by Jay McLean
I pull back and nod up at him.
“Good,” he says, unconvinced. Then he kisses me, again and again, and I let him. For the same reasons I let every other boy besides Josh Warden kiss me. Because he makes me feel safe, and at the same time, he makes me feel nothing.
5
—Joshua—
After dropping Tommy off at my uncle Robby’s, I drive to my house, my excitement building. As soon as I step out of my car, I run up the porch steps and knock harshly on her door. She takes a while to answer, but when she does, I wrap her in my arms and lift her in the air. “I missed you so much!”
She giggles into my chest and squeals when I spin her around before setting her back on the ground. But I don’t let her go yet. She feels too much like home.
“Joshua!” She pushes my chest and rears back, her dark, wrinkled eyes squinting against the sun behind me. “I love you and everything and I’m glad you’re home, but boy, you need a shower,” Chazarae says.
I laugh, my head throwing back with the force of it. “I know. I’ve been in car after car, plane after plane, and I just couldn’t wait to see you!”
She rolls her eyes. “Of all the women you see in your travels, you can’t wait to come home to me?”
“You’ll always be my number one girl,” I joke, and her eyes roll higher.
I clap and rub my hands together. “So tomorrow. The big 6-5!”
“Oh, Joshua, I hope you didn’t come home just for my birthday.”
I lean against the porch rail and cross my arms, inconspicuously smelling my armpits. She’s right. I need a fucking shower. And a shave. And maybe five days’ worth of sleep. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I tell her truthfully. The past year of my life has changed beyond what I’d ever imagined. I barely see my friends, my family, besides my mom—who has a hard time switching from mom to manager. But it keeps her busy and takes her mind off Dad’s passing, so I let the moments of confusion slide. The one constant through it all has been Chazarae. Regardless of where I was and what I was doing, I’d always come home to her. And through it all, she hasn’t changed the way she treats me. She’ll always be my savior, and I’ll always be the kid who needed saving.
“You’re a good boy, sweetheart,” she says, her smile soft. Then her gaze shifts to the cast on my arm, and I already know what’s coming.
Gasp. Tick.
Inspection. Tick.
Hand on my cheek. Tick.
“Oh, Josh…” Concern. Tick. “What did you do to yourself now?”
“Broke my elbow.”
“Again?”
“Yep.”
She eyes me sideways. “You didn’t even compete since I last saw you.”
“Chris wanted a demo video for Check and Deck. It was just street skating.”
She shakes her head. “Why couldn’t you have pursued a different career? Something safe. Something like… I don’t know… washing cars?”
I chuckle under my breath.
“I guarantee no one’s broken four—now five—bones in a year washing cars. You’re lucky God is on your side.”
“Well, I don’t know about God,” I tell her, pushing off the rail. “I’m lucky I have you on my side, Ma’am.” I give her a face-splitting grin. “Now go dress pretty! Lunch date. You and me. And then we’ll go pick out those flowers you asked me to plant three months ago.”
I turn to leave but she grasps my cast. “You can’t plant the flowers with this on your arm.”
I kiss her forehead. “Watch me.”
After taking a breath, she grips my arm tighter. “It’s good to have you home,” she says. “I was getting a little lonely out here.”
“I know.” I chew my lip. “You know the invite’s always there for you to travel with me.”
Her nose scrunches. “And be around boys as smelly as you? I’d rather be lonely.”
I can’t help but laugh, but it dies quickly when her hands are no longer on me and she’s halfway to her door. “Ma’am.” I wait until she’s looking at me before speaking. “My final goal hasn’t changed. Wherever I end up, I’m taking you with me. You have no choice.”
* * *
I take the longest shower in the history of showers and wait by my car for her. After a few minutes of checking e-mails and Facebook and all the things Chris forces me to do, a car pulls into the driveway. The windows are tinted, so I can’t see who’s inside, but as soon as the car door opens and I see one tanned leg step out, followed by another, my heart races, beating harshly against my chest, and then it stops, just long enough for it to drop to the ground because she’s stepping out of the passenger’s side. And as bad as it sounds, considering the last time we spoke, I hope and I pray that it’s her dad, not Aaron. But my prayers go unanswered, and my stomach joins my heart, as well as the joy I’d felt only minutes ago—all on the ground, where I’m currently staring, refusing to look away. They’re all here. Becca, her dad, and Aaron.
