Erased

by Margaret Chatwin

  “Are you being a jerk, Ry?” She folds her arms over her chest.

  “Just looking for some answers, Tasha.”

  She pays a little more attention to me at lunch. She stands beside me and when she speaks to the group she occasionally glances my direction.

  Zane keeps giving her a certain look, and it’s one I recognize, because people give it to me all the time. It’s the, you are acting out of character look.

  He bounces glances off of me, but takes long moments to study her, and he chews at his thumb nail a lot. He doesn’t stop doing this until Scott pushes him against a pole and practically rapes him of his weed.

  Scott lights up, takes a hit and passes it to Zane. Zane looks directly at me while he’s drawing in – some type of defiance blazing in his eyes. After that he acts about as normal as I’ve known him to act, until football practice.

  He’s pissed off at the team again, and although I’ve done nothing more than sit on the bench, bored out of my mind, he takes it out on me.

  “Find yourself another ride home, Ry,” he says and pelts me with the football as he passes. I’m able to block the ball from hitting my chest and I’m glad, because it stings my hands when it makes contact.

  I watch him storm away in all his football gear, helmet dangling from his left hand and I call Mom. It goes to voice mail and then I remember her announcing to everyone, this morning, that we’re all on our own for the afternoon and evening, because she’s been under so much pressure lately that she’s hitting the spa with the girls, for some pampering.

  I decide to walk. But, just like when I walk with Paige, I can only make it to the “oasis” before needing to rest. The park swings have no appeal to me without her here, so I take a seat on a bench by the sand box.

  After enough of my discomfort has worn off to allow me to become fully aware of my surroundings, noises cause me to swing my legs around to the other side of the bench.

  Across the playground, passed the sidewalk and out on a big stretch of grass, a rugged and rough, no pads, game of football is being played. Luc is there. Jake and Connor too, and five other guys. They’ve formed teams and are battling it out as if there are lives at stake.

  I focus on Lucas as he skillfully avoids tackles, intercepts throws, and successfully passes to teammates in difficult circumstances.

  I watch the game for about half an hour then leave the park to make the next leg of my journey, which puts me on Paige’s front porch.

  She greets me with a brilliant smile and invites me in. I stay for awhile and then she gives me a ride home.

  Lucas is in the kitchen with Connor and Jake when I get there. Their making their own dinner, or . . . a really big mess, I’m not sure which.

  “Luc, can I talk to you for a sec?” I ask from the doorway.

  “Nope,” he tells me flatly and without so much as glancing my direction. He’s still bent about what Zane did to him at school yesterday morning, I’m sure.

  “Please?”

  “No.”

  Connor bounces nervous glances back and forth. I think the kid has seen way too many spontaneous beat-downs occur.

  “Then I’ll say it in front of everyone.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’ll listen,” he says.

  “I saw you playing ball at the park, earlier.”

  He starts to whistle. He stirs the contents of a pot on the stove and I step all the way into the room.

  “It was a good game.”

  Jake is standing by the fridge looking at me, Connor by the table doing the same thing, but to Luc, I’m not even there. I move closer to him.

  “Everyone playing was pretty damn good, but you kicked some serious ass, Lucas.”

  He stops whistling but continues to ignore me. He moves from the stove toward the sink and I step into his path.

  “Move,” he tells me.

  “I’m serious, Luc.”

  “So am I,” And I can tell he really is, so I move and he continues to the sink.

  I wait until he’s done what he went there to do, and after he shuts off the water I ask, “Why aren’t you on the school team?”

  He laughs hard, but in a very unfunny manner, then he pushes past me to get back to the stove. His bump to my shoulder causes me to have to grab hold of the counter to help regain balance.

  “You’re plenty good enough. In fact, you’re twice as good as those clowns on the team this year.”

  “Sweet,” he mutters with heavy sarcasm.

  “So why aren’t you on it?” I ask and try to peer around him to see his face.

