Seven Sins

by Piper Lennox

  Juni: I am home. My Transit is my home.

  Van: Like hell it is.

  He’s right about that, I suppose. It doesn’t feel like home here, anymore. It hasn’t since he left.

  It didn’t feel too much like one before that, either. Nowhere does.

  That’s why traveling was the only thing that made sense, after I left the ranch. If I couldn’t find a place that felt like my own, I’d lay temporary claim to them all.

  I think about telling him it’s not just his inability to trust me that broke us. It’s me, too.

  No matter how deep my feelings for him became, they were too easily crushed in the face of one simple fact: Van reminds me of things I need to forget. He opened wounds I’d closed a long time ago.

  And I know the only way to close them is to do what I did before: keep moving. Alone.

  Van: I miss you.

  My heart, whatever’s left of it, cracks into shards. I miss you too.

  I miss you so much, I can’t believe I’m doing this again.

  I block him.

  Another message comes through less than five minutes later. Username: Sk8G0d. Block.

  Van_Andreas2pointoh.

  Sullivan96.

  Juni.Come.Home.

  One after the other, I block every last throwaway account he creates.

  I stay up for hours reinforcing this digital wall around my life—making sure Van Durham-Andresco, the one person actually looking for me anymore, will never find me again.

  Thirty-Seven

  “Ew. Get a fuckin’ room.”

  “Get your own fuckin’ place,” Wes quips, before pawing back up Clara’s dress all the way to the elevator.

  I continue with my video game marathon of loneliness and pretend I don’t hear all the filthy shit he’s saying, and her shushing him through her laughter.

  Crashing in his music room is only two days old, but I’m already sick of it. If I’d known I would have to listen to my cousin being unbelievably happy while I stayed at his place, I’d have taken Howard up on his offer.

  No, you wouldn’t have.

  Staying at the ranch was much harder than watching Wes become an idiot in love. At least here my reminders of Juniper are limited to the knowledge she once showered in the same bathroom, and slept on the same air mattress I now call home.

  She hasn’t messaged me back in weeks. Half the time, she blocks me without even reading it.

  I could trick her—wait a few weeks until her guard is down, use a name she can’t decipher, and lure her in with normal conversation. Make her think I’m another van-lifer or something, arrange a meeting. Not too long ago, that would’ve been my Plan A.

  Now, though...it feels wrong. If I win Juni back, I want it to be completely honest. No games.

  I wish somebody had warned me self-improvement came with the burdensome side effect of integrity. It’s so fucking inconvenient.

  “Your mom’s calling,” I inform Wes when he returns, looking so lovesick I want to roundhouse kick him in the head. He’s lucky I’m happy for him, even if it’s buried under my own self-pity.

  Waving his phone at him is still good payback, though. Nothing like your mom’s picture to kill the mood.

  “Hi, Mom. Uh…yeah, why?” He pauses, sighs, and looks at me. “She wants to know if you’re still ‘in good’ with some dude at Frey.”

  I sigh, too. My aunt’s unstoppable need to seek connections—and not even have the decency to contact me directly over it—is exhausting.

  “Never was. I met with them a couple times, but turned them down for Spiral.”

  Wes relays this information, then rubs his eyes while she speaks. “She says they’ve got some big national campaign coming up, and my stepdad wants an audition.”

  “Aunt Billie,” I shout, “you do realize I was asked to be an athletic sponsee for their actual skate gear, right? Not a model for their street apparel.”

  “Here,” Wes says. He tosses me the phone while his mom chatters on. “I’m not being the conduit for this shit, you talk to her.”

  I dig the phone out of the cushions where it landed. Christ, she’s still talking.

  “...just figured you might have some pull over there, that’s all.”

  “Sorry, Aunt Bills, but I’ve got about as much influence at Frey as some rando off the street. A couple guys there liked me, but I don’t—”

  “That’s plenty! Adler just needs his foot in the door, that’s all. One little edge. His agency completely dropped the ball, so we’re taking matters into our own hands.” A blender fills the background; I hear her shut a door, the line quieting. “We’ll be in New York tomorrow morning. Meet us in front of the Frey building at...let’s call it nine.”

