I know I can’t go anywhere, because I have no car and no friends, but it’s Friday night and I’d like to be doing something, anything, other than sitting in the great room listening to the clock tic.
Luc, Jake, and Connor went ripping through the house about an hour ago, gathering this and that, talking loud and happy about their plans, then took off to put them into effect.
Mom got all dressed up really nice, put on heels, and a necklace that makes me worry for her safety. It’s the kind of thing that tempts people to knock you down in a dark alley and steal it right off your neck.
She kisses me on the forehead and then leaves when Grandma and Grandpa pick her up for some charity event in the city.
And Dad works late.
So, I wander from this room to that. I sit down here and there. And I try to occupy my time, but I’m bored out of my mind.
I spend at least four hours feeling like a teeny-tiny person in an enormous house full of absolute silence, then Dad finally pulls in. I’m glad to see him and move into the kitchen to greet him when he enters. He’s burned out though.
It’s after 9:00 pm and he blows a steady stream of air out of his mouth as he closes the garage door. He throws his suit coat over the back of the chair I’m standing by and yanks at his neck tie. He loosens it until the knot is hanging down around the second or third button and then he pulls open the fridge and extracts a beer. He breaks off the cap with a bottle opener and as he swallows down half the contents at once, he turns to face me.
“Hi,” I say.
He lowers the bottle, burps, then while looking at the label, says, “This shit just isn’t going to cut it tonight.”
He hands what’s left of the beer to me and moves toward the great room. “Rerun of last week’s game plays as soon as I pour me a decent drink. I’ll help you downstairs.”
Oh, please no! I’d rather listen to the clock tic.
I watch him leave, look down at the beer I’m holding and figure if I’m going to have to watch a rerun of a game I don’t even like, with my drunk father, I’m gonna need this. I’m gonna need way more than this, but I’ll take what I can get. I tip the bottle back and swallow down every last drop.
Dad changes his clothes. Comes down from his bedroom wearing a T-shirt and work-out pants then moves to the liquor cabinet in the dining room.
I lean over my knees and sit on the very edge of the couch in the great room, nervously trying to gather my courage to tell him I don’t like football. Essentially, to break his heart.
He’s just worked a fourteen hour day to pay for my medical bills, give me food to eat and a killer place to live, but I have to play stupid to that fact for a moment and just do this. I can’t keep pretending any longer. I don’t like football. I don’t want to watch the games on TV, and I don’t want to sit on the bench after school, monitoring the sport either. I just don’t want to, and I have to tell him.
I’d like to wait until he’s had at least one drink, because then he’ll be more relaxed. But I can’t wait until he’s had too much, because he gets kind of weird after that. But no matter what, I simply have to do it before he hauls my ass downstairs. Since Luc set me back, even one stair at a time just isn’t going to happen, and I can’t be trapped down there.
I watch Dad select a bottle and I feel my heart pound. I watch him turn to the dining room table, pour some into a glass and I feel my blood rush. I watch him pick up the glass, swirl the liquor inside, and I feel my chest burn. I watch him take a swallow and I feel the words catch inside my throat.
I can’t do it. I’m scared.
I’m afraid of hurting him. Afraid of his reaction. Afraid of him being angry at me.
“Ready?” he asks entering the great room with his drink in one hand and his bottle in the other.
I have to do this. NOW!
“Dad?” My throat is dry. My voice is horse, and it cracks on just that one word.
“Yeah?”
“Umm . . .” My palms are clammy and I think I’m going to throw-up. Or maybe pass out. I might just pass out. There’s a terrible lack of blood and oxygen traveling to my brain at the moment. “I needed to . . . talk to you about . . .”
I pause and he raises his eye brows. “About what?”
Breathe, dammit, I tell myself.
“About . . .”
The doorbell rings.
It shatters my concentration and causes Dad to look over at the front door.
