out of consciousness with lightening speed. I barely had time to register the horror on my friends’ faces, who all seemed to be floating around above me like they were above the surface, while I was being dragged down to the dark depths below.
I reached out, wanting to grab them, wanting to hold on to this life.
But it was too fucking late.
For most people death was the end.
For me, it was only the beginning.
Forty
DRE
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…
Mindlessly, I bounced my pen on top of my open text book in such quick succession the pages vibrated, lifting at the corners. I shuffled my feet, crossing and uncrossing my ankles, wishing away the constant feeling of restlessness that only seemed to intensify with each passing day.
My desk was pushed up sideways against the only window in the classroom, although there was no view to speak of. Nothing but a brick wall. The small space between buildings was just large enough to allow in the rain that had just started to fall, beading up and sliding down the thick glass. The clouds overhead shifted, casting the already muted light of the room in a wash of gray. With the new lighting the image in the window shifted, and suddenly I was no longer staring at the brick wall but at the reflection of a girl.
A girl whose hair had begun to shine again, although her ponytail could’ve used a smoothing, the humidity of the day sending every little hair not long enough to be tied in the elastic standing on their tiny curly ends. She wore glasses, simple dark-blue frames. Her complexion was pale, but not sallow. Her eyes tired, but not lost.
I knew the girl was me, but beyond the clean clothes and classroom setting I saw another girl, just beyond
her shoulders. One who was slumped against a wall with a needle in her arm and cum in her hair.
A girl who was trapped both physically and mentally.
I shook my head, willing away the image of someone I never wanted to see again. I closed my eyes tightly and when I opened them again, both girls were gone. The clouds cleared and soon my reflection was gone as well, and I was again staring at nothing but an empty brick wall.
Without thinking, I raised my hand to scratch at an itch that didn’t really exist, with fingernails that weren’t long enough yet to actually do any real scratching. The scabs and pock marks were all gone, but in their place were the raised red scars just starting to take on their shapes, some of them were already turning their permanent shade of white, others lingering at bright red.
The teacher was a man in his sixties. He stood with his back straight and his head down at the podium. His voice was monotone, with zero inflection, as he read off his lesson plan.
I took a deep breath and tried paying attention but everything he was covering, about the founding of our country and the Declaration of Independence, I’d learned in the fifth grade. Leaning back in the chair I cross my arms over my chest and since my feet didn’t touch the floor I swung my legs back and forth, accidentally kicking the chair of the boy in front of me.
“I’m…” I started, but then the kid turned around and the wind was knocked out of my chest when my eyes landed on the familiar, beautiful big smile and the tattoos covering his neck. I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand.
Impossible.
“Hey, watch it,” he said, his unfamiliar high-pitched voice bringing me back to reality, where he was just a dark-haired boy with olive skin who didn’t look anything at all like the man I mistook him for.
“Sorry,” I whispered. The boy turned back around to face the teacher who’d turned off the lights so we could follow his slides on the overhead projector, which was blurry at best. The Sons of Liberty’s heads were all large and skewed, distorted pictures of a probably already distorted tale of American history.
It wasn’t the first time his face appeared on someone else’s, just like it wasn’t the first time my stomach dropped with my disappointment when I realized it wasn’t him.
It would never be him.
Later on that day, I sat in the small cramped office space of Edna Elinberry, my counselor who my dad insisted I see three times a week. One of the many terms of my return home, and one I didn’t really mind all that much. Edna was quirky and kind of funny. Being a recovering addict herself, she could relate to me in a way not a lot of other mental heath professionals could.
“I saw him again today,” I told her, staring at the books and other knick-knacks on the overstuffed bookcase in the corner. Lord of the Flies was on the top shelf dangling over the edge, one heavy footed passer-by could send it crashing to the floor.
“Brandon?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. Brandon was someone who’d recently started working with my dad. He’d asked me out a few times and, even though he was good looking and seemed nice enough, I just wasn’t ready to complicate my life in a way it didn’t need to be complicated. “Not Brandon. HIM,” I said, still finding it hard to utter his name without feeling a sense of sickness wash over me.
“That happens when we lose somebody we cared about,” Edna said, watering each of the thirty some odd plants in her little windowsill. She wore loose, light-faded jeans with a long, white, ribbed sweater. Her bright red hair was something from the eighties, permed in tight curls and cut longer in the back and short on the top. She had pink lipstick on her teeth at all times. “Especially, one who’d had such a huge impact on your life. It will fade with time.”
“But…but what if I don’t want it to fade?” I asked, realizing by asking the question it meant that I wasn’t entirely sure that moving on was what I really wanted.
Edna put down her watering can on the floor and side stepped one of the seven coffee tables in the cramped space, plopping down on the denim sofa and motioning for me to do the same on the one across from her. We both kicked off our shoes and sat Indian style across. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and I copied. When she opened her eyes she asked, “You cared for him a great deal, right?”
