“Coach probably won’t be able to get ahold of her. Linc says Lisa’s new boyfriend keeps her pretty high, so she doesn’t have a huge need to scramble or steal—and avoiding places like the hospital where phrases like abuse and neglect are often thrown around is always good for Lisa.”
“Has it always been like this—with her mom? The boyfriends and drugs and public scenes?”
Colt nods, eyes serious while he stares at something ahead—maybe nothing. “I met Linc in fourth grade. We were both being dragged into the principal’s office on a regular basis for fighting, skipping school, being a nuisance in class, that kind of thing. It didn’t take Sir Shithead long to figure out that what we both were was starving. My mom was just beginning to disappear… not coming home every night, not buying groceries when she was home.” Colt’s voice goes cold, but unlike Lincoln, there is no detachment when he speaks. I think about what Lincoln said that night at the end of summer—how it’s harder on Colt because he knew his mom when she was sober; when she was good.
And he misses her.
Somewhere inside of my chest, something twists, and my own parents flash through my mind so I’m remembering how my dad ordered me here, and then how my mom was already in Palm Springs on a “retreat” when I was packing to leave. How they sent me on a plane, and haven’t worried enough to check in with me since.
I shut that down immediately, not ready to analyze anything I’m feeling.
“Lincoln’s mom was already putting all of the money they managed to scrounge up into a pipe or a needle,” he continues. “A few years later, she became known as Lay-down-Lisa, prostituting herself for a fix. She was locked up three times for possession, and once for solicitation, when we were in middle school and beginning high school. The first two times, Lincoln was put into a foster home.”
My skin is humming and my stomach is tight. I feel like a joke, a child; someone who came here because his parents couldn’t deal with his antics—antics that I can’t even remember the purpose of at this minute.
Why was I mad?
Why was I lashing out?
Why didn’t I care what happened to me, to anyone?
While I always knew there was another side to the world, one where people struggled, it never hit me just how different it was than the one I lived in. It’s not another side to the world—it is another world, one where police understand a little girl and boy are in a neglectful and abusive situation and can’t—or won’t—do anything about it.
One where parents aren’t worried about whether their kids eat or have somewhere to sleep… if they’re safe.
One where kids learn to make a meal from school last until the next day when they can get another.
And one where a girl lands in the hospital, and the only people who are concerned are her best friend and her coach… and a guy with complicated feelings.
“Why does she stay?”
“The fuck she gonna go?” His voice is tired, and his words resigned, like he’s asked himself the same question over and over without an answer. “Her mom’s her only family—for better or worse, Lincoln needs someone who can secure an apartment for a week at a time, or find enough money for necessities when Linc’s own cash-flow dries up. She needs someone who’s responsible for her, even if it’s only forty percent of the time.”
“But she’s not—responsible,” I say, my teeth clenched. “Christ, her daughter’s been in foster care more than once. She goes days on end without eating when she’s younger, and now she’s in the goddamn hospital because she can’t afford the tools she needs to keep herself alive.” That, more than anything, is killing me. This disease… it’s consuming, life altering, and somehow, the world was cruel enough to look down at an already beaten girl, one who fights for every day she stays alive and unharmed, and decide that she could handle one more thing.
I block the idea that one day, one more thing might be the thing that takes her permanently. That twisting in my chest happens again, only this time, it’s more like a rip, a shredding of tissues and pulverizing of arteries until I can barely breathe my heart’s thumping so fast.
“She shouldn’t have to live like this,” I grind out.
“You don’t think I know that, Rich Boy?”
I lean forward, ignoring his barb because I am a rich boy, and goddammit, I can change this. “She needs to get out of her and go somewhere that people who care about her can be there—can take care of her and get her what she needs every day.”
Colt’s body goes immobile, and he finally turns his head to look at me. “Don’t. Don’t go there, Ford.”
Too late. “She almost died.” My voice carries none of its usual control, the adrenaline pumping through me because I can’t get the image of Lincoln from today out of my head—the one where she was too tired to stand let alone run, but she did it because… because it’s all she has. Running, letting it go and taking control, that’s Lincoln’s release. She craves that freedom the same way I craved the speed and recklessness of driving too fast.
Now, though, I’m starting to crave something—someone—different. And she’s laying in a hospital bed.
The angrier and more panicked I get, the calmer Colt seems to appear. “She was a little low—dangerous, but not life ending. Not a coma,” he says, turning back to face the hallway leading to where they’ve put Lincoln.
“But it could have been!” I explode. “Jesus Christ, it could have been. Don’t you get that?”
Now his jaw clenches, and his eyes veer to mine again. “I get it, Rich Boy. Trust me.”
I watch him swallow, and understand that I’ve sucker-punched him by saying what I did—that Colt does care about Lincoln, and for years, he’s done everything he could to take care of her, even when it probably meant he went without something. Just like calling me Rich Boy reminds me of one important detail: I am not a part of this life—I’m just a visitor, one whose life does not depend on either of the people like theirs depend on each other.