“I got it,” he says setting his liquor down on the end table on his way. He pulls it open then smiles. “Tasha! What a surprise.”
“Hey, Craig.” There’s flirt in her voice and she leans over the thresh hold and kisses him on the cheek.
He beams with delight!
Holy shit, no wonder he wants me to like her.
“Is Ry home?”
“He sure is. Come on in, Doll.” He moves out of the way and she steps into the house. She spots me sitting on the couch and moves toward me, but stops at the end table where Dad’s drink is, and she sticks her index finger down into the glass.
“Get out of it,” Dad says, and with a sassy smile she withdraws her finger and sucks off the liquor. He picks up the glass and bottle and looks me in the eye, “I’ll be downstairs watching the game. You’ll finish what you were saying later, huh?”
I nod, totally unsure if Tasha showing up right now is a blessing or a curse. It got me out of football, kept me upstairs, and it got me out of telling Dad, but I’ve got a feeling she’s looking for trouble tonight.
That feeling is verified when, after my dad is out of ear shot, she says, “Yum, that was good. He left the liquor cabinet open. Let’s find something and go up to your room with it.”
“What are you doing here?” I want to know.
“Was bored. Thought I’d come see what you were doing.” She moves toward the dining room and the bottles and I want her to go away now. I want a little magic wand to wave that will make her disappear in a poof of smoke. Preferably for ever and ever.
“Chloe had some dumb thing to do and Za . . . everyone else was busy.”
“So I’m you’re last resort?”
“Course not.” She withdraws a bottle and looks it over.
“I don’t think you should be messing with that stuff. My dad will . . .”
“He’ll never know.”
“He might.”
She laughs. “All the things that worry you now, but never used to. It’s kind of cute how freaked out you get.”
“Doesn’t feel so cute.”
“Relax then.” She unscrews the lid and smells the liquor. “Ever had this kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Smells promising.” She lifts it to her lips.
“Tasha, please don’t. I don’t want my dad pissed at me.”
“He loves you, Ry.”
“Well, yeah, he loves me but . . .”
“Like I said, he’ll never know.” She tips the bottle back and drinks down a swallow. She both cringes and smiles as it runs down her throat. “Yeah,” she says when she’s done. “This is the stuff. Come on. Let’s go upstairs.”
I don’t move. Not even when she’s standing on the bottom step with the bottle looking back at me.
“Come on,” she beckons to me.
“No. I’m not going up there with you.” No need in the world to tell her my room is now downstairs.
“Are you kidding?” she laughs.
“No.”
“Can you say, anal?”
“Can you say, maybe you should go?”
“Fine,” she says and comes back off the step. She doesn’t leave like I think she’s just agreed to, though. “We’ll just stay here.” She flops down on the couch next to me and takes another drink.
I reach for the bottle and she willingly hands it to me. She thinks it’s because I want a drink, but when I don’t take one she snatches it back and I can only do so much to keep it away from her. Fearing she might not get all that she wants,
she drinks down far more than she should at once, then sets the bottle on the end table and climbs onto my lap.
“Tasha, get off.”
She gives me a wickedly flirting smile and licks her lips.
“Get off, please. You’re hurting my leg.”
“I’ll kiss it better,” she says and then her mouth covers mine.
I can taste the liquor on her tongue when it breaches the boarder of my lips and goes inside. I draw back quickly, but she thinks it’s a game, giggles and tries again.
“Damn, stop it!” I push at her.
“What the hell is your problem?” she asks with a hint of insult.
My problem? It’s that I like Paige and Tasha is too mother F–ing tempting.
I could screw her right here, right now, without an ounce of hesitation from her, and part of me wants to. Part of me wants to forget that love and sex should have meaning and focus strictly on the feeling. And I imagine it would feel pretty damn good with Tasha. I’m a month away from being an eighteen year old male, for hell’s sake. Why does she have to come over here like this, looking and smelling like she does, and being so easy? She’s so damn easy!