I nodded. “I…he saved my life.” Immediately the words felt wrong. “I think I…no, I KNOW that I LOVED him,” I corrected. “And I just don’t see him when I sleep. I hear him, too. In my head, chatting away and making jokes and being ridiculous…” I trailed off, biting back tears.
Edna smiled and reached across the coffee table to give me a reassuring pat on my knee. I watched her hand but didn’t jump away, her smile grew brighter. “Dre, when you love someone it’s very common to carry that person around with you until you’re ready to let go. You hear their voice, you think you see them on the street, you dream about them at night. It’s all very normal and a very healthy part of grief. It will fade with time. But only when you’re ready.”
I bit my lip. “I don’t want him to leave,” I said, surprising myself when the tears welled up in my eyes. Edna side stepped the coffee table and sat down next to me, pulling me in and holding me tight against her ample breasts. Everything about her was comforting, and in a way she reminded me of a younger version of Mirna.
“He saved your life. It’s natural that you feel something toward him, along with a sense of guilt because you lived and he didn’t.” Edna paused, gathering her thoughts before she continued. “You know, kid, it sounds to me like you still need that closure we’ve been talking about.”
“Closure?” I squeaked. The idea of it sounded ridiculous. “I’m not sure about that. How can you close something that never really opened?” I felt myself starting to tear up and immediately felt embarrassed.
Awe shucks, Doc.
She nodded and handed me a tissue. “From what you’ve told me, you’ve never gotten a chance to really grieve, to close that chapter in your life and move on.”
“But I don’t know how to get it.” Or if I even wanted it. I’ll never forget the day my dad and I went down to Sarasota together to help transport Mirna to a facility closer to our house. I was debating taking a solo ride down to Logan’s Beach when one of the nurse’s mentioned his name and wondering why he stopped visiting. The other explained to her why he couldn’t visit. He was dead.
Right then and there I couldn’t breath. My heart stopped. A piece of me died right there along with him.
Edna held me tighter and rocked me back and forth like Mirna used to. She pulled me back and looked down to my hands where I was now staring. She snapped her fingers and smiled brightly. “When you’re ready, and ONLY when you’re ready, I think you should seek out those who cared about him. His friends, family. Have a conversation. Talk about his life. I truly think it will help you find what you need.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and I did. The only “interaction” I ever had with his friends was that one encounter from Bear.
“At least read the letter,” Edna suggested. “Maybe that will help you decide.” She pulled out the envelope that had arrived a few months earlier with no return address, just a stamp from the Logan’s Beach Post Office. “It’s time,” she said, handing it to me.
“Can you open it?” I asked. Edna shook her head.
“No, that’s for you to do, but I’ll give you a minute alone,” Edna said, patting me on the shoulder and stepping out of the room.
I tore open the envelope quickly, thinking that if I did it fast like a Band-Aid it wouldn’t hurt as much.
I was wrong.
Doc,
There’s this place where light and dark meet in the sky when the sun’s setting where it’s not quite day and not quite night. A grayish mist among the black and yellow.
I like to think of it as a place where right and wrong, black and white, life and death aren’t finite.
I call that place ‘the in-between’ and to me that’s where you and I will always exi
st.
Together.
It’s where we can’t be hurt. Where our pasts don’t haunt our present. Where there’s no such thing as lies. Where pain isn’t even a thing.
We couldn’t be together in this life. Maybe not even in the next. Who knows. My luck is pretty shit these days. But now when I think of you, which is still every fucking day, and when I can’t catch my breath wondering what could’ve been, I drag my ass outside, I sit in the yard, and I wait for it. That brief glimpse of the changing of the guard in the sky. And every day, even though the pain cuts just as deep as the day you left, even though I know the truth is that I’ll never see you again, I smile.
Because you and I are there.
And we’ll always have the in-between.
LOVE,
Samuel Clearwater
Preppy, BAD-ASS MOFO
PS- If you are receiving this I’m dead so I think it’s safe to tell you that you are by far my biggest regret. The light amongst all my dark.
I’m so sorry.
CHAPTER FOURTY-ONE
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER…
DRE
With Brandon sitting by my side on the plane to Florida, I was finally ready to go and seek the closure that my dad, counselor, and my sponsor were always so adamant about.
As we flew over the still waters of the Caloosahatchee River, I tightened my grip on Brandon’s hand. He offered me a reassuring smile and gave me a thumbs up, covering my hand with his own. He probably thought it was the flight that had me freaking out. And although flying wasn’t my favorite activity in the world, it wasn’t the fear of plummeting to the ground below that had my windpipe tightening like a guitar string as the plane descended. No. It was the water tower. The one that stuck out on the flatland, towering above the earth like a redneck statue of liberty, reaching up toward the plane. Its huge black spray painted dick was in full frontal view as the landing gear clattered and screeched, locking into place.
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