Two Different Sides

by L A Tavares

  “Blake, sweetie,” she says with sympathetic tears in her eyes, “your mother isn’t coming back.”

  Chapter Ten

  Now

  When I bought this couch, I thought it was the most comfortable possible option. And it is—for sitting. For sleeping, not so much.

  An unexpected bang—clashing of pots and pans—causes me to jump inches off the sofa and almost fall to the floor. Ripping the blankets off me, I sit up, looking over the back.

  Kelly places the blender on the counter and tosses kitchen items around while preparing to make what has to be the loudest freakin’ breakfast smoothie of all time.

  “Good morning!” she yells over the sound of the blender, though nothing in her voice indicates it’s actually a ‘good’ morning.

  “Good morning,” I whisper back, standing from the couch and heading to the counter. I reach to place my hand at her lower back, but she turns toward the refrigerator and opens the door.

  “You came home late last night—or, well, early this morning.” As soon as I open my mouth to speak, she restarts the blender over my words.

  “Are we going to talk?” I ask, my patience wearing thin.

  “I’m not sure, Blake. Are we? Because lately it seems like I do all the talking, and you sit there and disregard everything I say.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Really? Last night I had the night off. I told you I had the night off and that I wanted to spend time with you. And you agreed.”

  “Well, yeah, but we never really finalized a plan, so I wasn’t sure what we were doing.”

  “Maybe you should have, oh, I don’t know, asked instead of going out drinking all night.” She wipes her hands clean then throws the towel to the table.

  “I had a few drinks with Xander and—”

  “Don’t start deciding what lie you are going to feed me next, Blake, because I was with Natalie when Xander got home last night without you.”

  She crosses her arms across her chest and taps her foot. I plead the fifth.

  “I’m really tired of all this Blake. I love you, but you’re on stage seven months a year and I deal with that. I do. It would be nice if for one night, you could stay off stage and spend a night with me while you’re here.”

  “Off stage?” I ask, confused at first but then I realize what direction this is taking.

  “I run The Rock Room, Blake. You didn’t think that your little show would get back to me? You were supposed to be at home with me, not performing with some half-dressed rock star wanna-be. And unless Xander turned into a petite blonde with breasts, he wasn’t the one you were having drinks with either.”

  My heart clenches. She’s not mad. She’s…exhausted—and I don’t blame her. I am hardly ever in this house when I’m home. My absence has taken a toll on her.

  “I’m going to ask one time and one time only, Blake. If you look me in the eyes and tell me the answer I am hoping for, I promise to never ever ask again…”

  Her voice quiets and trails off, and she’s looking anywhere but at me. I nod my head and open my ears—something I should have been doing for a while now.

  “You are staying out late or not coming home at all. You’re distant and uninterested. It doesn’t seem like…like you want to be around me anymore.”

  My gaze follows the grout lines of the floor so I don’t have to look in her eyes as she runs down my list of failures.

  “Blake?” Her voice trembles like thunder at the start of a storm. I look up and my eyes find hers. “Is there someone else?”

  “No, Kel. No. It’s not like that.” I reach for her hands and take them in mine. I lift her fingers to my lips and kiss her knuckles. She breathes a sigh of relief. “I have a lot on my plate. But there’s only you. I promise.”

  “I am working today and tonight but only until around nine. Will you pick me up? Maybe we can go catch a movie or something?” Her eyes are pleading, like we’re at a point where a movie might be a large enough Band-Aid to keep us together.

  “Absolutely.” I lock my pinky finger into hers. “I promise.”

  I lie in bed and watch her get ready for work. I don’t know why, but something about the way she wraps her hair around the curling iron and applies perfectly even lines to her eyelids makes me feel like I’m watching an artist work. She looks back at me in the reflection and winks then blows me a kiss. I do love her—I always have—but I know I can’t keep her happy for long if things don’t change. She’s not the kind of girl who wants to stay at home by herself waiting for me to come home. She wants to go out, see the world and dance the night away. I know I need to put my needs aside and prioritize some of hers.

  I must have fallen asleep, because eventually I wake up, but my eyes don’t find her beautiful face in the mirror staring back at me. Instead, there’s a note written on the mirror she had previously been looking in.

  9 p.m. Don’t forget!

  My phone rings and I turn it over to see Xander’s name across the screen.

  Girls are both working tonight. Want to grab a bite to eat or a drink somewhere downtown?

  I consider it, but I know that dinner with Xander means drinks. Drinks means losing track of time, and losing track of time means missing my night with Kelly.

  Thanks, but I’ll pass tonight.

  Making my way down the sidewalks through the busy city streets, I take the roads into the heart of the city where there is abundant shopping. I think it’s about time I do something nice for Kelly. Flowers or jewelry maybe? It’s all long overdue.

  As I walk down the row of stores looking in windows and deciding what might be the best choice, my phone pings.

  7:30 p.m. Same spot as last week.

  I close out the message and walk into the nearest store.

  What do you say Blake? Are you in?