  “Because!” he suddenly shouts, then shoves away from the stove and leaves the room.

  I’m confused. I watch him go then turn to Jake and Connor. “What the hell?” I say and both of them get the deer in the headlight look. “Why isn’t he on the team?”

  Connor looks at Jake then at the floor and Jake tucks his hands behind himself and leans back against the fridge and presses his lips together.

  “Why isn’t he on the team?” I repeat, and add enough bad attitude to finally get an answer.

  Jake clears his throat and humbly says, “He really wanted to be. He tried out and got picked his freshman year, but you told Coach Stone you wouldn’t play if Luc was on the team, so they cut him.”

  I feel a sharp prick in my chest and I leave the room. “Lucas!” I call out to him, but he doesn’t come running. “Luc!” I check the patio. He’s not there. “Luc!” I yell down the stairs to the basement. Nothing. I yank my phone out of my back pocket and select his name from my contacts. I hear his phone ring once, from upstairs, then shut off.

  I move to the bottom of the stairs and shout out his name again. “Will you please answer my call, or come down?”

  Nothing. I dial his phone again but it shoots me straight to voice mail which tells me he’s powered it off.

  I gotta hike the stairs.

  I gaze up the flight that now has an uncanny resemblance to Mount Everest. Then I start to climb.

  I don’t do too badly on the first couple of steps. With a lot of help from the hand rail, I sort of just hop up them. But jumping is not a skill I still have and I don’t get high enough on step four. The toe of my shoe catches on the edge of it and I stumble forward, landing on my right knee. It jars me and it hurts, but when the cobwebs clear from my head, I thank God it wasn’t my left knee that I hit.

  I’m getting winded already, but I don’t take a break. I pull myself to my feet and try taking step five like a normal human being. I make it, but the pain to my left leg is unreal! It makes me so light headed that it takes me a second to remember what the hell I’m even doing. I look up at the remaining ten steps and they seem to double.

  If my left leg was the only thing on me that hurt, stairs would be cake. But everything hurts and the added stress to those places makes for a very miserable climb.

  I miraculously make it to step seven, but now my right leg is throbbing, my breathing is labored and my arms are trembling and weak from all the pulling.

  By step ten my body feels like it’s being hacked to pieces with an axe blade. I want to cry. I wanna just lay on the stairs and bawl like a baby, but I don’t. I keep going.

  Step thirteen and my lungs burn. I can’t catch my breath. I hurt nearly as bad as I did yesterday in school and all I can see is a kaleidoscope of colors whirling around me. I watch them spin until one thought breaks through. Luc. Then I keep climbing.

  Fourteen. Ears are ringing, eyes are watering and running down my cheeks, I’m sticky with sweat, on the verge of vomiting, and I only have one more step to go! I crawl up it and collapse face down on the landing.

  I fight off full out sobs. Sobs from the sheer agony I’m in, and sobs of pride. I climbed the F–ing stairs! I conquered my enemy. I won!

  I don’t allow myself too much of a break. I gather my trembling body up and stagger to Lucas’s bedroom door. I don’t knock, I just push it open and he’s beyond surprised to see me.

  “I’m s
orry,” I pant.

  He’s sitting at his desk, tipped back in the chair, arms folded over his chest.

  “I really am, Luc.” I crash against the jamb of his door with my shoulder. “I shouldn’t have told Coach I wouldn’t play if you were on the team.”

  “You’re right, you shouldn’t have, but you did.” His voice is even. Not nearly as angry as it was downstairs. I think he might feel slightly sorry for me because I’m going to die any minute now.

  “I don’t know why I did it.” My legs are shaking and I’m sinking. Sliding lower and lower down the door frame and his eyes follow me to the floor. “I can’t remember why, but after seeing you play today, I was probably afraid you’d show me up.”

  He looks rather worried for my health, and quite frankly, I am too. But I can’t think about that right now, and I don’t want him to either. I want him to pay attention to what I’m saying.

  “You’re that good, Luc. You could have out done me.”