I hear the front door open, and I still don’t lift my gaze. Even when I hear Chaz squeal as she runs past me and toward her real family. Chaz laughs and in my head, Becca does, too, her voice raspy and ridiculously hot and I almost look up. Almost. But then I hear Chaz say his name and I keep my head lowered and shove my hands in my pockets, waiting for the world to stop spinning so fast. It doesn’t. And when enough time passes and all I can hear is his voice saying all the right things, I turn on my heels and head back to my apartment.
I’m halfway there when Chaz calls my name, and it takes everything in me to stop. To not let my pride overshadow her wants. I turn slowly, making sure to focus on her and only her, but Becca’s here. She’s here and no matter how hard I try to fight it, I’m drawn to her. Right to her eyes—eyes that seem to see straight through me. “Are you able to change the reservation to five?” Chaz whispers.
I tear my gaze away from Becca and look down at her. Her lips press together, her face pleading. “How about I call and make it for four? You go spend time with them.” I reach into my pocket and pull out some cash, but she covers my hand to stop me.
“Josh. I’m not going to go—”
I turn my back on all of them, but she follows and stands in front of me, blocking my path. Squaring my shoulders, I try to keep it together. “I’m not going with them,” I say, my voice low, my words meant only for her.
“Why not?”
I sigh. “Please don’t make this awkward. You know why.” I push the cash into her hands, and she opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “Please,” I beg. “You know I would if I could, but I can’t be around them.”
A frown pulls on her lips, and I hate myself for causing it.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She nods, pushes off her toes and kisses my cheek. “I know.”
* * *
I hide out in my apartment until they’re gone and as soon as they are, I head back out, grab a board from my truck, and I bail. I skate the streets until I’m at my uncle Robby’s house, and when I hear Tommy’s laughter coming from their back yard, it takes away some of the ache in my chest.
“What’s up?” Robby says when I come into view. “Aren’t you supposed to be out to lunch with Chaz?”
I sit down on the chair next to him and focus on Tommy, like I do whenever I feel like things are getting to be too much. He’s standing in front of my aunt Kim, his arm out in front of him while she wraps soggy strips of newspaper around his elbow. “What the hell are you doing to my kid?” I ask Kim.
She eyes me sideways while Tommy bursts out laughing. “I’m like you, Daddy!”
“You’ve already had one broken arm, you don’t need another one,” I mumble.
Robby says, “Imagine if he ends up a skater like you. You’d flip your shit with the amount of broken bones your mom and dad had to go through.”
“Flip your shit,” Tommy repeats.
“That’s a bad word, sweetheart, don’t listen to your uncle,” Kim coos, her eyes narrowed at Robby.
/>
“I wasn’t that bad,” I tell Robby.
“Bullshit,” he replies.
“Bullshit!” Tommy yells.
I turn to Robby. “You gotta quit cussing around him. You know what he said to me after I placed second in my last comp?”
Robby rolls his eyes. “What’d he say?”
“He told me it was okay because the other guy was an asshole.”
Robby laughs.
“It’s not funny!” I punch his arm.
Tommy punches Kim’s shoulder.
“And I’m the bad influence?” Robby asks, and I just shake my head. “So why aren’t you with Chaz right now?”
“Change of plans.” I drop my board and set my feet on it, rocking it from side to side, my shoulders slumped. “Becca’s here.”
“She’s here?” he almost shouts.
“My Becca’s home?” Tommy yells, his grin from ear to ear.
“No, bud,” I lie. “Not your Becca. A different one.”
Tommy drops his gaze, his frown instant. “Oh,” he says, at the same time Robby stands. “Let’s walk.”
* * *
We sit on top of the half-pipe in his backyard. The one he made me to celebrate when I signed a deal with Red Bull. It was supposed to be a place for me to train when I came home. Honestly, though, I think it was just a way for him to make sure I came home. “So Becca’s home?”
“Yep. Becca, her dad, and Aaron.”
“I take it we don’t like Aaron.”