  “Let’s not.” My laugh isn’t from amusement, just disbelief. “Seriously, I don’t have an ‘in’ over there like you’re thinking. My rep in the industry is still shit.”

  “Language,” she chides, like her own son doesn’t use the same language. “And I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. There must be skaters out there with much worse reputations.”

  True enough. Drugs are rampant; at least I can say I’m clean. I don’t even hit the bottle nearly as hard or as often as most of the league, who treat Svedka like Folgers and Jack like Nyquil. And actual Nyquil like free cocktails at an office party.

  The other side of that coin, though, is that it made my fights and feuds look worse. Spiral even had me drug-tested, because they just couldn’t believe my explosions weren’t fueled by something illegal. Imagine their shock when my piss and hair were reported sparkling freaking clean. Sorry, boys: that anger is all me.

  It was all me. Not anymore.

  It’s become a small obsession, continuing to work on my anger even without Juniper and the “healing abilities” of nature. I figure, if I can get a handle on it in the middle of a city that never stops yelling, I’ll be cured.

  Not a soul knows. Even Wes. Especially Wes, in fact. I’d get no end of heckling if he heard the self-help podcasts I’ve been listening to every day since my talk with Dad on the farmhouse porch.

  Him echoing what Juniper said, about people not fixing each other, was true.

  She gave me so much. Dredged up her past and stirred all that pain, just to make me face mine and finally admit I had issues. And they weren’t anyone’s fault but my own.

  Sure, people still piss me off. People are annoying, and rude, and always in your face when you just want to be left the hell alone. Kind of like how Aunt Billie’s being right now, when she takes my silence as a yes and hangs up, solidifying our plans to meet tomorrow without any real agreement from me.

  But for the most part, I’m realizing people act how we do because humans just do that shit. We invade each other’s space when we’re lonely. We bicker over dumb stuff so we can ignore the important talks a little longer.

  Sometimes, we use each other. Especially the people we love most.

  Keeping all that in mind doesn’t stop me from getting angry, but it’s helping me control myself better. I tell myself the guy bumping my shoulder on the subway, or the woman holding up the grocery store line over one expired coupon...they’re only human. We’re all trying to figure shit out.

  Maybe that’s the fix I should’ve been going after, all along: changing how I look at people, instead of avoiding mankind to wait on some magic cure.

  When I pass Wes his phone, he’s stifling laughter behind a long, low whistle. “Steamroller Billie strikes again.”

  “How the hell does she do that?”

  “Unjustifiable confidence.” Wes steals my controller and unpauses my game. “She talks herself into the idea, first. Assume you’ll get whatever you want without a shred of doubt, and the other party can’t say no.”

  I used to think that’s how I got whatever I wanted in life, too: confidence. Now I can’t stop hearing what Juniper said once, about kids turning into entitled little brats.

  The line between “confident” and “arrogan
t” is as impossibly thin as the one between love and hate.

  In the morning, I stand outside Frey’s building and yawn bitterly until Aunt Billie and her husband step out of a cab. She sweeps me up into a hug, while he offers me a triple-shot espresso and awkward fist-bump.

  Usually, I’m giving him shit on Wes’s behalf, calling him “Uncle Addie” so I can laugh about the irony: the guy’s only a few years older than us. That, and it’s hard to consider a dude family when he’s your fifth uncle in two decades.

  The self-help podcasts must be helping more than I thought, because I thank him for the coffee and actually make pleasant conversation in the elevator. He asks how my skate career’s going; I ask about his modeling shows and don’t make fun of him once for saying shit like “catwalk,” “fall line,” or “body mass index.”

  Even Aunt Billie notices, to the point she keeps eyeing me with suspicion. Here he is, the new and improved Van Durham-Andresco. Who would’ve thought all it took to get to this point was losing everything I own, nearly dying in a lake, catching pneumonia, and getting my heart smashed against a wall?

