by Holly Hood
I cock my head to the side and take him in. “Griff.”
He drops his overnight bag on the floor and cocks his head to the side mocking me, his little hands going on his hips. “Hope.”
There’s a bit of silence and then he takes off for me. He wraps his arms around me and it’s hard to hold it together.
“Looks like someone is happy to see you,” Slade says joining us in the foyer. My mom smiles, just as happy everything has gone well so far.
Griffin lets me go and walks right up to Slade. He touches his arm, admiring all his tattoos. “These are cool.” Slade lifts him up and he touches his lip ring and runs a couple fingers across the bill of Slade’s hat.
Slade grins. “Thanks. I think they are too. Nice to meet you Griffin, you’re sister told me a lot about you.”
Mom and I watch in awe as Slade gets to know Griffin. Griffin is infatuated with his every move.
“You’re my sister’s boyfriend.” He pulls Slade’s aviators from the collar of his shirt and puts them on.
Mom crosses the room. “Hey Griffin. Wash up and we can have some dessert.”
I watch him tackle the stairs and when he’s gone I look over at Slade. “He loved you.”
My mom nods in agreement. “He so did.” She touches Slade’s arm. “I think it’s safe to say we all do.”
Slade tugs his hat down. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
My mom shakes her head. “No, thank you for making my daughter happy when everything in her life sucked because of her parents.”
I tear up. “Mom.”
“What?” She shakes her head. “I’m happy you found someone who makes you happy when you did. It’s a blessing.”
I hug her and we all go into the living room to wait for Griffin to come back.
“Gary made a cake, sort of a celebration for Griffin having you back,” she says.
I clap my hands at the thought of sweets and Slade shakes his head.
“Is she still obsessed with sweets?” My mom laughs, poking at me. “I remember when she would eat all the cookies in the cookie jar when she was little.”
Slade smirks. “This one time we went to the fair and she ate three cotton candies.”
I roll my eyes. “You are a liar.”
The doorbell rings. My mom jumps up.
“I wonder who that could be,” I say nestling into Slade on the couch. He smells amazing, and after being such a charmer to my family I want to jump his bones as a thank you.
He plays with my hair. “I like hearing all these stories about you.”
“I don’t,” I tell him.
We both stop talking when my mom’s voice echoes in the hallway. She’s upset and it gets louder and louder.
Slade and I take off to find out what the hell happened because everything went from calm to crazy in seconds.
I’m not happy when I round the corner.
“Dad,” I say.
My mom picks up the picture frames from the ground because from the looks of it my dad knocked them over. He stumbles towards the stairs.
“You can’t just walk in here like this,” my mom informs him. She sits the pictures on the table and shakes her head. “You need to leave.”
“You bring Griffin home and don’t even tell me?” His words come out in a flurry of chaos. He doesn’t make sense.
Slade cuts between me and my dad. “I don’t think now is the time to be doing this.”
Dad grabs the railing and tries to get back on his feet. “Oh look whose here.” He stumbles toward Slade and I react. I shove him back, there’s no way I will let him lay a finger on Slade.
“You need to leave.” I push him again. “Griffin is right upstairs and he doesn’t need to see you like this.”
Dad shakes his head. “I’m his father. He needs to see me. Griffin!”
Slade goes up the stairs when Griffin starts down them.
“Hey man, let’s go check out your room. I hear you have a wicked drum set,” he lifts Griffin off the stairs and disappears.
“I am calling the police,” my mom says when my dad settles back onto the stairs again.
“Has she told you about everything that has happened since she went away?” He hiccups. “Has she told you about Slade? Or is that off topic?”
I glare at him. He glares back.
“Dad, just go,” I beg.
“Please don’t let him up there,” she says.
I shake my head. “He will never get past Slade.”
My mom leaves the room.
I look at him, he’s disheveled and unshaven. He’s a mess.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I want to see my son,” he says. “I want my family back.”
“She’s happy. She’s happier than she has ever been because you’re not around.” I know I’m being harsh but I’m angry with him.
“I suppose you and your mother put your differences aside and you’re not angry at her anymore for what she did to this family.” He stands back up crashing into the table and the pictures fall back on the floor again.
“Hope, is everything okay?” Slade says from upstairs.
“It’s fine. Just stay with Griffin. My mom called the police.” I watch him look around.
“Charlie Knight called me the other day,” he tells me. I don’t even have to pull it out of him. “Hutch sent him my way. And I told him everything.”
I swallow. “Why would you tell him?”
“Because the world deserves to know what kind of person Slade is. And what he does to people.”
I shake my head.
“He’s looking for you.” He shrugs. “Maybe you knew it and that’s why you came home. You thought coming back to Georgia would get rid of your problems.”
I steady my shaking hands and bite down on my lip in order to not scream at him.
“It doesn’t work when you bring the problem home with you. And one way or another I am going to take care of this problem before it gets worse.”
I look away.
“Did you help him kill Pastor Dillinger?”
