The Right Way

by Ashey, Katie

  “Consciously, you’re here because you can’t bear to have the one good thing in your life taken away: your football career.” With a pointed look, he added, “On a subconscious level, you’re here because you’re a mess. It isn’t just on the football field where you can’t focus. You’re sure as hell not focusing in your classes, are you?”

  I blinked at him. “No,” I answered honestly.

  “From the dark circles under your eyes, you aren’t sleeping well at night. I’d wager that’s not only grief, but you’re probably experiencing nightmares.”

  As I trembled all over, I tried holding back more tears. I just wanted it to all go away—the flashbacks that left me emotionally crippled, the guilt that ate away at me when I was awake, and the nightmares that haunted me.

  Until you let it go, you’ll never be free.

  “I saw him die, Doc. I saw my baby brother be blown up like a fucking 4th of July firework. And I see it every. single. fucking night.”

  Chapter Four: Presley

  PRESLEY

  Leaning against the porch railing, I watched a real estate agent hammering a For-Sale sign into our yard as Mom looked gleefully on. Two weeks had passed since I’d agreed to Evelyn’s offer to move in with her and Martin. In that time, I’d been busy packing up my room as well as trying to plan out what I would need to get rid of so I would have adequate space for the baby.

  Just as the agent was finishing with the sign, a U-Haul, driven by Martin and Evelyn, pulled up to the house followed by a Jeep belonging to Jonathan. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I peered through the windshield to see who was with Jonathan. It was Jake’s best friend, Noah. Although I’d known him since middle school, Noah and I had grown a lot closer since Jake died. I waved to him as he got out.

  Mom’s heels clicked up the front walk. After joining me on the porch, her perfectly micro bladed brows creased at the sight of the U-Haul.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Presley?” she asked.

  “I think we both know it’s for the best.”

  “It is?”

  “Come on, Mom. We both know a baby doesn’t fit into yours and Ian’s life right now. The Nelson’s are in a better place to help me.” When she didn’t seem convinced, I added, “Besides, I don’t want to move to Tennessee. You know I want to go to school here.”

  With a contemptuous snicker, she said, “You still believe you’re going to go to college?”

  I wrapped my arms around my growing waist. “Don’t you remember I was accepted at Chattahoochee Tech?”

  “That was before you got knocked up.”

  I cringed at her words. “Yes, I’m aware I’m pregnant.”

  She pursed her collagen enhanced lips at me. “I’d finally gotten around to enrolling when I got pregnant with you, but I never got to go back.”

  I will never turn out like you. “Whatever, Mom.”

  Turning my attention away from her, I focused on Jonathan’s Jeep. I couldn’t imagine who was in the back. It had been too far for Jason to come home from Duke to help out. Maybe Jonathan and Noah had gotten another friend from Tech to help them.

  When a brunette female hopped out of the passenger side, my heart momentarily leapt into my throat. Maddie Parker—the one girl Jake had truly loved.

  I hadn’t expected to see her. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since graduation. While she’d been a mission trip for the summer, we had swapped a few emails back and forth. At first, it had been a little awkward, but then it was also nice commiserating together in our grief. She’d come to embrace the idea of me having Jake’s child a lot easier than I thought she would. I think it helped that she and Noah were dating now.

  As she made her way across the yard, a truly genuine smile lit up her face. “Hey, Presley,” Maddie called cheerfully.

  “Hey, Maddie. It’s really nice of you to give up your Saturday to help me move.”

  She waved a hand. “Don’t mention it.” Bumping her hip playfully against Noah’s, she added, “After all, it’s a way for us to spend time together.”

  “Well, I really appreciate it.”

  While I thought it would’ve been seeing Maddie that would’ve been awkward and difficult, it turned out to be Jake’s older brother, Jonathan. Standing behind Noah and Maddie, he glowered at me so intently I had to look away. Since he was only two years older than us, Jake and I had spent a lot of time hanging out with him and his girlfriends over the years. In fact, I’d actually kissed Jonathan before I had Jake, but it was only during a Spin the Bottle Game when I was a freshman.

  I could only imagine his animosity towards me stemmed from an incident at the funeral home between me and another one of Jake’s on and off again girlfriends. I’d apologized profusely, and obviously, it wasn’t an issue to his parents. I couldn’t imagine why he seemed so hell-bent on holding a grudge. Trying to be hospitable, I threw up a hand. “Hey, Jonathan.”

  “Hey,” he grumbled.

  Okay then. I guess he was still really pissed. Martin and Evelyn joined us on the porch. Gesturing to my mom’s heels, Martin noted, “You better change before you start helping.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “Actually, I have plans today with some friends.”

  Of course, she did. Since she didn’t approve of me moving in with the Nelsons, there was no way in hell she could be bothered to help me move. She was just that petty.

  As Martin’s face darkened slightly, Evelyn quickly replied, “Don’t worry one bit. We’ll make sure Presley gets moved and settled.”

  “Thank you,” Mom replied somewhat sourly.

  With a grunt, Martin brushed past her and into the house. Mom took that as her cue to head to her car to go and do God knows what with her group of questionable friends. When it came to them, it didn’t matter it was barely noon. They’d spend the rest of the weekend celebratory shit-faced at Mom’s departure to Tennessee.

  While I watched Mom pull out of the driveway, the others went inside the house. Everyone except Evelyn. She touched a comforting hand to my face. “I know she’s your mother, Presley, and her apathetic behavior has to hurt.”

  I shrugged. “Trust me, I’m used to it.”