  The meeting goes great. Turns out my “connections” are better and more intact than I realized. That, or Frey just operates under a fucking rock and has no idea why my sponsors dropped me.

  Adler gets sent upstairs to meet with a casting consultant, while Aunt Billie and I make small talk with the guys who first approached me for sponsorship. One of them gives me his card and tells me to keep in touch. By the time we leave, I’m tempted to pinch myself and make sure I actually woke up this morning.

  “What a great company! Why didn’t you take that deal with them, a few years ago?” she asks me, on our cab ride to lunch. I suggested the place in Brooklyn where I’m now waiting tables to save up for a new vehicle, but I should have known better. Billie Durham only dines in establishments that throw dirty looks at my dirty jeans.

  “Got a better offer,” I shrug, because it really had been that simple, at the time.

  I’d liked the people at Frey way more from the start. They seemed more genuine. Even a few of the higher-ups were retired pro skaters. Didn’t get more real than that.

  But Spiral offered more money. And, unlike Frey, they didn’t mention exclusivity, so I was free to take the offer from Creigh Supply, too. I’d figured the more, the merrier—a.k.a., the more cash and bragging rights I’d get.

  What a stupid prick you used to be.

  “Thanks for setting that up,” Adler says quietly from the other side of the cab. He looks skittish, and I guess that’s my fault. Why should he trust my sudden kindness, when all I’ve done since he married my aunt is treat him like garbage?

  “No problem,” I tell him, even though I didn’t do much. Aunt Billie set up the meeting. I just let her drop my name, mostly because I didn’t think it still had any weight to it.

  Over lunch, Aunt Billie gushes about my dad having another baby at his age, like it’s some scandal. “It’s going to be so difficult to adjust, after all these years. He hasn’t changed diapers since...well,” she laughs, waving her fork at me, “since you were a baby.”

  “Yep. Been changing my own for over two decades.”

  Adler laughs. Aunt Billie elbows me, a silent reminder that this is a Nice Place.

  “I bet it’s a girl.” She twirls her fork like she’s eating pasta, not salad. “Your parents always wanted a daughter, you know. Not instead of a son,” she adds quickly, “but in addition to.”

  “Yeah. They wanted a big family.” My parents didn’t talk about it much, the fact I was their one-hit wonder before Mom needed a hysterectomy due to fibroids. But I knew they wanted more than what they got. Don’t we all.

  “She’d be happy.” Aunt Billie tops off my wine and dumps the rest into her glass, while Adler sips his cucumber water. God, model life would kill me. I pull my steak closer and eat the fat I initially ignored, because watching him pick at skinless chicken and grilled asparagus makes me ten times hungrier.

  “My mom?” I ask.

  She nods. “Your dad’s been so...not himself, since she passed. Meeting Megan was the first time I saw him really smile, like he used to. And the way he’s been talking about the new baby? He’s just as scared and excited as when your mother was pregnant with you.”

  “Dad was scared then, too?” I laugh.

  “Oh, God, yes.”

  “Why, though? They planned to have me.” Spent about thirty grand to do it, too. That sure didn’t quell my ego, growing up—learning I had a hefty dollar sign attached to my very existence.

  “That doesn’t make it any less scary. You start thinking about your own parents, and all the mistakes they made with you, and you swear to yourself you won’t make the same ones with your children...but then you make them, anyway. Or a mess of entirely new ones.”

  Sadness crosses her face. I get the feeling she’s thinking of the many, many mistakes she made with Wes and Delaney.

  “In some ways, your father’s got it easy—he’s been through this before and knows all the technical things to do. But he’s also got to deal with that fear all over again, and this time he knows it’s not unfounded. He knows it’s not a matter of if he’ll make mistakes...just which ones. And trust me, no matter how guilty he makes you feel for messing up, he’s blaming himself even more.”

  “But it’s not like Dad is responsible for my problems and mistakes,” I protest. “Kids make their own choices. He shouldn’t feel guilty.”

  Aunt Billie pats my arm with a soft laugh. “Parenthood runs on guilt, dear.”