A distant internal warning bell tells me I’m in over my head—that what I’ve come to feel for Lincoln is no comparison to what Colt feels for her, because the entire past decade of his life has been spent making sure that she survived, no matter what.
“Just like I get that being here means not only is Lincoln being treated, but that some good-will nurse or doctor will probably find a way to slip sample products into her bag before she goes—one that will save her from scrounging up the money to buy shit she needs and can’t afford for a little bit. It might be test strips, or pens, or something else, and for a few weeks, maybe even a month, she’ll be able to manage her diabetes like a regular person.”
I stare at Colt, acknowledging that he’s angry, like me. But unlike me, he understands one crucial element of life that I’m only just beginning to learn: some people are never safe. No matter what.
We don’t talk any more after that. We sit and wait, the clock ticking away the minutes until it’s past nine and the doctor finally comes out.
“Are you here for Lincoln Brewer?”
We both stand, but it’s Colt that speaks. “Can we see her?”
He nods. “Just one of you.”
I almost step forward before I catch myself. Colt doesn’t hesitate, already halfway down the hall when I get it together enough to look up. Since I have the strong urge to race after him and take his place, I sit down, resting my elbows on my knees, reminding myself that this is a girl I’ve only known for a little while…one I have no claim on, no right to. But Colt… he’s her family. It’s always going to be him who goes down that hallway.
And it should be, since this is only a temporary stop in my life. Even as I say it, the words don’t feel right.
It’s only ten minutes from the time he left to the time he walks back out and motions for me to follow without stopping. When we get to his truck, he revs the engine to life and peels out of the parking lot, rolling through several stop signs before he hits Pacific Bouleva
rd.
“They’re going to release her in a few hours.”
“Where are we going?”
“Pharmacy to get some things. Got cash on you?” I nod. “Good. We need to call Maggie and Beau. I want to bring her back to the farm tonight—keep monitoring her. She’s tired, and her body has been through the wringer; I don’t know if she’ll be able to wake up on her own and administer insulin tonight, or monitor her levels.”
The fist that’s been in my stomach eases. I just nod. “You done this before?”
He doesn’t look at me. “She’s been my best friend for a long time.”
“Do you love her?” The words are there before I can stop them, and though I wish like hell I’d never said them, knowing they reveal far more about me than him, I can’t help but hold my breath while I wait for his answer.
He waits a second, eyes trained on the road, and then he nods. Knowing it’s none of my business doesn’t stop me from asking the next question. “Then why aren’t you with her?”
His hands are clenched tightly on the wheel, but the rest of him is stoic, almost empty while he goes through the motions of flicking on his blinker, checking his blind spot, and turning into the CVS parking lot. When the truck stops, neither of us moves, our faces hidden in the shadows.
“Lincoln and I are best friends. I love her more than anyone or anything—but it’s not because I want to sleep with her.” He turns to look at me, and I don’t look away, because yeah, I might have thought of being with Lincoln like that in the past few days.
“Your feelings seem pretty intense for two best friends.”
“Because they are. We aren’t normal, Ford.” He says it in a way that reminds me of the hospital, where he already understands Lincoln more than I ever will. “We didn’t grow up with parents who were kind of obnoxious or selfish—we didn’t grow up in houses where someone gets mad because you embarrassed them, or got a bad grade. We grew up needing each other because there was no one else. Goddammit, there was no one else to love or feed or care only about us.”
He sighs, running his hand over his short hair. “I love Lincoln more than myself. And, because of that, I can see that she doesn’t belong here. When she graduates, she needs to get as far away from Albany as she can, and she needs to make the break permanent. It’s the only way she’ll ever get a chance to be more than the sick girl whose mom is a junky-whore. In order to do that, she can’t think someone or something is waiting for her, hurting when she leaves.” Colt’s head turns in my direction, and, even in the shadows, I can see the weight resting on him, the one he carries in secret every day that I’ve just forced him to acknowledge. “I love Lincoln,” he says one last time. “But I’ve known from the very beginning that I can’t be in love with Lincoln. I won’t leave,” he says before I can ask why. “This place… it’s all I have. Love it or hate it, I can’t leave it. Lincoln can’t stay.”
He hurts himself to save her.
The story Lincoln told me a week ago flashes through my mind. Colt’s doing what neither of our fathers could—he’s letting the girl he loves go. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a romantic love—he loves her more than himself, and because of that, he’ll let her go. That’s his grand gesture.
“How do you do it?” He raises a questioning brow. “Love her and stand back. How do you know you’re never going to see her again and still manage to survive?” My voice is clear, none of the desperation leaking through, but I’m tense, near ravenous for his answer.
Tell me, I want to scream. Tell me how I walk away from her and don’t think of her every day.
He finally laughs, like he knows why I’m really asking. “By knowing that loving someone doesn’t make you good enough for them. I’m not enough for her, and I don’t have the answers,” he says. “I don’t know how to get her through the rest of her life—so I love her now, get her through now, and understand that part of loving someone means doing everything in your power to make sure she has everything she needs to save herself so that one day, when you’re stuck here or somewhere else, doing the only thing you know how and working, battling all of your demons that just won’t leave you the fuck alone, she’s far away, becoming the person she was meant to be, all on her own.”
