My mouth opened in a pained gasp. “You broke up with me. What was I supposed to do? Grovel? I’d never do that, not for a boy, and not even for you. I thought you were so much better than that!” I spewed. Why, why did I have to cry? Why couldn’t I have been stoic and strong?
He ran both his hands through his hair and began pacing the length of the hall, glaring at anyone who got in his way. “Mel, baby. What do I do?” He stopped in front of me and begged, with his eyes, with his heart.
“It means I’m in love with you!”
Then why are you breaking me?
I saw his point in that moment. Because what I wanted him to do—take me back—and what was good for me—stay broken up—were two different things. If we gave each other everything one day and this day still came, when we both said goodbye, it would hurt too much. The equivalent of ten divorces and ten lost Sean’s.
I already felt empty.
I already felt numb.
Someday, I could be all of those things and he could be nowhere to be found.
The people that we loved, that raised us, implanted this doubt and hurt in our hearts like a microchip that was set to an unknown self-destruct date.
One day, we could both detonate.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” I told him quietly.
The hurt in his eyes was so stark I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. I knew in his mind it sounded like I didn’t care about him. Especially after he told me he loved me. His eyes hardened, and his entire demeanor had gone from open to closed off and cold.
“Can we still be friends?” I managed to get out.
His coldness took every ounce of warmth from my dark parts.
“Sure, Mel. We’ll be best friends.” He gave me a crooked smile that was so forced and mean I couldn’t believe I ever found beauty kissing those lips.
Maybe Principal Darwin was right. College. Far away. From home, from Mom and Dad, from… Dare. Every one of those hurt, but not as much as the last one.
“Walk me to class?” I gave him wide eyes.
He gave me flat eyes. “No problem.”
“We still need to talk about the assignment.”
He leaned against the side of my locker, staring straight. “The assignment’s covered.”
“What do you mean, it’s covered? We’re so far behind, we’re going to have to throw something together.”
He met my eyes briefly before turning them away. “It’s all good, Mel. Don’t worry about the assignment.”
I stared at him, perplexed. “You’re mean.”
I hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t even known that was on the tip of my tongue until it came out.
“And unfair. And beautiful. And you smell amazing. And you’re mean!” I shouted, not caring who heard me.
A group of girls snickered as they passed. I shot them a look, which only made them laugh harder. Great. Now even my pain was comical.
“I’m mean?” He lowered his voice and leaned down. “I’m mean? I told you I loved you and you didn’t say anything.”
I pushed at his chest. “We barely know each other, Darren. How long has that been true? Huh? How long have you loved me?”
He held my eyes boldly. “For a long time.”
“Before the project?”
He glared darkly at me, his chest rising and falling. “Maybe.”
My stomach filled with nerves and disbelief, a nauseating combination.
He grabbed my face and pressed my back to the locker. “What if I’ve been in love with you for longer than you ever imagined, Melanie Barton? What if you’re my entire world? What if when I told you I loved you, and you confirmed my worst nightmare, that you didn’t love me back, that I’ve never felt anything that horrible? Not even when Mom overdosed freshman year, or again junior year. Or when she ran off for two months and left my little brother in my care? What if then?”
Before I could answer, he crushed his lips down on mine. Every single tear and crack he carved into my heart healed in seconds. I sighed deeply into his kiss and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. The moment his tongue touched mine, the threat of falling, of floating away, abated. All I wanted to do was stay where I was, kissing a boy who made my darkest time feel a little less painful.
He kissed me hard, desperately. When he pulled away, my lips already felt bruised, and my mind and heart lay tattered and sated on the floor.
He released my face and walked away, leaving me panting, blushing, and crying, against my locker.
Dare didn’t talk to me in photography class. He spent the hour the same as the last, intently working on something that was more important than acknowledging me. I wondered if he were as aware of me as I was him. He had to be.
It was a special kind of torture to sit beside him for an hour and not get to feel him, or hear him, or even have him. But I lived for that hour.
I spotted Sean sometimes, under Maisy’s spell. Lounging on the stage gazing adoringly into Maisy’s eyes like she was his sun and earth. The messed-up part was Maisy stared back. Genna wasn’t any better. Twice I caught her sneaking off campus with Rudy pulling her after him, an uncharacteristic smile painting her beautiful face.
Everyone was in love, leaving me in their past with heart-shaped boot prints in their path.
Mom called every night at nine. She talked about her progress. Her “new me” mentality. She sounded attentive and clear-headed, but still broken. She called Dad when I wasn’t around, and I started to hear the hesitation in her voice when I asked if she wanted to talk to him. She didn’t sound broken over him. She sounded broken because she’d broken at all.
***
It had been two weeks post break-up with Dare.
I walked out to the dugout at lunch. I’d been spending every day out there. The amphitheater mocked me. And it wasn’t until I was alone did I miss being at the top with my friends. It wasn’t about who was where, it was about who you sat with. Sitting without them hurt.
Being alone showed who exactly I wanted beside me.
