I looked down at the folder like it might grow teeth and try to bite my hand.
“Open it. It’s all there,” my mother encouraged me. I felt sick to my stomach.
Over the past couple of weeks I had been plagued with doubt and indecision. Going to California had always been the plan, and it was easy to stick with what I knew and say I was still going to do it. But saying it was not the same as actually doing it. And now that I had the means, the tickets and the encouragement to go, I was finding it difficult to put my money where my mouth was.
Just seeing Brett earlier had stirred up all the pain and hurt feelings. It took all the strength I had to keep from running up to him and hugging him to death. The past couple of weeks had been pure hell.
I missed him. My heart ached for him with every beat. He filled every other thought inside my head. The only reason I had yet to go crawling back to him was because I was terrified he’d reject me. I didn’t even want to imagine what I would do if that happened. My heart wouldn’t survive it. So I was biding my time, waiting on my feelings to settle, trying to figure out how to apologize and tell him all I wanted was him.
Two weeks in the same town was driving me crazy. Could I even handle going out to California? The trip might kill me.
“Go on, honey,” my father gently encouraged me. I couldn’t deny my dad.
I reached out and flipped the folder open. Inside were keys to my studio apartment and directions on how to get there. The bills for the utilities. And my one-way plane ticket to LA.
“Tomorrow?” I said in disbelief as I read the dates on the plane ticket. “Don’t you think you’re kind of rushing this?”
“Your mother is right, the longer you stay the harder it will be for you to leave,” my father frowned at me. I watched him look longingly towards my mother’s wine and drink deeply from his own water.
My mother grinned. “On this we agree. In fact, I’m here to help you pack.”
“I’m not going,” I said, shaking my head and pushing the folder away.
“Amanda,” my mother gasped. “Don’t you dare do this!”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “You can’t make me.”
My mother started to verbally berate me. She stood up from her chair and shrieked how ungrateful I was. How I was such a spoiled brat.
We were asked politely to leave the restaurant or be forcibly escorted off the premises.
“Don’t you let her do this, John!” my mother screamed at my father in the parking lot from beside her rental car. She wasn’t coming back to the house. She was going to return to her hotel room because she couldn’t stand to be around me a moment longer. “If you love her as much as you claim you do, talk some sense into her. Don’t let her ruin her life like this!”
My father sighed deeply and told me to get in the car. He walked over to my mother and they had words. I watched her shove the folder in his hands before she climbed into her rental and pulled out. My father looked grim when he returned. He set the folder between us and was silent the entire drive home.
When we parked in front of the house, my father grabbed the folder and climbed out of the car first.
It wasn’t until we walked through the front door that he asked me, “Do you want to stay because of Brett?”
After the past couple of weeks, seeing Brett at graduation, and my mother going off on me, I broke down in tears and could only nod my head.
I couldn’t leave him, I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I was too weak. I didn’t care if he got me pregnant. I didn’t care if he ruined me. I had finally realized I needed him and only him to be happy.
“Oh, sweetheart,” my father said sadly and pulled me into a hug. I cried and let all the sadness out. It felt like I was finally safe to do so now that I had someone to comfort me.
“Do you love him?” my father asked while he squeezed me.
“Yes,” I sobbed. If anyone could understand, my father would. It was awful seeing what losing my mother did to him.
“If you love him, sweetheart, you’ll go. You won’t do to him what your mother did to me.”
“No,” I wailed at my father and his arms around me only tightened.
“Sshh, sshh,” he cooed. “You’re a good girl, Amanda. I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Chapter Nineteen
Brett
Bzzt, Ring!, Bzzt, Ring! Bzzt, Ring!...
“What the fuck?”
My phone went silent and I fell back into bed. I tossed my phone towards the laundry pile and groaned loudly. My head was pounding, and it looked like there was a swirliness to the ceiling.
I didn’t know who was calling but they could wait. Dear god, what was in that drink?
* * *
A loud pounding on the door brought that massive headache of mine straight back to the front of my head. I was at that moment forswearing all booze and bad women. I could hear the pounding again on the front door, and from the way it sounded, I swore it was Chase or one of the guys trying to kill me.
I looked down to see all I was wearing was a pair of boxers, and there were lipstick prints all over my abs. Yeah, I could call ‘em abs now, especially since Peaches from the club liked what she saw. Fuck that looking down stuff though. That fucking hurt my head and made me feel like revisiting everything I had done the night before.
I slowly rolled off my bed and towards the floor. The jolt in my steps sent the room spinning and the carpet almost looked like an appealing bed.
I didn’t drink. Really, I didn’t. But since graduation about two weeks before, Chase and all the guys at the gym had been dragging me all over the town and the strip. My parents warned the guys to take care of me last night, then took off for their trip to the lake.
“Be a good kid,” Dad said.
Honestly, I thought they were willing to let me bend the rules like I had to allow me to feel something beyond heartache and regret.