My body is weak and my emotions are stripped when the doctor finally signs my release papers. Colt is there in the waiting room like he promised he would be when he came back to see me.
“Don’t you forget to use those tablets, darling, you hear? And the socks,” the nurse pushing my wheelchair says. “Oh, they are heaven. We’ve heard such good things about them. They really keep those feet from getting blisters.”
I nod, patting the goodie bag she jammed full of test strips, socks, tablets, and other Type 1 paraphernalia. “Thank you,” I say again.
“Take care of yourself.” She slows the wheelchair when we enter the waiting room. Colt stands, his broad body snapping to attention, his eyes sweeping up and then down, like he’s making sure I’m whole. “She’s good to go.” Colt nods, stepping forward and taking position behind the chair. Experiences tells me that they’ll make sure I’m wheeled out of the hospital. I used to be embarrassed. Now, I’m just grateful. The idea of walking makes me tired.
He pushes over the threshold of the emergency room doors, and his truck is already waiting. When Ford jumps out of the passenger side, I wish I was standing.
Pride is a weakness I don’t often give into. It’s like I admitted to him all those weeks ago when we were stacking hay bales together: sometimes, pride has to be sacrificed for some of us to get by each day. But there are also times when we take a moment to have pride—like racing and being good at it. Like going to school and overcoming even though we do it on empty stomachs and no sleep because we worked until midnight the night before.
Remembering what Ford said to me that day, and then this afternoon when he caught me at my locker, I wish I was walking—at least standing, so I didn’t have to look at him and accept that I was wrong. I wasn’t okay to run today. However much I needed to, I wasn’t okay, and I should have been smarter.
Before I have too long to stare at him, the wheelchair is stopping. I go to stand, but he steps forward as Colt reaches down and lifts me.
“I can do it.”
“Not tonight.” Colt doesn’t say more than that, just turns to his truck and places me gently on the bench seat in the middle. Ford jumps in directly after, my bag of goodies in his hand. I shiver when he sets it on the floor and leans over to click my lap-belt for me. Without a word, he strips off his sweatshirt and tugs it over my head.
When he’s done fussing, he doesn’t scoot back over to his side of the cab. He stays right next to me, his large frame warming mine where it presses into my side.
Colt jumps in and revs the engine, checking to make sure I’m buckled before shifting into DRIVE. He pauses when he sees Ford’s sweatshirt on me, eyes flicking to where his cousin has thrown his arm over the back of the seat. Ford’s not touching me, but something about the way his arm rests and his body is angled… Colt’s eyes meet mine, and in them I see something new, something I’m too tired to understand.
Before I shift, uncomfortable with the look and the way I can feel Ford staring at Colt, Colt turns away and focuses on driving us home. When he goes the opposite way of my mom’s apartment, I say his name.
“You’re staying at the farm tonight. I already called Beau and Maggie—they’re expecting you. Maggie set my bed up in the guest room and got new sheets for you.”
Beside me, Ford tenses, but he doesn’t say anything. He also doesn’t back away.
The ride outside of city limits toward the farm is wracked with heavy silence. The radio is on low, and it’s nothing more than a muffled sound with the roar of the truck’s engine. In the driver’s seat, Colt stares straight ahead, both hands clenched tightly on the oversized wheel. I can see his jaw clenching and unclenching, and his knuckles get a little whiter every few seconds.
Instead of trying to figure it out, I give in to my exhaustion and close my eyes, allowing the rumble of the big truck and the warmth of Ford’s body heat to lull me to sleep.
It feels like mere seconds after I close my eyes that they are fluttering open again while I try to decipher why it feels like I’m flying. The noise and warmth of the truck is gone, but I’m still warm. And the smell… I lean my head to the side and inhale deeply, drawing the spicy, woodsy scent into my nostrils.
A low chuckle sounds from above me, the rumble transferring vibrations against my cheek.
“You smelling me because I stink, Blondie, or because you’re hungry?”
“Because it’s you,” I mumble, a little tipsy. Exhaustion, leveling out my numbers… it always takes a while after a crash to come back to myself.
Right now, I don’t feel in control of my body, a lot like when I smoke or drink. The world is a little fuzzy, and with this feeling of Ford holding onto me, I don’t really care if it ever comes back into focus.
I keep my eyes closed and let Ford get me where we’re going. It feels good—this state of half-consciousness, and I let my brain turn off, listening to the words people say, but never responding. Ford will do it. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.
People talk, their voices floating in and out, and each time Ford answers them, I hear it in the rumble of his chest, those vibrations working from him to me. I snuggle closer, glad when his arms tighten.
When the world shifts again, he disappears, and my eyes fly open. I meet those dark eyes—the same ones I’ve been seeing my whole life, except these ones… the look inside of them is different. It makes me feel different.
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