  He lets out a single laugh. “Apparently you’ve never seen yourself play.”

  “I don’t care. You’re damn good with a ball. You need to be on the team, let the scouts see you . . .”

  He lets his chair down on all fours and stands up. He moves toward me and stops in a place that leaves him towering over me. He looks down at me, crumpled on his floor and says, “Tryouts are over. The team has been picked. I’m not on it.” He steps over my legs, takes another three steps then stops again. “I can drag your ass down the stairs, or you can wait up here ‘til Dad comes home.”

  “I’ll wait.” Being dragged doesn’t sound all that appealing.

  You’d think I really had climbed Everest by the way my dad hoots and hollers. Never knew a man could feel such joy about finding his son curled up on the floor unable to move. But it thrills him! He takes me down stairs and tells me I’m gonna “Kill the field sooner than I realize,” and I think, Yeah-yeah – more like the field will kill me. But I don’t say it aloud. I just let him be happy.

  He kisses my mom right on the mouth when she comes home and she smiles. Then they go upstairs to put an official end to the four day rivalry.

  _____

  Lucas’s birthday. He doesn’t get a truck.

  FOURTEEN

  Tasha invites me to her house on Thursday evening. She calls while we’re eating dinner. I silence the ringer quickly, but my dad has seen the screen.

  “Answer it,” he tells me. I glance from him to Lucas, who got yelled at a few days ago for even bringing his phone to the table. He scoffs the word “typical” under his breath and keeps eating.

  “Who is it?” Mom wants to know.

  “Tash.” Dad informs her with a smile.

  Tash? I do not want to answer this call in front of the whole family.

  “Hurry, before it goes to voice mail,” Dad nods to the phone that sits between us.

  I shift uncomfortably and pick it up. “Hello.”

  “Come over.”

  “Umm,” I glance at Dad who’s heard what she said and is practically digging his car keys out of his pocket in preparation of driving me over.

  Saying no isn’t an option, even though I try to say it ten different ways, and twenty minutes later I end up at her house.

  It’s bigger than mine.

  Of course the stairs are an issue, so Dad helps me up onto the porch and rings the bell for me. I want to ask him if he wants to go in and hang out for me, too, but I have a feeling he might say yes, if I did. This is just very awkward.

  The front door is opened by a fit man wearing Khaki pants and a golf shirt and he greets Dad like they’re old friends. Then he turns his attention to me. “You look like your feeling much better than the last time I saw you, Ry.”

  I smile politely, then he does something cool, at least in my book. He introduces himself. “Tom Holmes, Tasha’s father.” Everyone else has always just assumed I remember them, even though I’m sure they got the memo that I don’t.

  I shake hands with him and he doesn’t let go until he’s pulled me across the threshold and into his house. “I’ll give him a lift home, Craig.”

  Tom shows me into the living room by way of a set of French doors and asks me how I’m feeling. I’m honest and tell him that I’m still stiff as hell from climbing Everest. He gives me sympathy then tells me he’s amazed at how well I’ve recovered.

  “You owe part of it to your youth and the other part to the great physical shape you were in before the accident. Good thing you played ball.”

  Ball. The guy seems pretty cool, but I don’t want to have that conversation. “Is Tasha here?”

  “Of course,” he says then leaves to go get her.

  She enters the room a short moment later and is looking down at her phone. Texting. “Hi, Ry,” she says without focusing directly on me.

  I’m sitting on the couch and she flops down on it too. She presses her back against the arm of it and stretches her legs out, resting them on my thighs. She’s wearing a short tennis style skirt and no shoes or socks. Her bare legs are long, tan, toned and smooth. I want to touch them. I wanna glide my hand across them just to see if they feel as silky as they look. But I don’t do it. I move my gaze back to her face instead. She’s still staring at her phone. Still texting. She hits send then says, “You haven’t even said hi, Ryan.”

  “Hi.”

