by L. J. Stock
“Why did she think you needed your own bathroom?”
“Does it matter?” Sheer embarrassment was what stopped me from answering that immediately. I didn’t make excuses for my father or his behavior, but I didn’t advertise how bad things got sometimes either.
“Not really,” he said, then took a bite of his sandwich and chewed. Grabbing a family pack of chips, he slipped them under his arm and grabbed two sodas while I fixed my own sandwich. “That’s not to say I’m not curious.”
I bought myself some time by shoving the sandwich into my mouth and packing everything back into the cooler. By the time I took a bite and swallowed he had one eyebrow raised.
“I, uh, walked in on something no kid should ever have to see.”
“Damn. Your dad and some chick?”
“Worse,” I said, heading back to the hood of my car and keeping his glance over the top. “His friend, and a drunk woman who was… uh, on her knees.”
“Shit.”
“My dad felt guilty. It was the only reason he agreed to Jen’s terms.”
“Well, she certainly had a point. How old were you when this happened?”
I blew all the air from my lungs, my cheeks ballooning as I did. Sliding my butt back up onto the hood of the car, I swung my legs around and leaned back against the windshield, taking the soda that Dustin offered as he settled onto his side. I really didn’t want to answer the question, but it wasn’t that big of a deal either. By that point, Megan and I had discovered her dad’s porn collection. I knew what was what and her mom had given us the talk already. I just hadn’t expected a viewing of oral before I knew the true meaning of the word.
“I was twelve.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, well, it was the first and last time. I wasn’t even the one who told Jen. She called about something unrelated, and Dad just assumed I’d told her. He promised it would never happen again. Of course, her reply was…” I changed my voice to a deeper Texan lilt. “You’re damn straight it ain’t never happening again, Jeffrey. You will build that girl her own bathroom, or I will make sure the right people know how that little girl is living.”
“Who were the right people?”
“Any cop or CPS person who would listen.”
“Why didn’t she go to the CPS?”
“I begged her not to. My dad is an asshole, but this is my home. If she’d called, there’s no telling where I would have ended up. It’s not like there are many people fostering here in Childress. I have one friend in the world—”
“Two,” he corrected with a grin.
I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t make friends easily, and I wanted to stay. So she promised she would protect me any way she could. She even offered to become a foster parent so she could take me in, but I refused. I couldn’t do that to them. She always goes above and beyond, though. When her momma got too old to drive and was put in the retirement village in Amarillo, she gave me this beast.”
I patted the hood of my car and smiled broadly. The day she’d given me the car was the day she’d given me my freedom and a way to escape. She was the only reason I’d learned how to drive. Megan and I had taken our test on the same day.
“Does your dad even know you have a car?”
I shook my head. “I park it behind the big barn in the yard. If he knew I had it, he’d send me on beer runs.”
“You’re sixteen.”
“He doesn’t care. He’d just tell Hank to sell it to me via proxy… for him.”
“Your dad’s a loser.”
I took a bite of my sandwich and shrugged, pulling my legs under me as I swallowed. “We don’t get to pick them.”
“Shit, I know that’s right. My dad is a hard-ass. He wants what’s best for me, but he wants me to follow Rett’s path, only do better. The better came only after Rett lost his startup ranch in a stupid lawsuit. Now I’m paying for his mistakes.”
“I’m not sure which is worse.”
“Well, I have Mom as a buffer, so I think you win that one.” He laughed quietly and opened the family bag of chips, offering them to me before digging in himself. “Do you remember your mom?”
“Of course I do. I was eight when she died.”
“What was she like?”
“Amazing,” I said, my lips curling into a smile. “I remember coming home from school, and when I got off the bus all the windows would be open, and she’d be playing her albums while she cleaned. When I walked through the door, she scooped me up, dancing and singing until my sides hurt from laughing. We’d make dinner for Dad together every night while we talked about what I’d learned at school. She was never content with just sitting still. On the weekends we’d always end up somewhere different, exploring the world around us. The farthest we ever went was Raton Pass. She wanted me to see the mountains.”
“She sounds amazing.”
I smiled and looked up at the boughs of the trees as I let the image of her form in my mind. Mom’s hair was dark like mine, and those green eyes were filled with laughter and love whenever she saw me. She had been beautiful in a way I knew I never could be. She’d been the one to give me a foundation of what love should be. My greatest fear was losing that completely and losing the ability to love anyone because I was too afraid of being hurt again.
“She was,” I said, blinking back into my reality. “And my dad was amazing when she was alive, too.”
We both ate in silence for a while. These thoughtful moments were growing into a habit when one of us said something profound—two thinkers, turning over their responses before speaking them aloud. In this case, I had nothing more to say on the issue, even though I could talk about my mom for hours with Jen. Their past together helped. Jen had been such good friends with my mom that she could fill in the blanks with some of the things that were a little foggy for me. Talking about her with other people—people who hadn’t known Mom—felt strange because so many of my memories of her included my dad, and people only ever remembered the man he was now. Most hadn’t thought about who he used to be.