I heard feet on the gravel and my head shot up. A familiar lock of milk chocolate hair ducked into the dugout and then our eyes locked. He didn’t look surprised to see me, and frankly, I wasn’t surprised to see him either. I turned back to the baseball field.
He walked down and sat a few inches on my right.
“I miss you,” I whispered.
He was wearing black jeans today, paired with a long-sleeved dark gray thermal, and similar colored sneakers. His sleeves were pushed up, revealing his forearms. His hair was finger-tousled, and he smelled so good my mouth watered.
“Is that what you want? For me to miss you?”
He surprised me by saying, “Yes.”
“Did your mom really overdose?”
He nodded, staring straight.
“On what?”
“Painkillers.”
“I’m sorry, Dare.” I held up my hand.
He took it, interlacing our fingers intricately. The moment our palms kissed, I knew that this distance between us hadn’t even started to kill me yet. That was a warm up.
“Me too, Mel.” He brought our conjoined hand to his lips and kissed the back of mine. He kept it there, sliding his lips over my knuckles until the late bell rang, and we dropped our hands and went back to class.
The next day at lunch, I beelined to the dugout to find him already there. I took a deep breath, stepped over his outstretched legs, and then sat beside him.
“The ‘rents still fighting?” he asked nonchalantly, like he hadn’t sat there for hours thinking of what to say to me today.
The idea of him practicing made me smile. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep my smile hidden. “No.”
“No?”
My smile fell. “Mom went to an emotional wellness center. To get better.”
He offered me his hand. I wrapped my fingers around his greedily. Palm to palm. Everything was okay for as long as we were palm to palm.
It was
my turn the next day to think of what to say to break the ice between us. I ran out to the dugout, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there in photography class either. I sat, morose, staring at my desk top like it had all the answers.
At my locker that afternoon, Maisy was there. Sean had his hand to his neck, rubbing his nervously.
When I approached my locker, his entire soul turned black and he stepped aside, studying his shoes intently.
Maisy smirked and pulled out her pink binder from her locker. “Look at her broken heart, Sean. It’s so fugly.”
I ignored her and opened my locker.
“Maisy,” he warned.
I had homework in every class that night, so I couldn’t get in and out. I had to cram all my books into my backpack.
“I’m just saying. He totally screwed me over and now look at him. Cutting class to clean up Mommy’s mess instead of spending time with the only girl he’s ever loved.” She looked around to pout at me. “That’s you, by the way.”
“Maisy!” Sean snapped, and I’d never heard him get so rough.
She closed her mouth, her eyes tightened, and she ducked back into her locker. “Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled, like a petulant child. “Leave the tomboy alone.”
“Damn it, Maisy.” Sean shrugged away from the locker, hands in his pockets.
“See what you did?” she sneered at me, closing her locker and starting to head after him.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “What happened with Dare’s mom?”
She yanked her arm free. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”
“No, I’m putting myself through this conversation for my own enjoyment.” I rolled my eyes. “What happened?”
She checked to see where Sean was—waiting at the end of the hall, his eyes on us so hard, I squirmed—and then sighed. “Miranda told me he crashed at her place, again, and that he got a call in the morning and had to run home.”
I frowned. “Why was he at Miranda’s?”
She looked at me like I was dumb. “Because Rudy’s like his best friend.” When I still didn’t get it, she decided I was dumb with a snort. “Miranda is Rudy’s sister. They’re twins.”
Oh. That explained a lot. I guessed. “You don’t know what happened?”
“No,” she grumbled, exasperated. “You’re his girlfriend, shouldn’t you know everything about him?”
I looked into her eyes. “Where’d you get those pictures?”
She smiled, a genuine smile, I thought, and shook her head. “I dangled his secret in front of you like a carrot and all you did was swat it away. Not my problem anymore. He is.” She gave Sean a determined smile and then sauntered away, her bubble butt swaying in her skin tight skinny jeans.
It shouldn’t have hurt me as much as it did to see him offer her his hand and for her to take it. Before they left the hall, Sean looked over his shoulder at me, and I gave him the finger.
Immature, maybe, but it still felt good.
His sad, familiar eyes looked away.
The moment he left, I was detached.
Floating.
Away.
Nothing pulling me back to earth. I didn’t want anything to bring me back down. I wanted someone to fly with.
When I made it outside, Dad was watching something with a perplexed look on his face. “He’ll come back,” he said.
“Who?”
He nodded ahead of him, and I spotted Sean and Maisy giving each other googly eyes. “Uh-huh. Not my problem anymore.”
He snorted, his pale blue dress shirt sleeves rolled up. “You grew up with that boy. He was there when you got your period.”
“Dad!” I so did not need to remember that day right now.
Dad laughed. “All I’m saying is you guys have a great friendship. Things change when you insert new people, but it’ll work out. Sean’s a good boy.”
“What am I?”
He gave me a knowing smirk. “Grounded.”
“Still?”
“No,” he relented. “You’re off the hook.”
“Really?” I asked excitedly. “Can I have my cell back?”
“It’s in my office. I’ll get it when we get home. How was school?”
