If I Fix You

by Abigail Johnson

  Your whore backed into my car

  There was a nagging thought somewhere in the back of my mind that prompted me to be embarrassed that she classified me that way, but it didn’t seem worth it. And ultimately it didn’t matter what she called me, considering it was hardly worse than the things she called her son.

  “I can only imagine what she said to you,” he said.

  “Pretty much the unabridged version of this.” I shredded the card up as small as possible and let the pieces blow out the window, hoping Daniel would let it go too.

  He didn’t. His hands were tightening on the steering wheel before the wind could carry away the last piece.

  “She doesn’t think right anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Not about that anyway.”

  There was a very pregnant pause after that.

  “I’ve been apologizing to you since the day we met. You’d think I’d be better at it by now.”

  I still felt sick, but not because of hitting his mom’s car or what she’d said. I felt sick about Daniel. I didn’t want another apology; I wanted not to need one. I wanted to be back on my roof where we could hide from the world and the things we’d done. I wanted the dream back instead of the reality.

  Daniel muttered something under his breath. “Do you know what I thought that first night I saw you?”

  I had a few unpleasant ideas.

  Daniel rubbed the fist he had bloodied on his shed that night, and then again on Sean’s face. “I forgot I was angry, just by looking at you.” Disbelief must have been written all over my face when he finally turned to me. “You think I’m lying?”

  I remembered him angry that night, and that first day at the shop, and when I saw his scars, when he got drunk, when he hit Sean... Even understanding what was behind all his anger, it was harder for me to forget as easily as he claimed he could.

  “You have no idea what you looked like sitting in the moonlight. You glowed, and I wanted to be close to you, before I even knew your name. That’s why I didn’t go back inside right away.”

  “That sounds like a bit of revisionist history to me. I’m pretty sure you stayed outside to yell at me.”

  Daniel smiled at my attempted humor. “I’m serious. I walked out of a nightmare and there you were. It was because of you that I walked out. I don’t remember if I yelled or not, I just remember not wanting to blink. And then you offered to fix my Jeep.” The sides of his mouth kicked up higher.

  “After which more yelling ensued.”

  “That wasn’t yelling, that was shock and something I needed way too much.” His smile grew until his whole face was happy. “I almost kissed you in my Jeep that first day.”

  I went warm remembering the feel of his thumbs on my temples.

  Then Daniel’s smile died completely. “It was like a punch to the gut when you told me how old you were.”

  “It wasn’t fun for me either.”

  “And then seeing you with your dad... I don’t even know all the ways I could destroy your life, and it’s a good life, Jill, it is. But that’s not even the problem anymore,” he said, drawing my attention back to him. “After that next night, I stopped trying to stay away. I barely tried to begin with. I stopped caring that it was seriously wrong for me to be looking at you the way I started looking at you. We were spending night after night together, and the first time I got you away from your roof I tried to kiss you.”

  I spun to face him. “Hey, swimming was my idea. I was the one who got you away from my roof. You say you’re always apologizing to me, maybe that’s because half the things you try to apologize for aren’t your fault.”

  “I shouldn’t have tried kissing you that night and I shouldn’t have succeeded the next.”

  My features smoothed and I sat back against my seat. No, he most definitely should not have gotten drunk and kissed me on his couch.

  “I never had any business going anywhere near you. You’re sixteen years old and you’ve got so much. All I’ve got is poison.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Which part? I know we pretended that hanging out was just about us avoiding our problems, but it stopped being about that a long time ago. If we hadn’t had that night in the pool, it would have been something else, and maybe that time you wouldn’t have pulled back.” Daniel was stopped at an intersection and he stayed even when the light turned green. It wasn’t until cars started honking behind us that he started driving again. “I’m not saying this right.”

  “We didn’t set out to spend all that time together,” I said. “Or to start having more than friendly feelings for each other, really it was the opposite. But you aren’t poison. I don’t know if you realize what you’ve done for me. Before you, I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my mom and everything that happened. And I’m glad I got to be there for you even though you didn’t mean to tell me so much. But getting drunk after telling me about your dad—”

  “Isn’t an excuse for what I said and did.”

  “No, it’s not. But honestly, you kissing me wasn’t the worst part of my weekend, not by a long shot.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my mom showed up and told me I was a bastard. How’s that for perspective?”

  Daniel looked away. For him that probably would have been great news. For me, vomit still burned the back of my throat at the possibility.

  “I don’t want to dredge any of that up right now, I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t give you back, not even after everything...went wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t give you back either.” He bounced his hand off his knee. “Is it true? What your mom said?”

  “I don’t want it to be.” A tremor rolled through me. “I really, really don’t want it to be.”

  “I can’t even hold you right now, can I?”

  At some point while I was talking, my arms had wrapped themselves around my middle and my hand curled around the base of my seat belt. I’m sure it looked like I was seconds away from flinging myself out of a moving car, but that wasn’t it. I wasn’t holding myself back from him; I was trying to hold myself together. Period. Full stop.

