by Sophie Hill
“I understand.” I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. “I’m not going to drive again. I can walk to work, it’s a mile from my house.”
“You could drive again, once you finish an alcohol addiction program.”
“I’m not going to stop drinking. Which is why I’m not going to drive again.”
“Oh.” Aurora’s voice was quiet and sad. She didn’t try to argue with me.
“You’ll be out of here by tomorrow morning,” she said finally, her voice coming out as a long sigh.
“Okay,” I said dully.
“Slade?” she said, after a pause. “I’ve come to know Heather, and she’s a good person. She –“
“Don’t.” I sat straight up and a wave of dizziness rolled over me and bent me over, retching between my knees.
“Fine, Slade. Whatever you want.” She shrugged, and turned and walked over to the door of my cell, and I looked up to see Sheriff Blackstone there, yanking open the door.
He didn’t say a word to me. He didn’t say a word to her.
I saw her glance at her and it looked like she was going to say something and then she changed her mind. Her face was sad as she left the room. His lips were set in a hard straight line.
The two of them used to spar, but there had always been kind of a joking undertone to it. Heather was right. There had been something there between the two of them.
And now there was nothing. He wouldn’t even look at her, and I knew why.
Because of me. Because she was representing a drunk driver, the same kind of scumbag who’d killed his wife a few years back. Maybe the two of them could have had something together, and now that would never happen.
I poison everything I touch. Everything I care about. It served me right that Heather had ripped my beating heart out of my chest and crushed it to a very fine pulp. I’d more than earned it.
I leaned back against the cold, hard wall, closed my eyes, and felt hot tears burning my lids, but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. That ability was scorched out of me a long time ago, on the night that my life as I knew it ended. I’d cried for days then…and when I finally stopped crying, I hadn’t shed a single tear since.
Heather
“Are you going to go see him?” Dottie asked me, as we sat at the counter, counting our tips for the day. Chuck was behind the counter cleaning up.
“Nope.” I didn’t elaborate. When I talked about Slade it made my throat start to hurt, and it was hard for me to breathe.
Aurora had stopped by to tell me that he’d lost his driver’s license, that he was lying around his house moping and drinking, that he refused to listen when she tried to talk to him about me, that he wasn’t even showing up to work these days.
I ached for him. I wanted to help him, reach out to him, heal his wounds, but I didn’t know how. I’d tried to talk to him, everybody had tried to talk to him. I couldn’t go near him, because watching him kill himself like this was killing me.
“Probably just as well,” Dottie shrugged, tucking her money into her purse. She was in oddly morose mood these days. Maybe my mood was contagious, like the flu.
“My mother still hasn’t called yet. It’s been a week.”
“So your parents let you down yet again. Big surprise. That’s what parents do.”
“I guess so.” I figured I’d give her another day or two, and then…what? I certainly wasn’t going to go back to the Rodriguez residence, after what had happened the last time. The only thing that I could think of doing was taking the letter and the picture to Sheriff Blackstone, tell him everything that had happened, including the fact that Pedro had threatened to kill me, and see if he’d be willing to investigate.
Dottie looked around the diner, already bored with talking about my miserable life. I couldn’t blame her. I was boring me too, these days. I wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with me.
“I need to talk to Phil about redecorating this place,” she muttered. Phil was Chuck’s dad, the owner of the diner. “It needs a paint job. I could design some new menus.”
I didn’t answer her. I lay my head down on my folded arms and wondered if I’d ever feel all right again.
It was just about closing time, but the bell on the door jingled as a guy in a lime green golf shirt and color coordinated plaid pants strode through. He looked like he was in his late 20s, blonde, with a sunburned face.
“Should we serve him?” I asked, straightening up and glancing at the clock.
“Sure, why not. Hell, I’ll serve him…in more ways than one.” Dottie had a wicked, angry gleam in her eye.
“Him?” I stared at him. He was already getting a little paunch that hung over his plaid shorts, and a wedding ring gleamed on his finger.
“What about him? Have you known me to be particularly choosy? I’ve fucked much worse, believe me.” Her tone was belligerent now.
I could hear Chuck rattling the dishes in the sink as he washed them. It was an angry, clattering sound.
“What about Chuck?” I asked, in a voice too quiet for him to hear.
“What about Chuck?” she repeated the question in a voice that was deliberately loud. “Chuck’s just the guy I screw when there’s nobody better around.”
The clattering of the dishes stopped. Chuck very carefully folded up his dish towel and walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
I felt as if the air in the room had just dropped fifty degrees. Chuck’s pain was so palpable I could have squeezed it between my fingers; her casual cruelty stunned me. “Jesus Christ, Dottie. That was uncalled for.”
“Uncalled for? Uncalled for? Fuck you, little Miss Perfect! Little Miss Chastity Belt!” Dottie threw her order pad down on the counter, swinging around to glare at me.
I stared at her, astonished.
Was there something in the water in Hidden Cove? Had everyone in town taken a hit off the same crack pipe? All of a sudden, all the people that I cared about were suffering from RDD – Raging Douchebag Disorder.