I push her again. “Get off of me, Tasha. I mean it.”
“I’m not leaving,” she warns me as she climbs off. “I’m hanging out with my boyfriend tonight.”
“Tasha, I don’t even know you. I don’t love you, either. I think I might have at one time, but I don’t now.”
I’ve hurt her, but I had to. She stares at me, lower lip quivering ever so slightly, then she folds her arms across her chest firmly. “It’s just because you need more time to get to know me again.”
“I don’t think so. I think I just want to move on.” I don’t want to tell her about Paige. I don’t want to introduce any animosity that might cause Tasha to harm her in some way. It’s better she just be mad at me.
“But . . .” she stammers a bit, pulls herself together again and says, “You had fun the other day when we went to the train tracks. You laughed and we . . .”
“I know. I did have fun. But . . . I don’t know, Tasha, I just can’t do this.”
“Do what? What is it you think you’re doing?” her voice is growing louder. “You can’t kiss me? News flash, Ry, you’ve already kissed me a million times. You can’t have sex with me?”
“Shhh,” I try to quiet her because the basement door is open and the last thing I need is Dad hearing.
“Lord, Ryan, I can’t even count how many times you’ve screwed me!”
“Could you . . . keep it down?”
“You’ve screwed me! You’ve screwed me! You’ve screwed me!” she shouts at the top of her lungs.
I shake my head – nervously glance at the basement door – then at the bottle of liquor she’s left in plain sight. I have to get that shit put away before Dad comes up to find out what all the yelling is about. I rise to my feet and move for it, but she knows what I’m doing and snatches it up. She clinches it close to her chest and I know I can’t get it away without coming in contact with her breasts, which I’m sure is why she did it.
“Why am I not good enough for you anymore?” she wants to know.
“Tasha you’re good, I just . . . I’m a different person now. I just want to break up.”
“But you loved me once, right?”
“I think so . . . but . . .”
“Then you can love me again,” she says with a sniffle.
Damn, the liquor can’t possibly have gone to her head this quickly, could it?
“I’m the best there is!” she’s yelling again. “I’m the prettiest and the . . .”
“You’re a lot of things, okay? And yes you’re pretty. Give me the bottle, please.”
“No,” she tells me flatly.
“You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“I don’t care.”
“Look, I think you need to go, Tasha.”
“I told you, I’m not leaving,” she cries out. “I’m hanging out with you tonight.”
“Ry?” It’s my dad’s voice and it nearly gives me a heart attack. “What’s going on up there?” he asks from the bottom of the stairs.
“Nothing,” I call out.
“Keep it down, huh?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I’m not sure I breathe again until I hear the volume of the TV increase and then I turn back to Tasha.
“Please go.”
“No.”
I make a very poor decision, next. In my effort to protect myself and to keep Dad from finding out she’s drinking and thinking I’m allowing it, I close the liquor cabinet and take Tasha and her bottle into my bedroom and lock the door.
I know I can’t get too close to her or she’ll . . . do what she does to me. So I sit in the desk chair and she sits on my bed and drinks and cries about me not loving her anymore.
She keeps it up until my bed is cluttered with wadded, wet balls of tissue, the clock reads quarter after eleven and then she tells me, “I’m gonna throw-up.”
I scurry, to the extent my leg will allow, to get her into the bathroom that’s attached to my room before she does, but we don’t make it. She pukes three feet short of the toilet and it gets all over the front of her shirt.
Now she’s really crying. She sits there on the bathroom floor, drunk out of her mind and sobbing.
“I want it off. Get it off me,” she pleads.
“What? The puke?” I ask.
“Please, get it off.”
So I move to the sink to wet a washcloth and when I turn back around she’s taking off her shirt.
“Whoa! Wait. No,” I cry out.
“It’s gross.” She keeps right on pulling.
“Eww, Tasha, you’re going to get it in your hair. Stop.”