  The second text in a matter of minutes burns bright across my screen. I shouldn’t. It’s nearing seven o’clock and I need to be picking Kelly up by nine—but I’m tempted. I hate that I’m tempted. I wish it were easier to leave the past in the past, but it’s not. Some bad habits are easier to erase than others, and this is a part of me that can’t be deleted so easily.

  Yeah, count me in.

  * * * *

  I knock on the door—three times hard and quick, followed by a pause, then one more single knock. The door opens and Isabella stands on the other side. She wears heels that render her taller than me, skin-tight jeans and a top that hugs every inch of her upper body, except for her midriff, which remains bare.

  “Blake,” she purrs, “you showed.” She opens the door wider, and I step through it. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too, Isabella.” My hands sweat and my heart pounds—side effects of the guilt. I said the last time would be the last time—but I’ve been saying that for years.

  I enter the house and walk down the hallway, finding the stairs and ascending them one by one until my feet find flat ground in the smoky loft. I turn the corner and everyone is waiting, sitting around the table with only one seat open—the spot that I have inherited as my usual chair.

  “Mathews,” Victor says. His hair is slicked back and he wears a fitted suit. “Have a seat.” He pulls a cigar out of a pocket of the suit and hands it to me across the table.

  Isabella pulls out the remaining chair and I take it.

  “Deal me in,” I say, pulling out my wallet and tossing hundreds onto the table in front of me.

  * * * *

  Then

  Going to Julian’s football game actually meant drinking under the bleachers with a small group of outcasts like me.

  I had no home to go to and no mother planning to pick me up anytime soon…or ever. All I had was a cheap bottle of vodka that burned something fierce as it went down, but I welcomed it. It was a pain I could control.

  “What are you doing, man?” I hear Alexander’s voice say as he enters the area under the bleachers. “Look… I know I’m not always the best decision-maker, b
ut come sit with me and the guys. My mom will kill you if you come home drunk tonight.”

  “I’m not her problem.” I take another swig from the bottle.

  “If you don’t get your ass on those bleachers right now, we’re going to have a problem,” he threatens as he pushes his hair back off his forehead.

  “What are you going to do about it, Alexander?” I hand the bottle off to the brunette next to me whose name I don’t remember and step forward toward him, so we’re nose to nose.

  “Blake, stop. Let’s go, okay?” Alexander offers one last chance to walk away before I lose everything, but I don’t take it.

  I swing at him hard and miss, throwing myself off balance and falling forward. Alexander grabs my arm and the back of my jacket near my neck. “Let’s go,” he says, leading me toward the exit.

  “Get the hell off of me.” I rip my arm from his grasp aggressively and walk away, leaving the game and parking lot behind me.

  I get as far as the fence at the opposite side of the field when I hear footsteps cross into the parking lot.

  “You’re leaving?” Kelly asks, clad in her maroon-and-gold cheer uniform.

  “Looks like it,” I say, not turning to face her. “I never pegged you as one to join the cheerleading team.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she scoffs, and I turn, slowly, wondering if I should face her or walk away.

  “You used to wear black, exclusively. You didn’t own a pair of jeans that were intact, and you had at least fifty bracelets. Every day was a different band T-shirt and those high-top sneakers you wore? The lyrics on them and the art you drew…”

  Tell her, Blake. Tell her the music is because of her. Tell her that everything you are is because of her.

  “Well…they were bad-ass.” That’s the best I can do.

  “People change.” She drags the toe of her bright white cheer sneakers across the asphalt.

  “They do.” I step in closer to her.

  “That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” she whispers, tucking a piece of loose hair behind her ear and securing it under the large bow that ties her curled ponytail.

  The liquor is fueling all the courage I need to be open and honest with her—maybe even kiss her if she’ll allow it. I lean in, bringing my face within inches of hers and she stalls.

  “I have to be going.” She looks over her shoulder at the field.

  I run my hand through my hair and hold my breath. Swing and a miss—for the second time tonight. She heads toward the field and I walk toward the street with no real destination.

  “Hey, Blake?” she calls, leaning into the chain link fence.

  I look over my shoulder at her as she twirls a curl around her finger.

  “I still have them.” she says, and my eyebrow twisting is enough to tell her I’m confused. “The high-top sneakers and the bracelets.”

  I smile, thinking back on the first time I ever saw her and realizing it hadn’t been all that long ago at all. The girl I’ve always known isn’t as far away as I thought.

  For a while I just walk, unsure of where to go from here, but end up at an address that was always a house but never really much of a home.

  The skies open and the rain pours, forming puddles in the mud at the bottom of the stairs. Thunder shakes the walls of the old, run-down house. The shutters threaten to fall from their hinges. A handful of eviction notes wallpaper the front door. I peer into the windows, imaging the spot where our belongings used to fill the space. It’s empty now, with no evidence anyone is coming back.

  “Hey.” Alexander’s voice cuts through the sleeting rain. He puts his hands in his pocket and sloshes puddle water around with the toe of his boot. “You know, when my dad left, he gave me a piece of paper with his new address on it and told me to visit whenever I wanted.”