“Really, Dottie?” I stood up and yanked off my apron. “Better that than Little Miss Take-A-Number, 69 Billion Served!” That was a horrible thing to say, I don’t judge people like that, but I was stunned and hurt and very sick of being kicked in the teeth by people who pretend to care about me.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Dottie screamed at me, face flushing red. “And don’t bother coming back!”
“With pleasure,” I hissed, throwing my apron on the floor and stepping on it as I stomped out of the restaurant.
Veronica was parked in her car waiting to give me a ride home when my shift was done. I made it to the car before I burst into tears.
“What the hell is happening?” I wailed as I climbed in the car. “Dottie just freaked out on me for no reason, and fired me! Is it me? Am I somehow a horrible person?”
“Come on,” Veronica said, as she pulled away from the curb. “You know the answer to that question. It was just a few days ago that Dottie said that everything decent that comes into her life, she screws it up. And you already knew what Slade was like. He was the bad boy heartbreaker from every bad teen romance movie and every TV after school special. He was a blues song waiting to happen.”
“I just lost my job. I can’t believe it.” I grabbed tissues from her glove compartment and mopped at my face as we drove.
“The job that paid you enough to live in poverty for the rest of your life? I can give you money, for God’s sake. I already have full access to my trust fund.”
“I can’t do that to you.”
“Do what?” Veronica shrugged. “I literally wouldn’t even notice that the money’s gone. I’m rich as fuck.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, I couldn’t do that to myself. I really want to know that I can take care of myself.” I paused. “Was that in any way offensive to you? I feel like I’ve totally lost the ability to tell what effect my words are having. Dottie just said something horrible in front of Chuck, the cook who’s
in love with her, and I told her it was out of line, and she literally just lost her mind. Screamed at me. Fired me. I must be the easiest person to dump in the universe. My parents, Slade, Dottie…”
“Listen. I will never dump you. You could look at me and call me a shallow, vain, stuck up whore, and I would not dump you as a friend. Mostly because it would be true.”
Veronica could always make me laugh.
“Not the whore part,” I said. “You’re pretty choosy.”
“Eh. There’ve been a few frat parties…”
“Don’t tell me! I’ve got you up on a pedestal right now. Let me just assume I have one friend who’s perfect, okay?”
“You’re not easy to dump. You’re the best friend a person could have. You’re as loyal as they come. Look at what you gave up to look for the younger sister you’ve never even met. You’re just having a run of bad luck, is all. Don’t they say it’s always darkest before the dawn?”
“God, I hope the dawn is coming soon,” I grumbled.
“It is, it is.” She sounded so convinced that I kind of half way believed her.
I pressed my thumbs against my eyes until I saw red sparks. “Why is it that Barron is such a douchetard and you’re so awesome?”
“Barron is one hundred percent his daddy’s son. An a-hole. What can I tell you. He hasn’t been hassling you any more, has he?”
“No,” I shrugged uneasily. “But he hasn’t left town yet, which makes me nervous. I don’t think he’s going to give up that easily.”
“I agree,” Veronica said quietly. “I know my half-brother. And you need to watch your back.”
Chapter Eighteen
Slade
I don’t remember hearing Jason and my uncle came in. I couldn’t say if it was day or night; the shades were drawn.
I remember my uncle was pale and his hands were shaking. He looked as bad as I felt.
Jason looked around in disgust and started picking up bottles off the floor and putting them in a trash can.
“Leave it,” I groaned. He shrugged and looked at me.
“You like living like this, man?”
“Love it. Mind your own fucking business.” I gritted the words out, my mouth like sandpaper, my perpetual hangover pulsing in my ears.
“Whatever,” he snapped, and glanced at my uncle. “I’m out of here. I’ll be outside.”
My uncle Larry, puffy-faced and red-eyed, looked down at me as I lay sprawled on the couch. “You all right?” he asked finally.
“Never better. You don’t look so hot.”
“I don’t want to watch you killing yourself like this, but I can’t tell you to lay off the booze when I’m still hitting it. So I quit drinking. I’ve been to the doctor, taking some medication to ride out the DTs. Went to the hospital for a couple days. I’m going to meetings.”
I rubbed my gummy eyes with my hands. I should have felt relieved, proud, happy, but all I could feel was a massive anchor with its chains wrapped around me, dragging me down, down, down. “Whatever works for you.”
Larry shook his head, his face puckered with worry. “Listen. I know I wasn’t the best example for you growing up, and I’m sorry. If you need my help with this…”
“It’s not your fault. It’s the Monroe curse.”
“There is no Monroe curse.”
“How would you know? You’re not a Monroe.” Larry was my late mother’s brother. He hadn’t been able to save her. I hadn’t been able to save her.
He sucked in a breath of frustration and let it out slowly. “If you need me, you know where to find me.”
“Yep. Shut the door behind you on the way out.” I closed my eyes and listened to his footsteps receding, and the sound of the slamming door.
I guess I fell asleep then, or blacked out. When I woke up I heard a voice coming from far away. “You look like a pile of dog crap that somebody’s just stepped in.”
I tried to open my mouth to snarl a response, and a pained croak came out. I pried open my eyes, squinting up to see who was looming over me.