  Outside, I thank them for lunch and part ways with a hug for my aunt, and another slightly-less-awkward fist bump with Adler. They wave me off from their cab; I walk to the subway station.

  At Wes’s building, I run into him on the steps, bringing Bowie back from a walk. “How was it?” he asks, while the dog licks the steak smell off my fingers.

  “Surprisingly...nice.”

  “Wow,” he says, as floored as if I’d told him his mother announced a new career as a nun. “Well, I was going to ask if you wanted a beer to unwind after combat, but I guess I don’t have to.”

  “Might take you up on that later. I need to crash for a few hours.”

  “Another late night pining after Fairy Lights, huh?” Wes gives me a charley horse on our way into the elevator. I knifehand him in the gut as revenge.

  “No,” I lie, “another late night listening to you and Clara fuck like two deaf horses. Especially you. Ever hear of a ball gag?”

  “You’re so cute when you’re jealous.”

  I knock his hat off his head, just because I can’t think of a comeback. Obviously, it’s not him banging Clara I’m jealous of—just how disgustingly happy he is now, even when she’s not around.

  “Things did get weird at one point, with your mom,” I tell him, when the elevator opens and Bowie yanks him ahead. “She got this really sad look on her face at lunch. I think she almost cried.”

  “About what?”

  “She was talking about my dad having another baby, and how parenthood is, like, nothing but constant fuck-ups. Or worrying you’re gonna fuck up.”

  Flipping through his key ring, Wes lifts an eyebrow and nods. “Well, my mother is an expert on that topic.”

  We go inside. My need for a nap forgotten, I accept the beer he hands me before we settle into the couch.

  “How’d you forgive her?” I blurt, then swig my drink so I’ve got something to do when he looks at me.

  “After she stole that money from me and Delaney, you mean?” he asks. I nod. He sits back and shrugs. “I mean...she apologized.”

  “Right,” I say slowly, “but it’s not like that fixed it. Even her giving the money back didn’t fix it, because the problem was that she took your earnings to begin with.”

  I don’t mean to let anger rise into my voice, but it’s tough. I’m still pissed over what Aunt Billie did to her kids, much as I love her. Because I love her, in fact. It’s painf
ul to watch people you care about screw up so supremely.

  “The apology was Step One,” he says, pointing the mouth of his beer at me. Some spills; Bowie laps it right up and whines for more until Wes throws a tennis ball, instead. “The rest was that she started working on being a better mom.”

  “Eh....” I make a wobbling motion with my hand. He laughs under his breath and picks at the label on his bottle.

  “Definitely still has stuff to work on,” he nods, “but she really does try. Besides, I don’t expect her to be, like, Supermom all the sudden. All I needed was enough effort to make her apology mean something.”

  “Sorry’s useless,” I mutter, “if you don’t back it up.”

  Wes nods again and taps his beer to mine, but I set it down and heft myself up.

  “Heading out? I thought you were tired.”

  “Fucking exhausted.” But either that espresso Adler got me is finally kicking in, or I’m running on nothing but the adrenaline of a new plan.

  The way my heart’s pounding, I’d say it’s the latter.

  “Just...thought of something I need to do.”

  “That’s a lot of money, son.”

  Dad sits back in his recliner after I finish babbling my plan. I’m still out of breath from it, plus the running I did between the subway stations and cab I took to get here. When he offers me one of Megan’s La Croix—which I can’t stand—I happily take it.

  “I know,” I pant, after chugging half the can. “Believe me, if I could get that kind of cash waiting tables, I would. But I can’t. Not in the timeframe I need it.” I wave my drink in the air like a half-assed toast. To fathers with money. “So...here I am.”

  He’s pretending to think about it. Solemnly, I wait, knowing this is just a formality. By now, Dad’s dividends rival what he used to earn on Wall Street. He and Megan won’t feel one bit of strain.

  Not that my pride isn’t absolutely destroyed, right now. I hate doing this. And I’m definitely not going to take something for nothing.