My Best Friend's Brother (Hometown Heroes Book 3)

by G. L. Snodgrass

  I don’t know how long I sat there. As I’ve said before. Time gets messed up on the inside. No clocks. No windows. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. But each second, I hurt. Not just the physical pain, but the realization of what I had lost and would never have again. It was enough to make a man question life and why it was even worth fighting.

  Finally, one of the guards pulled the cell door open and nodded with his head for me to get out.

  My brow narrowed as I tried to figure out what was going on.

  “Your lawyer is here.”

  Mom, she must have done this. Once again, a deep sense of shame filled me. No way she could afford this.

  Sighing heavily, I pushed up off the bench and stepped outside the cell. The guard pointed to the end of the hall where a small conference room waited for me.

  Mr. Stewart sat at a small table. The same lawyer I had last time. He looked up from a file and flashed me a quick smile as he shook his head.

  “Do you make a habit of attacking three large very dangerous young men and beating them to a pulp?”

  I laughed. “Only when they deserve it.”

  He smiled and returned to reading the police report. Then took out another file, and somehow, I knew it was the record of my last conviction and my time inside.

  Closing the file, he folded his hands together and said, “Tell me what happened.”

  My gut turned over. No way was I letting Willie get away with this. Not again. So, I told him. Everything. Willies demands, my refusals, the three of them attacking me. Everything.

  He nodded slowly, occasionally making notes. Every so often shooting me a quizzical stare.

  “And no witnesses to any of this?”

  I thought of Amy at the gas station. But no way was I pulling her into this mess.

  “No.”

  He pursed his lips and opened the file once again then sighed heavily.

  “I don’t know. I’ll try and get the charges dismissed. In all honesty. It will depend on how strong the others stick together. But I know the prosecutor. She’s not an idiot. Maybe I can convince her. The Dawsons don’t have a very good reputation in this town. So maybe. In the meantime. You don’t talk to anyone without me there. Do you understand? Not the guards. Not the cops, no one.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. What could I say? Even if I did talk to them. They wouldn’t believe me. As for getting the charges dropped. He could try. But only as long as it didn’t cost Mom too much money.

  Besides. Even if he did. My world would still suck. Amy would no longer be a part of it.

  “It might take a few days,” he continued. “I don’t know If I can’t get them to drop the charges right away. They’re going to want a final report on the injuries on the other guys. So, you sit tight.”

  I laughed. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of choices.”

  He smiled sadly at me and started putting my files into a briefcase. “I’ll try to get you bail.”

  The idea sent a bolt of fear to my gut. I could well imagine Mom mortgaging the farm to pay for it. I knew that she’d never lose the money. I’d show up for trial. But once she mortgaged the land. There was no telling what might happen.

  “No bail,” I told him.

  He frowned for a second then said, “With your record, your age, the nature of the alleged crime. I don’t know that they will let you out on your own recognizance.”

  “I don’t care. But you make sure my mom doesn’t go into debt to get me out. Do you understand?”

  He studied me for a long second then nodded. “Okay. But, hopefully, I can get them to drop the charges.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I slipped past him and preceded the guard back to my cell. The idea of not getting bailed out really didn’t bother me. They would count any time served towards my sentence. So, it all worked out in the long run when you thought about it. In fact, every day in county and not prison was a good day.

  Besides. The idea of accidentally running into Amy was a prospect I wasn’t ready to face. As things stood now. I didn’t deserve to be a part of her life.

  .o0o.

  Amy

  Three days of pure misery holed up in my room. Half the time crying my eyes out. The other half of the time raging at the world. Mom thought I was going crazy. And she might have been right.

  She’d stick her head in the door and I’d glare at her. Daring to explode at any moment. She would wisely pull back and let me simmer.

  When Dad tried, I didn’t even bother to merely glare. I screamed at him. Literally screamed.

  Again, he had the good sense to leave me alone after that.

  Three days of this. No school. Nothing but wallowing in my own misery.

  It was Jenny who told me what happened. When she called, my heart stopped. We hadn’t spoken since the hospital. I had been too afraid to confront my worst nightmare. Too afraid to actually accept the new reality.

  “They dropped the charges,” she said breathlessly on the other end.

  “Really?” I asked as the tension in my stomach finally released. I had been so worried about him. My heart soared. Maybe now we could return to the way we were.

  “Yeah,” Jenny said. “I guess their story didn’t match up. The idiots couldn’t even lie right.”

  I glanced up at the ceiling and said a silent prayer of thanks. My biggest desire had been granted.

  “But,” Jenny continued, “the school is still expelling him. All of them in fact.”

  “What? That isn’t right. It wasn’t his fault. What was he supposed to do? Let them beat him up?”

  “I know, right. But they say they don’t care, rules are rules. Mom was on the phone with the principle all morning. But they aren’t going to back down. I get the feeling that they wished Luke had never come back. None of this would have happened if he had just stayed away.”

  My mind raced with the injustice and unfairness of life. Luke had tried everything to make it right …”

  “Can I talk to him?” I asked as my insides tightened into a knot. I held my breath while I waited for an answer.