  “Don’t answer that. This is gonna be a problem for me.” He sat back and ran his hands through his hair. “The sick truth is that if your friend hadn’t hit me the other night, I probably would have tried to kiss you again.” Daniel slipped his glasses back on, covered the worst of the damage. “In fact, I know I would have, because sitting with you right now and after telling you exactly how much of an asshole I am, I still want to. And there is no world where that is okay. How am I supposed to go back when I don’t want to?”

  If it were possible to split into two totally different people, I would have done it right there.

  Part of me felt like it’d be impossible to reverse back to a place where I wasn’t aware of his body in relation to mine. Where I just wanted to help him and didn’t want...

  But the other part was still clutching my seat belt like a shield between us. Because that night after the pool, when we were hiding in the bushes and he’d lifted my chin, I remembered pulling back. And after that drunken kiss, and his hurting Sean...how could I do anything but pull back? I was sixteen. He was twenty-one. Dad would murder us both. His mom would probably call the cops and get him arrested. He wasn’t poison, but the two of us together...

  And Sean... I couldn’t even convince Claire I was over him.

  The shop came into view ahead. Rather than risk Dad seeing me get out of a Jeep instead of a Jetta, I had Daniel pull in at the check advance place next door.

  Daniel reached for his keys and the lulling noise from the engine died, plummeting us into silence. “I’m not going to be around for a while, a week, maybe two. I need to do something I’ve been putting off.”

 
I frowned. “Are you okay?”

  He shrugged off the question. “It’s just stuff I should’ve taken care of before we moved. It’ll be fine. Might be good to spend a few nights away, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I hated that I couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses. I really hated that he didn’t sound half as indifferent about his upcoming trip as he was trying to. I wanted to ask him more, but everything about his body language said he’d already told me more than he wanted.

  I reached for the door, but it didn’t budge.

  Daniel leaned around me, lifting the handle just right so that it opened. “It sticks a little. Guess I should have asked you to fix that too.”

  The warmth from his body pressed into my side. It was as close as we’d been since... I half turned to see his face. Bruised.

  I felt exactly the same way.

  He didn’t pull back. “That night at my house. I don’t want you to think about me kissing you like that...” His eyes dipped to my mouth and a forgotten butterfly fluttered to life in my stomach. And then, before I think he even realized he was going to, Daniel bent and brushed his lips against mine. The pressure was so light that I barely felt the warmth from his mouth until it was gone...until I could miss it.

  It was just the one kiss, no more than a second or two. A kiss that you’d miss if you blinked.

  Nothing like my dream.

  Nothing like that night.

  I didn’t have to push him away. It didn’t last long enough for me to even have to make that decision.

  “I’m sorry for so much, Jill.”

  “I know.” And I did.

  CHAPTER 34

  The rest of the week passed in a ricochet of emotions. Everything with Dad and the Spitfire was a dream that I never wanted to wake from. Everything outside the shop was...not a nightmare, but the constant threat of one.

  By the time Wednesday rolled around, Claire had sufficiently recovered from her sunburn to run again. Sean had been MIA since the fight with Daniel. He’d stopped calling me, and when Claire finally got ahold of him after her sunburn healed, he hadn’t said much. She and I had been talking all week, so she knew what had happened and the way I’d left things. I knew it was bad when even Claire couldn’t offer a hopeful outlook.

  I’d also told her about Mom and her nuclear bomb. It helped more than I’d thought possible, telling her about all that stuff. It was different than talking with Daniel. Sometimes Claire couldn’t school her reactions fast enough, and the switch on her friend brain broke at some point. But it was...okay. We were okay.

  We were sitting on the grass at the school track in the early-morning light, when Claire suddenly blurted out a confession.

  “I gained two pounds,” she told me, somewhere between ashamed and triumphant. “My mom was worried that I was getting too skinny—can you believe that? Anyway, I promised her I would, so I did. She was really happy.” Claire’s chin dropped to her chest. “Only I feel kind of sick about it. I know it’s stupid. I know it.” She tapped her head. “But I can’t stop thinking about those two pounds, like I can feel them. When I was fat I didn’t care.” She sighed and squinted at the rising sun that was just high enough to stretch glowing ribbons across the field as it pierced the trees around us. “I can’t remember how I did it. How do you?”

  “Not care? I don’t know. I never thought about it. It’s like me with Sean. You never had to learn not to think about him. I’m still working on that.” And a million other things, but I knew my audience.

  Claire nodded like my answer was the one she was looking for. “Makes you kind of wish we could trade, huh? Fix each other’s problems?”

  “That’d be awesome.” It had been a week and a half since the fight on my porch and I was going quietly mad wondering how Sean was. I knew he was okay physically. Claire had found out that much. Apparently he’d told his parents he broke his nose catching an elbow playing basketball. He had a really good relationship with them, and it only made me feel worse that he’d had to lie to them. For me.

  “Okay, I may have done something you’re not going to like.” Claire uprooted a small pile of grass.

  “What did you—” I started, but turned to the parking lot when I heard another car pull in.