“I want it off.” Another little tug and she gets her wish. She drops it to the floor beside herself and unfastens her bra. And before I have time to react, I’m staring at her bare breasts.
I swallow hard and give her the washcloth, but she doesn’t know what to do with it and it just falls to the floor with her limp hand.
I don’t know what to do, either, so I move back into my room to get one of my shirts for her. She’s lying on her side, passed out cold, when I return. I can’t move her. She has to stay there because there’s just no way I can pick, pack, or drag her anywhere else.
Then her cell phone rings and when I dig it out of her back pocket and see the name, Dad, illuminated on the screen, my heart starts to pound so wildly that it nearly makes me puke down the front of my own shirt. I drop the ringing phone onto her bare upper half and get the hell out of there.
My dad is in the kitchen. He’s drunk, and as I nervously watch him move around with a stagger in his step, I know that the time to ask him for help has long past. I was afraid of him finding out what was going on when Tasha first arrived, but I now realize that I should have just sucked it up and asked him to take her home then. He can’t drive now.
I’m scared. There’s a half-naked, underage, passed out, puked on, drunk girl in my room and someone’s going to pay for it, and, unfortunately, I know exactly who it’s going to be.
A wave of heat crashes into me and beads of sweat immediately make my back prickle. I need some air! I hurry out onto the front porch and close the door as quietly as I can to keep Dad from noticing me. I move to the very end of the long porch, where the garage wall meets with the house and I crumple down into the dark corner and pray my mom will come home soon, not to mention sober.
TWENTY-THREE
I sit out on the porch for a long time trying to get a grip on myself and figure out what I should do. The clock on my cell phone reads 11:49 when headlights come into view. They shut off before the car pulls to a stop in front of the house.
I want it to be Mom, but it’s not. It’s Luc and he’s with some girl. She’s driving and before he gets out of the car he leans closer to her and they kiss for a long, juicy moment.
Luc doesn’t see me until he’s actually up o
n the porch, then his eyes land on me and he flinches and gasps slightly. “You’d better not tell Dad about that,” he warns in a hard tone.
It takes me a few seconds to realize that the girl he was making-out with was just a normal girl, driving a normal car, and that, around here, normal translates to trailer itch. Now it makes sense why he had such an interest in my battles with Dad over Paige. I was fighting for his rights, too.
“Man, I’ve got my own shit to hide from Dad right now,” I say in a choppy voice.
He looks over his shoulder at the car parked in our driveway. “Tasha?”
“I’m so F–ing dead, Luc. I didn’t even want her here. I don’t even like her, but she stole his liquor and now she’s passed out in my bathroom and her dad is looking for her.”
He raises an eyebrow and then goes inside.
Five minutes later he sends me a text. He found her.
I want to respond with, Her dad found her? But when my dad shouts my name, I know exactly who found her.
Dad is screaming at me before he even knows where I am. He doesn’t even pause when I enter the house; he just turns to face me and keeps right on yelling. His speech is somewhat slurred but his message is perfectly clear. I’m done for.
“I’ve been hearing her phone ring for fifteen minutes straight,” he hollers. “No one answered it so I went in to find out what’s going on. Now I want to know what the hell is going on!”
Luc has removed his shirt in preparation for bed, but he’s taken his balcony seat for this event.
“She . . .” That’s the only word I have time to get out.
“She, nothing! Have you been drinking, too?” He steps in close enough to smell me and I pray his own stench isn’t mistaken as mine. “Just because I give you a quarter bottle of beer earlier doesn’t mean you’re allowed to have any more.”
“I didn’t touch the other stuff.”
“Then why did you let her? She’s totally inebriated, Ryan. She can’t even move. What the hell were you thinking? Get her wasted so you can screw her? Is that what you wanted? I highly doubt you had to get her drunk for that.” He jabs me in the chest, in the spot where some of my ribs were broken in the accident and it adds a physical sting to the mental pain I’m already feeling.
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