  She paused for a long time, each second a twist to tighten the knot.

  “He’s not here,” she said finally.

  “Where did he go?” My world was still ending. We couldn’t fix this unless we had a chance to talk.

  “I don’t know. But he and Mom had a big fight while I was feeding Bailey. Even Grandma got worried enough that she came out to the barn. All I know is that he threw a suitcase into the back of the truck. Hugged Nellie, hugged me, and said that he had to take off for a while. That he’d write me.

  My heart stopped beating as my mind scrambled to process what she was saying. Write? That meant he would be gone for a long time. We weren’t talking hours. Not even days. Luke had left. Without saying goodbye.

  “I asked him about you. Honestly, he can be such a jerk,” Jenny continued. “But he told me what your dad said and how he sort of agreed with him.”

  It was as if someone had punched me in the stomach. A blow that knocked the wind out of me. He agreed with my father that he wasn’t good enough. How was that possible? And besides. By what right did he think that? I got to decide that for myself. Not him.

  How was this possible? Where did he go? NO! he couldn’t do this to me. Not Luke.

  “When did he leave?” I asked as I desperately wondered if he was on his way to me at that very moment. Maybe he had decided to whisk me away. To deny my father and his stupidity. An idea I was perfectly willing to entertain.

  “About an hour ago,” Jenny said with sadness. “And he turned east, not towards town,” she added.

  “East?” I asked as I tried to figure out why. Why had he left without saying goodbye? Because he said goodbye in the hospital, I reminded myself. He had already broken up with me. There was no need in his mind to do it again. That was like Luke in a way. He knew I had been hurt so there was no reason to do it again.

  Both Jenny and I paused for a lon
g few seconds as we felt the reality of the new situation fall over us. She had lost her brother. I had lost the love of my life.

  “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I said between sniffles. I needed to get off the phone and crawl into a ball of uselessness. I know it wasn’t very strong of me. But really, what else could I do? He wouldn’t even give me a chance to stand with him against my father.

  “Yeah, I understand,” Jenny said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. So am I,” I said. “So am I.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Amy

  My life became one day of sadness after another. He was gone. Really gone. Disappeared into the air like a forgotten piece of music.

  I was lost. Nothing mattered. My grades suffered. I stumbled through life as if I had become half a person. Everything was bland and blah. Colors blended together. Sounds didn’t register. My life had become one long boring monochrome existence.

  Jenny tried to pull me out of it. She would look at me sadly and slowly shake her head. But there wasn’t anything she could do or say that would make things better. We both knew it. There was only one way to fix things and that was impossible. He wasn’t there.

  It must have been two weeks after Luke left that my dad finally got tired of me moping around. Both he and mom were in the kitchen when I stepped in and opened the refrigerator to grab a Mountain Dew. My sugar intake had increased significantly since Luke left.

  They had quickly fallen into their old ways. It was as if they had never been apart. She would occasionally touch his arm. Or he would rub her shoulders. They gave each other secret looks. God, it was like living with two lovesick teenagers.

  An idea that was extremely ironic when you thought about it. Which of course I did. All day, every day. Their happiness was like a spike through my heart. It wasn’t fair.

  I shot them both my best evil stare then ignored them.

  Dad put his coffee cup down and said, “That’s enough Amy. You need to get over this. Your school work will suffer and you’ll never get into college.”

  I spun on my heels ready to attack. This was all his fault. Those awful things he had said to Luke had made him leave. My heart ached and he dismissed it as if I was whining about having a cold or the flu.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said as I put my hands on my hip. “Remember what you were like when Mom left?”

  She had the good sense to wince and pull her coffee cup up to take a sip.

  “You were a basket case,” I added just to drive the point home.

  “It’s not the same thing,” he exclaimed as he glanced at Mom. She put a hand on his arm, obviously hoping to keep him calm and to stop this from getting out of hand. But it was too late. We needed to have this out. The flash of anger inside of me had to be released.

  “You don’t get it. You never understood. It is the same. Even worse. He left because of you. I didn’t have to go through all of this if it wasn’t for you sticking your nose in where it didn’t belong.”

  “Amy,” he said with a heavy sigh. “You’re my daughter…”

  “Exactly!” I said. “I thought you wanted me to be happy.”

  “But you don’t understand. You wouldn’t have been. Not in the long run. I have to look out for your future. Don’t you understand.”

  “Why can’t you understand?” I said to him. “Luke is my happiness. For the rest of my life, there will always be a missing part. I know it sounds melodramatic and silly. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  He slowly shook his head. “You are seventeen. You have your whole life in front of you. There will be other boys. Other men. You will meet someone …”

  I rolled my eyes and growled at him. He would never understand.

  “You’re right, Dad, maybe I will,” I snapped. “I might even fall in love again. But I will never know what might have been. There will always be a fear in the back of my mind that things might have been better with Luke. And the sad thing is that deep in my gut I will always know, they would have been.”