  “I sort of tried to fix one of your problems for you by telling someone that cross-country training was starting again today.”

  The “someone” needed no further explanation as Sean got out of his car.

  * * *

  We started stretching in silence, Claire looking back and forth between Sean and me with a cautious optimism that I wasn’t sure I shared. She greeted him with the same bright smile she’d given me earlier.

  “Pretty great that we’re all back together, isn’t it?” Not even crickets answered her. “Earth to Sean. What’s up?”

  I caught Sean’s eye as he stood. “What’s up is that it’s hot and I’m pretty sure it’s still last night, so let’s do this so I can go to bed.” Which was the exact perfect grumpy Sean thing to say. Claire rolled her eyes at him and got to her feet.

  I rediscovered something that day. Running was not my thing, I knew that, but running without Sean to complain with—and it didn’t feel like he was there when he was silent—was the absolute worst activity ever. He didn’t pantomime strangling Claire when she tried to motivate us to speed up. He didn’t lean his shoulder into mine and gradually move me off the trail until I had to grab ahold of him or end up swimming—not that he’d ever let me get that close to falling in the canal, but it was his stupid game that I thought I hated until he no longer wanted to play.

  I was beyond miserable when we got back to the school and I collapsed on the grass, panting. Seconds later, Sean thumped down next to me, resting forward on his knees. Claire had beaten both of us and was sitting on my other side, her breath barely faster than normal.

  “You suck,” Sean told her.

  “Hey, don’t be mad at me if you can’t handle three miles after a week off,” she said. “I told you to run without us. I called you and everything.”

  “And what did I tell you?” he said, without raising his head.

  Claire’s face flushed slightly, but with her fair skin, it was rather impressive. “I,” she said, “am your friend, so I will not repeat what you told me.”

  Sean found the energy to laugh and I wasted what little air I’d forced back into my still-panting body to laugh with him. We stopped when the sound blended together.

  There was this moment when our eyes met and my smile was still half there. But it was like he was looking past me. Not seeing me at all.

  “Come on, guys.” Claire had noticed our little exchange, and her mouth was pinched in disapproval. “I don’t know why you’re both being so stubborn, but this—” she pointed at both of us, then crossed and uncrossed her arms “—needs to stop.”

  I didn’t say anything and Sean took the opportunity to guzzle from his water bottle.

  “Okay, so this is it now? You’re just going to give up?” She gave Sean a look before turning to me. “Jill?”

  I had to turn away when she stared at me like that. My eyes fell on Sean, barely two feet away but feeling much farther. His face was healed except for some light yellowish bruising and a thin, almost imperceptible line from where his lip had split—from where Daniel had split his lip. Looking at it made me feel guilty and angry all over again. Mostly guilty. But I didn’t look away.

  Just meet my eye once. Convince me again that we have a chance.

  He didn’t.

  This time was nothing, nothing, compared to what had happened with my mom. He hadn’t given up then, so why now? When I couldn’t look at him refusing to look at me anymore, I shoved him. “What is with you?”

  “Um, Jill? I don’t think—”

  “No.” I waved o
ff Claire. “He hasn’t talked to me in over a week so why is he even—”

  Sean let out a barked laugh and shook his head. “Except for last week, right? You know, when you called me and I took you to lunch.” Sean leaned toward me and put his arm around my shoulders and addressed Claire in an overly enthusiastic way. “I dropped everything and raced right over to get her. ’Cause I’m that guy!” He flung his arm away from me and got to his feet, all pretense gone. “You’re gonna have to find someone else to run with, Claire. I’m done.”

  “What?” Claire gave me a wide-eyed look, then pushed up onto her knees.

  I was on my feet right behind Sean. How could he possibly know I’d lied to Dad when Daniel and I talked? I went after him when he started for the parking lot, motioning for Claire to hang back.

  CHAPTER 35

  The farther Sean made me chase him, the angrier I got, until at last I darted in front of him. He had to stop or collide into me, and the last thing he looked like he wanted to do was touch me.

  His eyes skidded away from me and his chest heaved.

  “Are you done?” I dug my hand into my side, pressing at the stitch our earlier run had created and the sprint revived. “I can’t follow you if you decide to take off again.”

  Sean didn’t dodge around me, but he didn’t speak either. He dropped his pissed-off expression for a split second, and what was underneath it was sadness, like he’d lost something and he was only now realizing it.

  But that made no sense, none of it did. Not his locked jaw or his curled lip, not his rigid posture or the waves of hostility I could feel. He was supposed to be the one apologizing, not acting like it was the other way around, like it wouldn’t matter even if I did.

  My eyes twitched as I searched his face. His last words from the track trickled through me and I was overcome by a wave of dizziness. I swallowed. “How did you—how did you know about lunch on Thursday?”

  Sean drew back, like he couldn’t stand to be near me. “Your dad called to offer me a tune-up. Shocked the hell out of me. He said I was always driving you around and I said ‘not really’ ’cause you weren’t even answering my calls at the time. Then he said I took you to lunch last week.”