Mandy breaking up with me and throwing everything we had away was fucking hurting me. I didn’t show it to her at school because, I guess, I had been trying the whole make her regret her decision by making her jealous thing. Yeah, that didn’t work at all. If looks could kill Stacy would have been dead.
Fuck, if she would have seen me last night with Brandon and Chase, she would have shit a brick and probably tried to kill me. I was dancing on one of those platforms with a hot little go-go dancer who had neon green hair. Fuck, she was a hot little number up on the stage, and when I bet the dancer I could dance better than her she brought me up. Yeah, I did. And last night she bowed down to the fucking Demon. Heh, that’s what Chase had dubbed me. I liked it.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I made it home last night from the party after her, and the two dancers Chase had picked up. But I knew I left a very happy Peaches in her bed. I couldn’t fucking believe it, her real name was Peaches. It said so on her driver’s license. It also said she was twenty-three. I was really tempted to ask how she liked robbing the cradle, but very quickly thought against it.
That was a wild night, up until I somehow got home.
Stomping down the stairs, I tried to get past the fuzziness in my brain. My mouth was like the Mohave Desert, and yet my stomach wanted to blow its load all over the rug in front of my front door. Dear god.
I looked out the peephole expecting to see Chase in his all black clothes, grinning at me and yelling for me to get my pansy ass outside, pussy time was a-wasting. I expected to see Brandon with some random redhead hanging on him, telling me to hurry up or he wouldn’t share her sister. Yeah, those guys, for the prior two weeks, had been my rocks and pulled me up out of the despair. I owed them a lot.
But what I saw outside the door, I didn’t understand it at first.
And then my stomach drops. Oh fuck me, what did I do last night?
I wanted to run upstairs and call my parents, but there was no way they could come be with me right then. They were at the lake, and it wasn’t close. Shit, shit, shit.
Man, the ground was dry and the sun was out, not like night befores absolute downpour of fucking huge raindrops.
Swinging the door open, I didn’t even remember I was in nothing but boxers.
Until both the female officers looked down at me. I was not sure what they were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t me standing there in bright white boxers. The blonde looked up from where I was thankfully not sporting morning wood.
“Brett Fitzpatrick?”
I smiled hesitantly at first then tried to give them one of my grins that use to make Mandy all giddy. Maybe I could sexually bribe the officers into not taking me in for something I couldn’t remember.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s me. Is there something I can help you with?”
She didn’t roll her eyes, that had to be a good sign. Right?
The brunette’s hands, though, caught my attention. They were wringing each other and she looked really, really uncomfortable.
“I’m Officer Sanders,” the blonde one said. “Would you mind if we come in?”
I knew it couldn’t be a surprise stripper thing, even though it sounded like something Chase would do.
Scratching at my stomach, I remembered the lipstick print I saw on my abs. Fuck, that probably ruined any game I had with these two.
“Sure, um, would you mind if I go get some clothes on?” I asked.
“That’s fine, we’ll be right here.”
“Maybe a dumb question,” I said as I turned back before heading up the stairs. “But am I in trouble?”
I caught the blonde giving the brunette, and so far silent, officer a look, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Usually they didn’t let suspects walk off into the house, did they?
The blonde quickly looked to me and gave me a small smile. “No, we would just like to talk to you.”
Nodding my head, I jogged up the stairs. Bet they were looking at my cute ass.
Grabbing my phone, I thought about calling my parents but didn’t want the cops to think I was up to something. So I grabbed my jeans and a t-shirt out of the closet and headed back down. Hopefully they wouldn’t arrest a guy without shoes or socks on.
Again with the weird looks, but finally the brunette straightened up and looked almost military in her stance. The blonde, when she was at my front door when I first opened it, looked about twenty-five. Suddenly she looked much older, she looked tired.
“Can I get you officers a drink? Water or maybe some soda?”
“No, but thank you for the offer,” the brunette said kind of stiffly. Her badge read: Walters.
“So, what’s up?” I asked.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick…” Officer Sanders started off.
Smiling I said, “Brett, call me Brett. Mr. Fitzpatrick is my dad. I can call them if you want. Maybe it would be a good idea?”
Shaking her head, she looked to my phone. “Have you had a chance to look at your phone this morning, sir?”
I looked down instantly and fuck, I wanted to drop it. I hadn’t looked at it and I was hoping to fuck I didn’t do something bad with it. “No…”
“Sir, perhaps we should go to the living room,” she said as she pointed across the front hall. “We can sit and talk for a little bit.”
I could feel those tiny hairs on the back of my hair rising and I knew for a fact I needed to call my parents, or maybe a lawyer. Fuck, was that a fake ID?
Nodding my head slowly, I led them into the living room. Taking a seat on the couch, I sat on one side. My head was throbbing and my stomach was dropping. I was going to fucking puke.
Officer Sanders smiled at me again, then sat next to me on the couch. Oh fuck, is she a stripper, I wondered. I mean the guns looked awfully real.
Pointing to my phone, she said. “You probably have a lot of calls on there right now. A lot are from the state police department, and our local one, and mine.”