  His brow knitted with worry as he stared at me as if he didn’t know who this strange silly girl was.

  All I could do was walk away. He’d never understand. I think Mom might have. But she was taking his side. She sort of had to. Their re-found connection was too tenuous to risk.

  That was my new life. The only excitement was an occasional fight with my parents. The rest of the time I floated through life like a useless blob waiting for Luke to come back.

  When I walked by his locker, I would remember what he looked like. His wide shoulders. The way his eyes danced when he was happy. Every morning I would have to force myself to remember that he was gone. But deep down, I continued to hope he would come back.

  I have no idea how long that might have lasted if Jenny hadn’t changed everything. We had just met at our lockers like we did every morning when I caught her giving me a strange look from under brow. I knew that look, that was the one she gave me when she had information she didn’t want to share.

  “What?” I asked, thinking it might be about Chip. She worked so hard to keep that stuff away from me. I know she was head over heels for the guy. But like I said, she didn’t flaunt it.

  “I got a letter,” she said in almost a whisper.

  My heart jumped. That look told me it was from Luke. Why else would she be worried about telling me?

  “Where is he?” I demanded. “Is he okay?”

  She nodded, “He’s in South Dakota.”

  “South Dakota?” I yelled. Everyone in the hall turned to see who was losing their mind.

  Jenny nodded. “Yeah, he says he was working on an oil well. I guess in the fracking fields.”

  My heart began to beat again as I realized he was still gone. He would always be gone. Suddenly, my denial was replaced by a burning anger.

  “Fracking? Why?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He just said he was working on an oil well in South Dakota and that he was enjoying it. That he was doing good. Stuff like that.”

  “Did he say anything about me?” I asked as I held my breath.

  She slowly shook her head.

  The jerk. He walked out of my life and he didn’t even have the courtesy to ask about me. Then I thought about the mail at home. Maybe he had written me. Had my parents hid it from me? It took every bit of willpower to stop myself from racing home and searching the house.

  Instead, I spent the day dancing around like a little girl hoping to go to the circus. But in the back of my mind, I knew there would be nothing there. He was gone.

  That didn’t stop me from going through the pile of mail on the dining room table when I got home. Mom gave me a quick frown. I don’t think I’d ever gotten a letter in my whole life.

  Nothing but bills and catalogs. My heart fell. He hadn’t written me. It was as if he’d stopped thinking about me. My world crashed as I raced to my room to throw myself onto my bed and cry.

  One last, long cry.

  I even thought of bargaining with any and all gods. What could I do? What would it take to make this pain go away?

  But of course, there was nothing. And just like that, the depression returned.

  But depression can’t last forever. At least I can’t. Slowly the sadness was replaced by a numbness as I slowly came to accept that he was gone from my life. We are talking months here. Day after day of the lost feeling slowly falling away.

  I noticed the change slowly. I was able to smile at a pretty sunset. Of course, I wished Luke was there to share it with him. But at least I was able to smile sadly.

  That was followed by a growing calmness around my parents. I could be in the same room as them without my anger bursting out all over the place. We even began to talk civilly to each other.

  But the closeness was gone. That sense of trust had been broken and I doubted it would ever come back.

  Jenny was my rock throughout that time. Which is surprising when you think about it. It was her brother and she ha
d been so worried about our breaking up and it ruining her and mine’s friendship. In many ways, it drew us even closer.

  She was missing her brother. She had finally gotten him back and once again he was gone.

  But she at least had Chip. For me, there was nothing. A lonely existence that slowly eroded my soul. I didn’t even have a picture of him. How was that possible? How had I spent all that time with him and never taken a picture?

  It was because I had never imagined it ending, I realized. I had been so blind.

  The school year finally ended. I had been able to pull my grades up to some kind of respectability towards the end. But deep down. I didn’t really care. I was just doing it because it was what people expected. Besides, it sort of ate up the time.

  But now I had a summer to kill. A long slow ten weeks to live through. I thought about getting a job, but I just couldn’t seem to muster the energy. Instead, I spent days on end in my room buried in books. Novels of every kind. Anything to pull me out of my own world.

  By the time the end of August came around, I was almost looking forward to school. It was going to be my senior year in High School. A person should look forward to that, I would tell myself and was almost to the point of believing it.

  I was walking down the stairs going over my class schedule when the front doorbell rang. Without really thinking about it I opened the door to find my dream standing there.

  Luke. He looked big and handsome. A red flannel with rolled up sleeves. Jeans and boots. Just like I remembered him. His face was very tanned with a tiredness about his eyes. God, he looked good.

  My heart stopped as my mouth dropped open. Just like that. Everything was back. All the hope and ache. The need for him. Everything flooded back into me. All of the long agonizing slog through getting over him was wiped away by one silly smirk.

  “Hi Amy,” he said with a seriousness that surprised me. “Is your father home?”

  “In the study,” I answered as my mind scrambled to understand what was going on. He had come back into my life and the first thing he does is ask about my father. Why hadn’t he scooped me up into his arms?