  I remain facing the house, watching his reflection in the clouded glass of the storm door.

  “At least he left you an address,” I say. “She left… She left nothing!” My scream echoes a deep, threatening tone that rivals even the sound of the thunder overhead. “Nothing…” I whisper, my voice breaking.

  “It didn’t exist, Blake,” Alexander says. “It was a bogus address. One hundred percent bullshit.”

  As I turn to face him and rub my thumb at my jaw, I step off the porch and tilt my head back so the rain pours over me like the stream from a showerhead, and I throw my hands to the lightening-lit sky. “Why didn’t they want us?” I shout it for Alexander to hear, but on another level, I’m yelling it to some higher being too.

  “I think it says more about them than it does about us.”

  “What am I supposed to do, man?” There are tears in my eyes disguised by the downpour. “My mother cut us off from every family member I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t even know how to start looking for my father. I’m sixteen years old with nowhere to go.”

  “That’s not true,” he says, stomping through the puddles as he makes his way toward me and slaps his hands on the sopping wet shoulders of my faux leather jacket. “You’re staying with us, and we’re not taking no for an answer.”

  “Your mother didn’t ask for a teenage boy to be dropped on her doorstep, Alexander.”

  “She didn’t,” he says with a laugh, though I don’t see what’s funny. “She said if it becomes a problem, I was going to have to go because she likes you better.” I smile and he wraps his arms around me, patting his palm in between my shoulder blades.

  “Let’s go home, Blake—where we belong.”

  The following Monday, I walked into school knowing that I had a best friend who had become a brother, a roof over my head and four walls around me that for the first time in years weren’t closing in on me. I place my books in my locker and the bell rings. As I turn to head toward my classroom, I see Kelly closing her locker too. She waves at me, one finger at a time before turning and walking down the hall. As she enters the classroom, I notice something different about her.

  She’s wearing her high-tops.

  Chapter Eleven

  Now

  My cards suck. Black and red numbers and faces stare back at me. None of them have anything in common and the two and the seven I hold offer no chance of a straight. Sweat beads at my brow. I end up folding. I had so much in on the hand, hoping to obtain better cards and banking on the fact that the other players were overconfident in theirs, but here I sit, watching instead of playing, with no chance to win the pot as it grows or get back what I had already thrown into it.

  “All right, all right. It’s clearly not my night. I’ve got to get going.” I wipe my hands on my jeans and push the chair back.

  “Mathews, please,” Victor says through a victorious smile, “I’m sure I can ring another few thousand out of you if you stick around a bit longer.”

  The table laughs, puffing more smoke into the cigar cloud that engulfs them.

  Thousands? I had lost count. On one hand, there’s more where that came from, but on the other, giving away any fraction of my bank account is an idiotic loss. I shouldn’t be here in the first place.

  “Sit down, Blake,” Isabella says. “It’s only ten past ten. We’re just getting started.”

  Ten past ten.

  Now I’m really screwed.

  I call Kelly’s phone, but she doesn’t answer. Her voice sounds over the voicemail, but I click out without leaving a message. This calls for an in-person apology. Even then, it might not be enough.

  I call for a ride and have them drop me at the door to my house. When I try the doorknob, it doesn’t budge. My pockets are empty in more ways than one. Not only is there a deficit where there once was cash, but I don’t have my keys. I’m locked out of my own house and I can’t even be mad about it. I dial in another number and the phone rings on the other side.

  “I’ve been instructed not to speak you until the end of time,” Xander says, picking up the phone.

  “By Natalie or Kelly?” I run my hand through the roots of my hair.

&nbs
p; “Both,” he says, and I sigh into phone. “Blake, what’s going on?”

  I shake my head, though he can’t see it.

  “Nothing,” I lie, but he knows me better than anyone. I can lie to almost anyone, but not to him. He knows me too well.

  “Well, that’s not true. You call me when you’re ready to talk.” He clicks the phone to a dead quiet and I sit on the porch steps, deciding what to do next. No house key, no girl.

  No luck.

  I walk down the road to a bar when I know I should be heading toward Xander and Natalie’s apartment, but I can’t. I can’t see Kelly until I know what I’m going to say—and right now, I don’t.

  I sit on the bar stool with only my drink to keep me company—the glass half empty. I used to have a drinking buddy in Xander—day, night, good times or bad, he was on the stool beside me, but now he spends most of his free time and days off with Natalie—exactly what I should be doing with Kelly, but I’m not.

  “Hey, stranger,” a familiar voice says, taking the bar stool next to me with a drink in hand. Stasia smiles at me and signals to the bartender for a drink for me and another round for her. “What’s going on?”

  “Same shit, different day,” I say. I’m actually happy to see her. We had a great time the other night talking music, playing riffs and just hanging out. No pressure. No commitment.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  It’s been a while since I had a friend to talk to—not a band member, not a girlfriend, just a friend.

  “Yeah, actually, I do.”

  Two days later, Kelly still hadn’t come home or returned my calls, but eventually I sigh a breath of relief when her name pops up on my phone with one new message.

  I’m working tonight. Meet me there.