It was Dottie. How had she gotten in? Maybe my uncle had forgotten to lock the door behind him when he left.
“What time is it?” I croaked. What day is it, I meant. What week is it.
“It’s loser o’clock, as far as you’re concerned. 24-7.”
“Fuck you,” I mumbled, but I didn’t have enough energy to put any real heat behind it. “Go get me some water.” My mouth was thick and dry and felt like the inside of a furnace.
“Fuck you. Get your own water.”
Well, I sure deserved that. I slowly and painfully hauled myself to my feet, and waited for the room to stop spinning. Then I slowly maneuvered my way to the kitchen. I tripped over an empty bottle of Jim Beam, fell to my knees, and hauled myself back up to my feet. I glanced back at Dottie; she was sitting in my armchair, reading a magazine and ignoring my struggles. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes and there wasn’t a single clean cup.
I ended up turning on the faucet and sticking my head under the water and gulping down cold water with my head turned sideways.
I splashed my face with cold water, scrubbed at my face with my hands, ran cold water through my hair. I couldn’t find any paper towels to dry my hands with, so I wiped them on my jeans and staggered back to the couch.
Dottie glanced at me, then glanced around the room with a curl of distaste on her lip.
There were piles of empty liquor bottles everywhere. I’d puked into the garbage can and hadn’t bothered to clean it up.
“What?” I laughed bitterly, leaning back on my couch. “Don’t like my décor? Why are you here?”
“Nothing better to do.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
“Tell me about it.” She flipped a page in the magazine. “Heather went out to the Rodriguez residence again a while back, and Pedro Rodriguez told his mother in Spanish that he was going to, quote unquote, take care of her,” she said. “But he didn’t know that Heather speaks Spanish.”
“What? When?” I sat bolt upright.
“I don’t remember.”
“Is she all right?” Panic washed through me, and my heart jack-hammered in my chest. Once upon a time, not too long ago, I’d sworn I’d keep Heather safe.
“Ask her yourself.”
“As if she’d talk to me,” I said bitterly.
“Can you blame her?”
“Why didn’t she bring her god damned fiancé with her when she went?”
Dottie slammed her magazine down on the coffee table with a bang and stared at me with murder in her eyes. “Because he isn’t. Her. Fiance. And he never was. Are you fucking stupid? Forget I asked. Just think about this. Either Heather’s telling the truth, or Barron Von Van Der Prick is telling the truth. Do you have enough brain cells left to figure out which scenario is more likely?”
“There was an engagement announcement in the Raleigh paper…”
“Her mother ran the announcement, because her mother is crazy. I guess her mother wanted to make sure that Heather was as miserable as Mommie Dearest, so she tried to stick Heather in a suck-ass marriage with a guy who had the right pedigree. And you’re so god damned insecure that it never entered your thick head that Heather was telling you the truth and she really loved you. Her ex boyfriend was just fucking with your head because he was bitter that she dumped him.”
My heart dropped, and I gasped with shock as it hit me. Dottie was telling the truth. I’d ruined everything with Heather for no reason at all. I’d broken Heather’s heart because I was so insecure that I couldn’t believe that someone like her could really love me.
There was a bottle of bourbon sitting on the coffee table in front of me and miraculously, there was about three inches left of clear amber liquor in it. I grabbed it and knocked it back in one long, burning swallow. The sweet burn spread through my body, and the shaking in my hands started to subside.
“Her mother said that she was going to tell Heather about Con
suelo, but she never called her back. So Heather will probably go back out there and get herself killed,” Dottie said, in a casual tone, as if she were announcing that she was going to pick up a pizza.
“What? No! I won’t let her!” I stood up, stumbled, and fell back on to the couch. The bourbon threatened to come back up and I retched, barely holding it in.
Dottie threw back her head, and laughed, a crazy sound.
“Really, Slade? You’re going to be the white knight riding in to save her? You couldn’t make it to your front door without puking or passing out. No, you’re just going to sit here drinking and feeling sorry for yourself, and fuck her over just like I did. You let her down, I let her down, her family let her down…”
I shook my head, trying to clear the thick fog that swirled through my brain. “How did you let her down?”
“I fired her.”
“What the hell, Dottie? Why?” My heart ached at what Heather must be going through. After what I’d done to her – to have Dottie turn on her, too?
“I was having a bad day. And don’t even think about lecturing me – I’ll punch your lights out, I swear to God.”
She fixed me with a burning gaze, and suddenly her voice was low and serious. “When you and I got together, and then you dumped me, was it because – because I sleep around?”
I stared at her, at the pain flickering in her big brown eyes, and for the first time I realized how much I must have hurt Dottie. Was still hurting her. All that screwing around, all those women – it meant nothing to me, but it meant something to them. To a lot of them, anyway. I had always just ignored the fact that emotionally hurting them was just as bad as physically hurting them.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That had nothing to do with it. I just – I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I’m still not, obviously.”
“And I wasn’t the right one.” There was a quiet sorrow in her voice that ripped my heart out.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, Dottie.” There was no point in lying. It was Heather, it had been Heather all along, and there would never be anyone else but Heather.