I didn’t like to defend him; he was who he was now, but at the same time, talking about the man he had been felt as though I was being disloyal to Mom. The great part of him had died with her, and I’d grown up with what was left behind.
As darkness took over the small grove of trees, the sounds of the night grew louder, mingling with the melody of the music still playing quietly from my car. There were no town lights to see by out here, and the spattering of stars that mingled with the dwindling sunlight was faint from below the canopy of trees. This was always my favorite time of the evening—the changes of day to night when the sun handed off to the moon. Closing my eyes, I listened to the song playing and hummed along quietly, not quite confident enough to sing with someone else so close to me.
The two of us must have laid there for an hour or two before I felt his hand brush over my wrist, seconds before his fingers intertwined with mine. There was nothing more to say, but the touch made us both relax, making the silence even more comfortable than it had been. The years I’d been coming out here, even before I could drive, I was used to curling up against the trees and listening to the songs as they surrounded me. I’d never once thought about how nice this would be having company, and yet I found myself regretting something I never had until this moment, with this particular guy.
How did you miss something you’d never had before?
Chapter Four
The red brick buildings of Childress High School hadn’t changed much over the years I’d been attending. Much like the buildings, my attitude about the place hadn’t changed, either. Most days I walked into the building feeling nothing. No eagerness to learn. No thrill of seeing the friends I’d missed at the weekend, and no promise of academic splendor. School was just part of my daily routine; something I had to do before I could escape this town and my unvarying life within the confines.
To my surprise, the routine that had made me so complacent in the past
wasn’t the case that morning. Standing by my car and pulling my bag over my shoulder, I felt what I could only describe as excitement. The residual butterflies from the time I’d spent with Dustin over the past weekend were still buzzing around inside of me like a promise, and the building standing in front of me now held a very real guarantee of seeing him again.
Soon.
“Where have you been this weekend? I was calling almost all day yesterday.” Megan bounced her ass off the car beside me before she hit the flat side of the vehicle with her shoulder and twisted to lean her back against it. “Mom and I went to see a movie in Altus and wanted to invite you.”
“My dad had a late one, so I turned the ringer off,” I said casually, rolling so I was standing like her with my back against the car watching the buses unloading their cargo. Dumping my bag by my feet, I stretched my arms over my head, enjoying the pop of my vertebrae. I’d stayed out later than I normally did because I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Dustin, and he’d been reluctant to go home at all.
“What was it last night?” she asked—her normal spark of humor at my musical obsession flaring.
“Sunday Shuffle. All decades in an epic mix.” I emulated the DJ and rolled my head to smile at her.
“They play our song?”
“No, sadly. Next time we go to the mall, I’m going to find a CD of that one. They just don’t play it enough.”
Megan nodded in agreement and glanced at me thoughtfully from the corner of her eyes. “You know, Mom gave you a cell phone for a reason, Mik. I tried calling that, too, but I got nothing. You're out God knows where with no one around to help if something happens. You really should have your phone.”
I grimaced at her. I hadn’t charged the phone since I’d received the box with the headset inside. A cellphone was just something else to ring unexpectedly and draw attention to myself when all I wanted was to blend into the background. I also preferred not to be accessible to anyone at any time. Being that available seemed like a bad idea, I didn’t want to have a technological leash in my pocket everywhere I went. Everyone had one, of course, but we’d more than established that I wasn’t everyone.
“Come on, before we’re late,” Megan said with a half-laugh as she rolled her eyes at me.
Scooping my bag from the asphalt, I flung it over my shoulder and followed her toward the doors to the corridor that led to our homeroom. Once we were inside, I would blend into the walls and hide behind her dazzling personality. Using Megan as a shield was one of my most effective tools at blending into invisibility. Once we went our separate ways, the effect was complete, and I would disappear into the crowd.
My shoulder was brushing against the lockers as we rushed forward, but as Megan turned the corner ahead of us, I found myself hauled backward by my bag jerking in the opposite direction. Before I could lose my footing, two strong arms slid under mine and set me right on my feet, followed by what sounded like an amused chuckle at my clumsiness in the face of the sudden directional change.
“I’m starting to see why I never noticed you before,” Dustin said, gripping my hand and forcing me to turn so he could tow me away from my intended destination.
“But–”
“I told Mr. Weston you were here, but you had a meeting with the counselor. Since he didn’t even recollect your name, I’d say you’re safe to come with me.”
“Okay,” I said, a giggle slipping from my lips without permission. “Where are we going?”
“Roof of the gym.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather talk to you than listen to Mr. Morley drawl on about city sustainability.”
“Why? It sounds enthralling.”
Missing the sarcasm, Dustin slowed, stumbled and looked over his shoulder at me in question. Only when he saw my smile did he started shaking his head and continue onward, a quiet laugh sounding as he pulled me close behind him and peered around a corner.