I pushed the screen button and saw fifteen missed calls. I didn’t get this. I saw all the missed calls from the police, and one from Chase that morning too. The first of the highway patrol calls was registered at eleven p.m. I was in the club then, and grinding the fuck out of a couple of girls with Peaches at my side, licking my neck.
Why the fuck was this officer sitting next to me?
“Okay. Lots of missed calls. What’s up, did I do something wrong at the club, ma’am?”
Reaching over, Officer Sanders gently took the phone from my hand and placed it on the coffee table. Turning back to me, she took both of my hands into hers. “Brett, call me Emily.”
I looked over and watched Officer Walters switch to full attention.
Shit.
It wasn’t about me.
It wasn’t a game, either.
I was scared, and I wanted my parents. Fuck.
I tried not to wrench my hands from hers.
“Last night…” she began before she just stopped, closing her eyes for a long moment. When she opened her eyes again, I noted how blue they were. Fuck. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed was my weakness.
“Last night, we tried to call you… Have you heard from your parents this morning?”
I just shook my head.
Her hands tightened their hold on mine. Fuck.
“During the storm last night, there was a great deal of rain, and it made the roads and driving conditions treacherous… Shit. Okay. Brett, your parents were driving on I-95. A tree came down on the road and they… well… They hit it head on and…”
“What hospital are they in?”
“Sweetheart.”
“Please don’t call me that. My ex called me that.”
“Brett, they were killed on impact.”
That was when my world went black. I didn’t do much more but sit there.
Silence.
Words were spoken but I couldn’t hear them.
They held my hands. They tried to console me. I watched them cry, cry for my parents. Cry for me.
But to me there was only silence.
They left. I think, but can’t really remember, after promising to come back.
And then there was only me.
Only me.
What did I have left?
* * *
“Hi, Mr. Taylor?”
“Yes, Brett?”
“Can I talk to Mandy?”
“She’s not here.”
“Sir, this isn’t about… um… us. I just need to talk to her. It’s really important.”
“She’s not here.”
* * *
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Hey, this is Mandy. Do what ya gotta do, fool!”
Beep.
I tried to talk but only got out a plea. “Please call me. I can’t do this.”
* * *
I stood before the podium. I hadn’t cried much since I first talked to Emily, but I saw her there, in the first row. She stopped by a lot that last week. Sometimes she was in her uniform, often though she was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
I didn’t have words. I didn’t know what my head wanted to say, and when I looked out into the audience, I saw so many people– all friends of my parents or my family.
I looked for another blonde out there, hoping, I needed the courage.
But my eyes landed on Emily’s, and she was staring at me, trying to give me all the support she could.
“My dad loved movies from the nineties. They were his favorite, and my mom suffered through them. They always did that for each other. No matter what, they were together through everything. Even this.”
I looked down at my notes and saw the two quotes I wanted to read. Both kind of came from his two favorite movies.
Fuck, I needed help.
Fuck, I couldn’t do it.
The words blurred on me and I had to close my eyes for a moment.
Slowly opening my eyes, I looked again to the two blue ones and focused on Emily. In my heart though I pretended they were Mandy’s lending me her strength.
“I found a quote from one o
f my Dad’s movies. I would like to read it to you guys now.”
I took my breath in slowly then out. In slowly then out.
”Because we don't know when we will…”
Chapter Twenty
Mandy
Today
Pressing my hands against my eyes, I lean against the counter and breathe deeply. I will not cry, dammit. The tears are aching to come out but I fight them back. I’ve already cried enough tears over him. It’s been five years, I need to get over this.
“Mandy?” a soft voice calls out and I sense the door to the ladies’s bathroom swinging open. “Are you okay? Oh my god, what happened?”
Grace just grabs me and pulls me into a hug before I can squeak out a word of protest. If she didn’t touch me, I might have been able to keep it together. But as soon as my best friend’s arms pull me into a protective hug, the tears break through and I choke back a sob.
“Did someone say something to you? I don’t care what Bob says, some of those guys are real assholes. Customers or not, they deserve to be smacked.”
I shake my head and I just can’t voice what happened just yet. My throat feels tight, all it wants to do is make sad noises and constrict.
Grace’s hand rubs down my back. It’s soothing, but I’ve also seen her comfort her daughter, Hope, this way, and I’m not a little girl. I’m a big girl, at least I should be acting like it.
It takes me a couple of minutes, but as soon as I feel like I can speak I lean back and tell her quietly. “It wasn’t an asshole customer. It was Brett. He showed up with a bunch of guys and I had to serve him.”
Grace’s intake of air is so shrill, so sharp, I swear I hear dogs barking off in the distance. “Brett was here? You had to serve him?”
I bite my lip and nod my head. It was beyond humiliating, but even worse than that it fucking hurt to see him. Not only is he even more handsome than I remember, but it felt like just being in his presence reopened all those old wounds I thought I had stapled together. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to close them again.
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