Before I can say anything my mom comes back into the room pocketing her cell phone. “They are on their way, Neil.”
He shrugs. “This is my house too.”
“You haven’t lived here in over two years,” she points out. She keeps her cool.
Dad sighs. “That guy upstairs with my son, he ruined your daughter’s life. If she doesn’t want to tell you I will.”
I cross my arms. “Dad, just shut up.”
My mom goes to the window looking for the cops.
“And he ruined my life,” he continues.
My mom closes the curtain and opens the door. “They’re coming.”
“This is bullshit.” He informs us, stepping out of the house onto the porch. “My house, but I have to leave.”
I watch from inside. I don’t have it in me to go outside and deal with him.
Two officers start up the steps. My mom explains what happened while my dad fails to stay upright and falls over one of her potted plants.
I sigh, realizing it’s not the first time I’ve watched him being handcuffed. It’s happened before. My mom looks at me, the same concern etched on her face I remember when I was little.
Just like me she’s coming undone each and every time he does this to us.
13
I pick at the sandwich Slade made me as I sit on the bed in his hotel room. We haven’t said anything in some time and it’s beginning to feel awkward.
After my dad made a scene in front of the entire neighborhood I needed to get away. I didn’t mean to but I cried all the way back to the hotel. Slade tried to comfort me but there wasn’t anything he could say to make any of what was going on better.
There are no words to make an alcoholic not an alcoholic. You can’t stitch up a broken heart.
Sometimes I think I was blinded my entire childhood, I thought my dad was this perfect man when he wasn’t.
He made o
ur beautiful family and then singlehandedly destroyed it. And you can’t come back after that.
I look over at Slade. “He’s blaming everyone but himself for what’s happened.”
Slade drops down beside me on the bed. “Are you going to eat your sandwich?”
I pick up the sandwich and sigh. “If you don’t want to hear it why don’t you just say so?”
“I didn’t say that.” He takes the plate away from me.
“Well, you’re not saying much at all.”
He drops back on the bed. I climb on top of him making sure he can’t dodge me.
“I am responsible for everything you have become,” he takes my hand in his. “As much as I love you I’ve screwed a lot up.”
I shake my head taking him by the chin. “Don’t ever blame yourself for who I am. I’m who I am because I’m in love with you.”
“I’ve put you through a lot of shit,” he argues, avoiding my stare down.
“My dad screwed a lot up.” I sigh. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re home and I see how happy that makes you. And even when you’re back here a lot of shitty stuff keeps happening because of me.”
I press my lips into his. “You are not a bad guy. You are a fantastic guy.” I kiss him again. “A wonderful guy.”
He kisses me back, his fingers slipping through my hair. And he’s looking at me and I feel a little better.
“I think maybe Georgia was a bad idea.”
And then I feel horrible. I pull myself off of him and get off the bed. I can’t believe I’m going through this all over again. I’m pretty sure he wants to bail on me.
“We came back here because of what we did.” If we stayed back in Cherry the entire town would have put our head’s on stakes and showcased us all over town.
Slade stands up and comes over to me. I see the worry all over him, in the way his eyes look at me. In the way his body feels when I move closer to him and press my head against his chest.
“I just want you to hold me and everything will be alright,” I tell him.
He wraps his arms around me. He doesn’t try to argue with me, he holds me the way I want him to.
Standing there with him makes me understand so much about my life. All the things that mattered don’t matter anymore when Slade is near me. I feel right when we’re together. And I don’t understand why it’s not the same for him.
Nothing is his fault. I’m happy because of him. He’s done more for me than any other person. We’re not messed up when we’re together.
And now all I can do is cry. I press my face into his shirt because something tells me he is not okay. I can feel it and I don’t know what to do to fix it. Sex isn’t going to fix this.
“Tell me what to do,” I beg. I pull him closer not wanting even a millimeter stealing what we have.
“I don’t know.” He’s angry, he tenses up when I touch his face and he pulls away when I try to kiss him. “I’m sitting here trying to figure that out. And I don’t have an answer.”
“I love you and you love me. What more can there be to figure out?”
“How I keep making your life worse. Let’s figure out how if two people are supposed to be together why everything is so fucked up.” He lets go of me, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know which way to fight anymore. I can only do so much. And nothing I am doing ever fixes anything, Hope.”
I wipe at my eyes.
“I don’t want to give up on us. But I feel like I am making everything harder on you. And it wouldn’t be so god damn hard if I didn’t care about you so much,” he says.
I turn away. I can’t look at him knowing he is right. Knowing everything we fight so hard to keep a hold of is slowly burning down. It’s turning to ash all around us and we are walking through the fire.
It’s not about love, if it was, things would be perfect and we would be fine. What’s happening between us is fatal. It’s tragic and I can’t breathe.
He walks up to me, touching my face. “The thought of being without you is more miserable than anything I’ve ever went through.” His kiss is deep and full of every emotion. Anger and sadness and devotion, it’s all in there behind his lips. “But I don’t want to hurt you over and over again.”