I couldn’t understand why he’d accosted me in school. I knew he and I had developed a decent friendship in the three days we’d spent together. He knew almost as much about me as Megan did now. I just hadn’t expected him to come and find me. I’d been prepared to steal glances at him, while he surrounded himself with his friends and acted as though life was normal. I wasn’t familiar with situations like the one we were in, but ignoring me in the halls would be what most people did. According to Megan, acting normal was what Libby had been doing in the face of her heartbreak.
By the time the two of us reached the roof of the gym, the warm Texas morning air had heated considerably. I could already feel the band shirt I was wearing clinging to my back as the material soaked up the beads of moisture sneaking down my spine. I tried to pry my damp fingers from Dustin’s, but he was relentless, continuing over to a structure sitting in the middle of the stone roof. My eyes widened with surprise as he slowed, his hand dipping into his pocket before pulling out his keys.
“What the hell is this?” I asked as he unlocked the door, tugged us inside, and flicked on a lamp sitting just inside the door. I was immediately thankful for the small window unit that started blowing frosty air into the space when Dustin flipped that on, too.
“The team calls this Coach’s Retreat.” He tapped his nose and pulled back a ragged curtain that revealed a tiny kitchen, a couch, and a twin bed covered in a blanket with the school mascot in the middle. “He hasn’t come up here since he quit smoking during my sophomore year, so he gave me the key.”
“Just you?”
“I am the key master.” He’d lowered his voice to make the word sound insidious. “He said I’d earned the right.”
Stunned, I released my bag, ignoring the thump of books inside as it landed, then dropped myself onto the bed, unafraid of what message that gave because we’d already established our boundaries. Dustin had made himself more than clear that we were nothing but friends, and I was good with that classification. I trusted him enough not to think twice about where I sat or what connotations the actions held. Though that didn’t seem to stop me from flirting unashamedly.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Dustin Hill? Because you could have at least sprayed a little something to take away the smell and put some Christmas lights up to soften the atmosphere. Bare bulb lights are a little harsh, don't you think?”
“I like the way you think, but…” He held up a finger and pulled a radio out from under the twin bed. “I think this will be far more enticing for you.”
After twisting the dial a couple of times, my favorite station—the one I couldn’t get anywhere in town—came in loudly with perfect clarity. The sound was even clearer than what I was able to get in my small grove of trees. Standing up and pointing between the radio and him, I grinned and bounced on my toes in delight. “Are you freaking kidding? You get so many points for that, Hill.”
“I thought I might. It’s also a little bribe so you won’t think I’m an absolute pussy.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting him to tell me. Maybe that he couldn’t be seen with me in school, or that our friendship couldn’t happen because he was the most popular guy in school, and I was a nobody who would just drag his reputation down to a mere human. Anyone else, and that would have absolutely been the case, but even as those thoughts drifted through my head, I knew better. I felt like after the weekend I knew him better than that, so I tried to keep the flare of anxiety to a minimum.
“A bribe?” I asked cautiously.
“Yes.” He shrugged his shoulders and pushed his hands into his pockets before he started fidgeting again. “When I got home last night, my dad was waiting up for me. I thought he was going to give me a break. Instead, he gave me an ultimatum. I either obey his rules, or I move out and cut all ties.”
“With your family?”
“All of them,” he said grimly, dropping to sit on the bed and pulling me down beside him. The emphasis on all told me his dad had used his mom as blackmail. Dustin dragged in a deep breath and cupped my hand in b
oth of his. “So, I have to play football again—at least until the end of the season—and I’m hoping that offering you a key to this place and a radio with your favorite station will encourage you to watch the games in secret from here. I won’t feel so bad about missing Friday’s Hell Bent Hair Bands with you if I know you’re watching from here.”
If the weekend had taught me anything, it was that Dustin couldn’t sacrifice his mom, so the threat was a really shitty move on the older Hill’s part. Dustin and I had talked about meeting at the grove after school most days, and I knew he was telling me it wasn’t just Fridays he would have to give up, but some of the weekdays when he had his practice days, too. I couldn’t find it in myself to say no. Not when his family wasn’t offering him support in any way.
“I’m sure I can manage some Fridays. Maybe some practices too if it’s really hot out there.” I spread my free arm out and into the cool stream of air from the small window unit. “Air conditioning is a luxury, after all.”
“You don’t think I’m a completely whipped little boy?”
I shook my head and smiled at him. “We all do fucked up shit for our families.”
“Some more than others.” Dustin smiled and held up a key. “Okay, so I made you a copy, but no one can know about this. And if you get a creepy ‘come and meet me’ note in your locker, or someone grabs you without warning, it’s probably me needing to escape the insufferable assholes that I sometimes call friends.”
“It’s all in again, then?” I asked, taking the key and pressing the cool metal against my palm.
“Mostly. Still haggling with my dad over other conditions.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but by the glint in Dustin’s eyes, I could only imagine these conditions weren’t anything good. When I’d only admired Dustin from afar, I’d never have thought he was the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve like this. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d miss the small emotional trigger, but after three intense days of getting to know one another, I knew what I was looking at and exactly what his expression meant. He’d lost a battle but he was still in the war, and as his friend, I had no inclination other than to support him in any way I could.