I mentioned the college brochures, and he beamed, falling into a spiel about his college days, and then he met Mom on an off-campus mixer. She wasn’t at the university, but it had been “love at first sight.” Or at least they said it was. I remembered Mom mentioning that Dad hadn’t made a move until another guy tried to get her number.
“Have dinner with your old man?” he said when we got home, as I was running upstairs to charge my cell phone.
“Okay…”
“Sushi?” He waggled his brows at me and rubbed his belly.
Ugh. Sushi struck again. “Sure.”
“Give me an hour,” he said, chuckling for some reason.
Probably because sushi was my weak spot and he knew it.
I waited until we were in the middle of Crazy Soy Sushi, table overflowing with rolls, wasabi, and pickled ginger, to ask him something. Dad had a beer and I had a Dr. Pepper. I was in bliss. Dad was there, sushi was there, and the sushi place cleaned up all the dust motes. But something was missing. Some pivotal part of me was gone, and no matter how much sushi and soda I put into my belly made that missing piece go away.
“Why did you cheat on Mom?”
He choked on his roll, coughing raw tuna and rice onto the table. I frowned, backing away from the grossness.
“Mel,” he ground out, cleaning up the mess. “I almost choked.”
“Tell me why.” I had to know. Had to know why he broke up our family.
His eyes became instantly sad. “You’re my daughter. I’m not talking to you about this.”
“You have to. Tell me, now!” I hissed, slapping my palm against the table. My chopsticks fell over and rolled onto the floor.
“There’s no good reason, Mel. I know you want one. I know you want a deep answer that makes it all right, but there isn’t one. There never is, baby. I made a mistake. Things between your mother and I started to fall apart, and I met someone who was put together. But she wasn’t put-together, I was just too broken to realize it.” He sighed heavily, stabbing at his roll. “You were always too innocent to see things as they were. Your mother and I have never had a perfect relationship.”
I tried to reach into his brain and see that, but I didn’t. Maybe Mom and Dad fought sometimes, but who didn’t? That felt like a lame excuse for being a cheater. “What did she have that Mom didn’t?”
“Melanie,” he groaned, hardly able to meet my eyes. “Don’t do that. Erin didn’t do anything. I did. I drove her crazy. Half the time there were no other women. I just liked to see her, I don’t know, care.” He shook his head. “Can we please talk about something else?”
I hated his answer. It didn’t give me what I needed to hope. “Will you ever do it again?”
“Cheat?” He held my gaze. “No, baby.”
“What’s different this time?”
“Jeez, Mel. You’re interrogating me?” He laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Everything? Nothing. I guess it was when you ran away. Because I knew deep down you weren’t running away from home. You were running away from us. Weren’t you, Melly?”
It was my turn to skirt my gaze away. “Maybe.”
“Shit, is this helping at all?” He rubbed a hand down his face. “You want the truth?”
I nodded, bracing myself.
“I cheated on your mother for no good reason than because I’m an asshole. I wanted a rise out of her. I wanted her to wake up. To fight for me like she used to. But I didn’t stop to think about how that would turn your life upside down. And I should have.” He looked pissed at himself. “What if something happened to you when you took off? What if that boy wasn’t who you thought he was? What if he was older and he wasn’t good? What then? When you ran away, you forced us both to take a long hard look at ourselves. Which is never easy. Not when wh
at you’re looking back at is the ugliest part of yourself and you’re still stuck with those parts. So the dust has settled. My daughter will never forget the pain I put her mother through, her through, and my wife woke up just in time for me to do the same, only she’d rather have herself, than me.” He sat back, his chest moving rapidly under the weight of his confession.
There still wasn’t hope in his answer. If anything, it made me even more upset. To know that the last two years of my life had been the byproduct of his screwed-up ego.
All. For. Nothing.
Everything was still ruined.
But there was hope in that ruin. We could start to rebuild.
“I think you’re an asshole,” I told him.
His lips twitched. “I know.”
“I think you need to fix yourself, too. And I need to stop relying on you both. It’s not good for me to rely on you. You’ll both let me down.”
His face collapsed. “No, we won’t, Mel. We let you down. Past tense. We won’t do it again.”
“But it’s too late. I’ll be leaving for college soon. When I needed you, you weren’t there. That’s your punishment. And my pain. It’s okay,” I assured him, biting back tears. “We can have a new relationship. One where I want to know you, not need to rely on you.”
He gave me a limp nod, having no choice but to give me what I wanted after taking it away. “I love you, Melly. That’s always been true. No matter what.”
“I know,” I told him. “That’s why it hurt so much.”
When we got home that night, we both went to our bedrooms. I wasn’t sure we went to sleep, but we both needed our space. I kneeled on my floor near my bed and spread out the college applications and read through the requirements until my eyes were scratchy. They were all art schools. In LA, New York, Berkley, and Florida.
Before I went to sleep, I looked up at the collage on my ceiling, and then grabbed my cell from where it had been charging.
Me: Are you awake?
I bit my lip, waiting for the message to get flagged as read. When it did, my breath caught, and I glared.
And then I saw that he was replying.
Sean: No longer grounded, I see.
The Tomboy & the Rebel Page 20