“You’re not hurting me,” I tell him, and I mean it. The way everything is hurts but not him.
He presses his head against mine. He takes my hands in his. “I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Promise me you will tell me when you can’t do this anymore.”
I squeeze his hands. “I promise.”
He pulls me close. “Because this inner voice keeps telling me I’m an idiot for ruining your life. But other parts of me want me to stay.”
I can imagine what parts he means. One being his heart. “What would you do if you weren’t here?”
“I would try to fix things so I knew you were alright. I would take care of my family. Make sure my sister is okay, she loses it sometimes when I’m gone.”
We move to the bed and he holds me. His arms around me and we talk, about everything we want. About all the things it would take to make us happy and all the reasons it seems life plays such cruel jokes on us.
I trail a finger over the brand on his chest. He watches me, giving me one of his famous Slade smirks.
“You have me forever,” his voice is soft. “You know that don’t ya?”
I nod. “Yeah. Even if everything falls apart, I know we’ll always be perfect for each other and in love with each other.”
“Forever,” he says against my ear.
“Forever,” I say back.
14
Outside in my backyard Griffin, Slade and I play ball. It’s been a full two days since he told me how he felt about coming to Georgia and his feelings about ruining my life.
I’ve said it as many ways as I can, Slade is and never has been the reason for my life turning out anything but wonderful. I don’t think I know how to convince him but I’ll always try to.
I can’t take my eyes off of him and Griffin as they romp in the backyard.
“Heads up,” Slade says tossing me the ball. He walks toward me once I pick it up off the ground and I throw it to Griffin.
“He really likes you,” I tell him.
Slade catches the ball. “I really like him.”
I smile and Slade raises an eyebrow. “What? Are you shocked I enjoy hanging out with your little brother?”
“No. It’s just a side I’ve never seen before.”
He rolls his eyes. “Another one of my great qualities. I’d make a good dad.”
I laugh at him. “Did you just say you would make a great dad?”
He catches the ball and nods. “Yeah. Don’t freak out. I don’t plan on knocking you up anytime soon.”
“Oh wow,” I say attempting to steal the ball from him. He doesn’t let it happen. He dangles it above my head.
“We’d make cute babies.” He smirks again.
“You’re crazy,” I say not playing into his teasing. We can barely survive in the world just the two of us. Having another person to protect sounds exhausting.
Slade tosses me the ball. “I have to take this call.”
I take over playing with Griffin while he talks on the phone. After a couple of minutes I realize he’s on the phone with Erica and Lucy.
And I can tell how much he misses them. And judging by the things he is saying they miss him too.
After a few more minutes he wraps up his conversation. And when he picks the ball up and starts another game of catch with Griffin I ask.
“Everything okay?” From the sound of things I don’t know if it is.
He tosses the ball. “Nothing really changes in Cherry. You know that.”
“I know. But how did they sound?”
Slade looks at me, playing with his lip ring it takes him awhile to say anything. “Erica told me she went to the grocery store the other day and a bunch
of kids threw eggs at her.”
I frown. I feel awful.
“Lucy said her truck was broke into. And they spray painted the side of it.” He doesn’t tell me what it said.
“I feel really bad,” I tell him. “Life sucked before all of this mess now it’s worse.”
Slade shrugs. “It’s Cherry. I’m not too surprised.”
I sigh. It’s not what I want to hear.
Griffin plows into me. “Let’s go get ice cream!”
I shake my head. “I’m not really feeling ice cream right now.”
Slade looks at me. “Don’t be like that. If Griffin wants ice cream I say we give it to him.” He chucks the ball at the porch. “What do you say, buddy?”
Griffin jumps on Slade and he pretends he knocks him over into the grass. It’s cute, watching his muscular frame covered in tattoos pretend to be vulnerable for once.
I follow the two of them out of the gate, a smile pinned on my face. Slade lifts him onto his shoulders and we start toward the ice cream store. It’s around the corner from our house.
“What are you doing?” Karsen yells from her porch.
Kidd is sprawled on the porch swing his head in her lap.
“We’re getting ice cream,” Slade informs her. “You guys should come.”
***
Most days a cookie dough blast would cure any problem I have but not right now. Every time Griffin looks up and giggles at Slade for making a silly face or doing something stupid the pain in my stomach grows.
I’m enjoying being home while things in Cherry are falling apart for his family. It doesn’t seem fair.
Karsen spoons a heaping glob of her banana split into Kidd’s mouth and looks over at me. “You missed one hell of a show the other night.”
I nod. “Slade said the owner loved them. He wants to have them there a couple times a week.”
Karsen nods. “Pretty soon they are going to be rock stars. I can feel it.”
Kidd leans back messing with the silver rings on his fingers. “Slade and I need a new name. I’ve been racking my brain but can’t come up with anything.”
Slade rubs the back of his neck, he takes a sip of his milkshake. “We’ll figure it out.”
Kidd shrugs. “We always do.”