“No, we don’t like Aaron. In fact, we hate Aaron. To the point where just hearing his name makes me want to stab my ears.” I look over at the horizon, an insane view that can only be seen from this exact spot, and the ache in my chest rebuilds itself. “I guess they came in to surprise Chaz.”
“Are you pissed?”
I sigh. “I’m trying not to be, because I don’t really have the right, you know? It’s been a long time since we broke up, and she’s moved on.”
“And you haven’t?”
“I can’t, dude,” I tell him truthfully. “I’ve tried. And it’s not like the opportunity hasn’t presented itself—”
Robby blows out a breath, cutting me off. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you on tour. I’ve read the shit online, watched the videos of all those girls throwing themselves at you. You must have the strength of a thousand men, Josh.”
I look at him, my heart in my throat. “Or the weakness of one.”
6
—Becca—
His truck was here when we got back from lunch, the same truck which held memories of a sand-stealing night at the beach, of first kisses, and of first loves. Grams had taken a piece of cake from the restaurant he’d booked and as soon as we got home, the first thing she did was march up his stairs and knock on his door. He wasn’t home. And he hasn’t been home since. I know, because I’m in my old bedroom, staring out the window with my thumb between my teeth, the curtains spread, watching and waiting for him. Just like I’d done during the first two weeks I’d moved here. But I don’t just want to see him. I want to talk to him, or at least my version of talking, and I want to apologize for ruining his plans. I’d spent the entire lunch feeling horrible about it, all while Aaron sat next to me, his hand holding mine on the table, charming the absolute crap out of Grams.
I give up hope at around midnight and get into bed, but I don’t sleep. I can’t. My mind reels with absurd assumptions. Not absurd in a way that they can’t possibly be true, but absurd in that I have no right to be feeling how I feel because of those assumptions. After a half hour of tossing and turning, I’m convinced Josh is with a girl. And I get mad at myself that it’s so much easier to convince myself of that than it is to remind myself that it shouldn’t matter, because I’m here with a boy, a boy who has been so excited to meet my grandmother—and he’s sleeping in the room next door.
I silently moan into the pillow, frustrated, then punch it a few times, because over a year of therapy has taught me that it’s better to hurt the pillow than it is to hurt myself, because hurting myself gets me nowhere (besides over a year of therapy). And that’s how my thoughts go for the next hour, around and around and around some more, circles of insanity flipping over and over in my mind. Then I hear a sound that has me sitting up and reaching for my phone. A sound I’ve never admitted to missing: four wheels spinning on concrete.
I jump out of bed and switch on my lamp before parting the curtains and looking down into the driveway. He rolls in, both feet on the board, and stops by his truck. After throwing the board into the back seat, he shuts the door and just stands there, his head lowered. A moment later he starts to move, one foot in front of the other, until he’s halfway to his stairs and suddenly, his feet falter and he looks up. Up. UP. I quickly shut my curtains and look at the wallpaper, my phone held tight in my hands. My eyes shut as I try to level my breathing, and when the beating of my heart slows enough so I can actually think, I open my eyes and look down at my phone.
Becca: Can you meet me outside?
The seconds feel like minutes while I wait for a response.
Josh: Will you be alone?
Becca: Yes.
Josh: ok.
I dress quickly and as quietly as possible, rush down the stairs, my nerves building. I pause for a moment with my hand on the knob and try to steady my thoughts. When I open the door, Josh is the only thing I see. Visible only by the moonlight, he sits at the bottom of the stairs, hat in his hands and his head lowered. He looks up when he must hear me approaching. I wave. He does the same. Then he motions to the spot next to him. I hesitate, because standing in front of him is one thing. Sitting next to him, possibly touching him, is another. But when he looks at me, his eyes tired and his smile forced, I push aside my fears and give in to his request.
“What goes on?” he murmurs.
I pull my phone from the pocket of my hoodie and type, I’m sorry for ruining your plans with Grams.
“It’s fine,” he says, his voice sharp, when I show him the screen.
The silence that passes is awkward, filled with tension—tension I try to relieve.
So, you weren’t even going to say hello to me? I type, forcing my own smile when he looks up at me.