  She fires off another text, reads one that comes in and smiles at it, then she tosses her phone onto the cushion of the chair to the right and mounts me. Yeah. She crawls across the couch, straddles my lap and sits down on my upper legs, causing me to immediately flash to that same memory again.

  Her head thrown back. A gritty kind of pleasure on her face. Bare breasts and abdomen.

  My memory moves lower, this time, and I see that she is sitting in the same position as she is now. I can see her bent knees and her upper thighs, as I currently can, the only difference is, in my memory there’s no skirt.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asks, her voice interrupts the vision and it’s gone.

  “Besides you hurting my legs? Nothing.”

  “Something is,” she relieves a little of the pressure to my thighs by changing the position of her feet to hold more of her own weight. She leans forward and kisses my mouth. “Your hands would have been on my ass by now if things were normal. I wore this skirt for you.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice.”

  She laughs that same kind of laugh that a lot of people around me do – that one that says, you’re kidding, right?

  “Come on, Ry.” She picks up both of my hands and places them on the sides of her upper legs, high enough that my fingers are under the hem of her skirt. Then she kisses me again.

  If she’s trying to get me turned on, she’s doing a good job, but I’m nervous. I pull my hands back a little and lighten my touch on her legs and I only partly kiss her in return.

  She pulls away. “Seriously? What’s wrong?”

  “You’re dad’s right out there.”

  “So what?”

  “Well . . . I don’t want him kicking my ass.”

  “He’s not going to come in.” She’s at my lips again and I try to pretend she’s right about her dad. I open my mouth and let her in.

  We make out for a few minutes, but I can’t stop thinking about Tom. I imagine him walking in, his daughter on my lap, my hands up her skirt, our lips fused, and him knowing exactly where it’s leading.

  I keep opening my eyes and glancing at the entrance. I do this until it annoys Tasha and she gets off of me and closes the French doors.

  “Better?” she asks.

  “I guess.” The doors are made of glass. They might keep the noise in, not that we’re making any, but it’s not going to keep Tom, or anyone else, from seeing us.

  She’s back on me. She’s kissing me and using my hands to rub her own body with – moving them exactly where she wants them.

  I’d really like to get into this. She smells fantastic and her skin feels the same
way and she’s not wearing any panties. I’d like to let my hormones take over and just touch her without reserve, but something is holding me back.

  “Ryan.” She’s dissatisfied with my performance again, and pulls out of our kiss.

  “I’m sorry, Tasha.”

  “You’re hard, Ry, I can feel you. Just unzip and he’ll never even know, even if he does come in.”

  “Have sex with you?”

  She gives me a duh look and I wonder how many times we’ve done this. Unzip and do it in a public, or semi-public, place.

  “I have a feeling your dad’s not quite that dumb, Tasha.”

  “Ryan, please, it’s been months, and I’ve really missed you. Wanna go to my room?”

  It’s probably a reasonable solution, but I keep thinking of her telling me her dad was pissed when he found out she’d pierced her belly button. I can only imagine his rage if he finds me tapping his daughter.

  “I, seriously, don’t want my ass kicked, Tasha.”

  “Is that the only reason you don’t want me?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want you. I mean . . . damn . . . you’re fine.”

  “You’ve never worried about him catching us before.”

  “Maybe because I could run faster back then.”

  She says something under her breath that sounds like, a lot of guys would die for this chance, then she begs. “Please, Ry. You’ve no idea how bad I want you. Please. It’s been so long.” She sounds so genuine and desperate.

  Shit!

  I glance over at the closed doors and then slide my hands up her skirt and onto her hips. I guess this means I’m going to do it. She smiles and unbuttons my jeans then inches my zipper down as she kisses at my neck.

  I’m shaking. My heart is pounding and, as usual, it’s making my head ache.

  She sticks her hand into the gap she’s created and starts working things into place. She pushes at the fabric of my boxers and pulls at me, then brings her pelvis closer to my abdomen, lining things up. Then she covers my exposed parts with her skirt.