He laughs. It’s quiet. But I hear it. I see it. And I let myself get completely lost in it. “Yeah,” he says, looking up at the stars. “I’m sorry about that. I guess seeing you just…” He faces me now, his eyes searching mine. “You kind of knocked the wind out of me, you know?”
I exhale slowly, feeling the effects of his words, and I do everything I can to tear my gaze away from him and look down between us. I tap his cast, something I knew would be there because an e-mail alerted me to it three days ago. After looking back up at him, I raise my eyebrows. “It’s fine,” he says with a shrug.
He’s leaning in to me now, his arm touching mine, his leg doing the same as he reads my message. And Tommy’s? Is his okay?
“He’s all good,” Josh says as I stare down at my phone. “He healed like a pro.”
That’s good, I type, my thumbs trembling. Where is he now?
“Robby and Kim’s. I just left there.”
I hide my grin, glad he wasn’t with a girl, and nod as I look up at the sky, trying to ignore the effect he has on me.
“So.” He pushes my leg with his, breaking the silence. “I kind of planned this surprise party for your grams tomorrow, but I can cancel,” he says, replacing his hat on his head. “If you wanted to do something with her or whatever. Just let me know now so I can make the calls first thing.”
“No,” I mouth, shaking my head, my smile wide. My thumbs move across the phone again. That’s really sweet of you to do that. She’s going to love it, Josh. Thank you.
He doesn’t respond for a while, so I turn to him, to his eyes set right on mine and I try to read him, try to feel something more than the nerves and the tension building between us.
His eyes narrow as he licks his lips, lips chapped f
rom all the outdoor skateboarding he does. “You don’t need to thank me. She means a lot to me. Even before you came along.”
I’m not exactly sure why his words hurt, but they do, so I reach into my pocket and pull out the cash that he’d given my grams. It wasn’t the reason I came out here, why I’d waited all night to see him, but it was my saving grace, and right now I’m weakening—by his presence, by his words, by our pain. I hold out the money for him and wait for him to take it.
Aaron paid for lunch. He said thanks for the offer and for booking it all. He really enjoyed the meal, I type, not knowing what else to say.
Josh shoves the money in his pocket and leans forward, his arms resting on his knees. He lets out a moan from deep in his throat and looks at the darkness in front of him. “I’m glad you’re here, Becs. It means a lot to your grams that you are. But do me a favor…” He faces me. “Don’t talk to me about him, okay?” I open my mouth, my words on the tip of my tongue, but he beats me to it. “It’s bad enough that I have to be around him, in my own fucking house, but it kills me to have you sit here and talk about him.”
Crossing my arms, I narrow my eyes at him, my mind reeling with a response. As soon as one comes, I type frantically on my phone. You’re being mean.
He reads the message and then drops his head in his hands, another frustrated grunt leaving him. I watch the rise and fall of his shoulders, wide and nothing but muscle, pulling against the fabric of his shirt. After removing his hat, he runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends. “I’m not being mean,” he mutters. “I’m just being honest, Becca.” He sighs loudly, still refusing to look at me. “You know,” he starts, his voice low. “When things didn’t work out between us, I thought about how it would feel when you moved on. What it would be like to know that it was some other guy lying next to you at night, some other guy who got to see you in ways that I’ve spent the past year and half dreaming about. I hate that he gets to touch you, and hold you, and get lost in your eyes and feel everything I felt, and still feel. And for a long time it was okay…” He sniffs once and wipes his eyes against his sleeve, keeping his head lowered. There’s no anger in his voice, no insult in his words. Just pure heartbreak. His and mine. “It was fine because I was never jealous of a specific person. I was jealous of everyone and everything around you. I was jealous of the air you breathed, the paths you walked, even the hearts you’d crush. Because they all got to be around you and I couldn’t.” He finally looks up, his glazed eyes doing nothing to cover his torment. “But then I met him and now he has a face and a name, and I hate him. And I told you I would. I told you I’d smile and I’d nod and I’d be amicable toward him. For your sake and for your grams. But I fucking hate him. And you can’t blame me for that.” He chokes on a breath and stands quickly. “You can’t be hurt and you can’t be upset that it makes me sick to my stomach having to sit here and listen to you talk about him. Listen to another guy’s name fall from your lips. Lips I’ve craved and he’s tasted. You just can’t, Becca.”