  Evelyn bobbed her head sadly. “I’m sure you are. Just know your family isn’t always made of those who you share blood and DNA with.”

  My throat tightened. “Thanks,” I murmured.

  She patted my cheek before brushing past me into the house. I quickly followed on her heels. When I got inside, the others were standing in the living room waiting for directions. Motioning with my hand, I said, “Follow me. My bedroom is the last door on the right.”

  The group fell in step behind me. When we got to my room, I almost tripped over one of the boxes I’d left in the doorway. “Oops. Let me get this one.” When I bent over to pick it up, a disapproving shriek came from the group. “What?” I questioned.

  “You don’t need to be doing any heavy lifting in your condition,” Evelyn insisted.

  “My condition?” I giggled. “Are we in the 1800’s?”

  Wagging her finger at me, Evelyn replied, “That is absolutely the last box you lift.”

  “Seriously, I can get some of the lighter ones.”

  This time it was Martin who bellowed his disapproval. “Absolutely not.” At my questioning look, he added, “With all of us here, there’s no reason for you to do any lifting.”

  My gaze bounced between him and Evelyn. “I can’t believe you all expect me just to stand here and do nothing.”

  A grin spread across his face. “You won’t be doing nothing—you can supervise.”

  I laughed. “Fine. I’ll get out of your way and go sit at the table and work on some job applications.”

  Evelyn nodded. “Yes. I want you to find something other than the coffee shop where you won’t be on your feet so much.”

  “Where are you looking for a job?” Maddie asked as she taped up a box.

  With a shrug, I replied, “I’m not sure. Maybe in an office so
mewhere. I’d love to find something in the medical field since I want to go into nursing, but I’ll take anything.”

  Maddie’s eyes lit up. “Hey, I bet Noah’s mom’s practice could find something for you to do.”

  Noah’s mom was one of the doctors at my OBGYN’s office. I hadn’t seen her yet because I thought it was a little awkward with her seeing my vagina when I was friends with her son. There was also the even more awkward fact that I had made out with Noah in a moment of grief-fueled stupidity a few weeks after Jake’s death. He was drunk, and I was in over my head with pregnancy hormones and being scared out of my mind. It wasn’t one of my finer moments.

  “You really think so?”

  “Of course.” She took her phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll text her now.”

  “Thanks, Maddie.”

  She grinned at me. “No problem.”

  While we waited on a response, Martin and the guys huffed and puffed as they carted parts of my bedroom suite to the truck. “I wish you guys would have let me hire some movers,” I remarked.

  Martin swiped his brow with a handkerchief. “With all of us able-bodied men, there was no point in wasting the money.”

  “Always the cheap shit,” Jonathan muttered under his breath, which apparently Martin didn’t hear because it would have elicited a response. Just like with Jake, Martin had been an overbearing asshole with Jonathan as well. I don’t think Jason escaped it either.

  With the five of them working hard, they made quick work of dismantling my room. It wasn’t too long before the U-Haul was packed to the brim. As I stood inside my empty room, I wish I could’ve said I was sad to be leaving, or that I’d experienced a lot of happy memories inside the house. But that wouldn’t have been truthful.

  Instead, I focused on the future before me at the Nelson’s. “Ready?” Evelyn questioned gently.

  “Yes,” I answered honestly.

  Since there was nothing to come back to, I drove my car behind the moving truck and Noah’s Jeep. When we arrived at the Nelson’s, I took my purse and another small bag and headed inside while they started working on unloading the van.

  Over the years, I’d spent a lot of time at Jake’s house. We’d had sexual exploits in almost every room. Well, except for his parents’ and brothers’ bedrooms. But besides the sex, there had also been family dinners and movie nights. Lots of laughter and crazy antics. Unlike my house, it really was a home. And unlike my house, I’d mostly felt welcomed. Even when Martin was an asshole, the place had a warmth I’d never known anywhere else. I wasn’t sure what being here without Jake would feel like, but I couldn’t even go there right now. Not while I had an audience.

  After pounding up the stairs, I made my way down the hall to Jake’s room. When I stepped inside, my heart momentarily shuddered to a stop before slowly restarting. The last time I’d been in the room was when Jake was alive. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see him standing beside the bed—his usual sexy grin spread across his face.

  But he wasn’t there. The room was stripped bare of his presence and all his possessions. By early July, most of his personal effects had been distributed to his friends and family. What was left had been donated to several different charities. Initially Martin had plans to sell the furniture and electronics, but Evelyn had objected that she didn’t want to make a dime off her son’s death.

  A sob rose in my throat for what felt like the thousandth time, but before I could expend it, Noah and Maddie appeared in the doorway with boxes in their hands. I quickly pushed the sad memories out of my mind. Today wasn’t about the past—it was about new beginnings for me and the baby.

  “I think the best place for you is either the bathroom or the closet,” Evelyn suggested.

  I laughed. “Are you guys banishing me in my—” I paused to make air quotes “delicate condition?”

  Evelyn smiled. “Would you considerate it a productive suggestion, rather than a banishment.”

  “I suppose so.”

  When I headed for the bathroom, Evelyn cautioned me. “I hope you don’t find it in terrible shape. I asked Jonathan to clean this morning.”

  Oh shit. I’d forgotten that Jake’s was a Jack and Jill bathroom with one of the other bedrooms. Jonathan’s bedroom. As an only child, I’d never shared a bathroom with anyone other than my mother. I couldn’t imagine sharing a bathroom with a guy, least of all one who didn’t seem to like me very much.

  At that moment, Jonathan came inside with my headboard. “Did you clean the bathroom like I asked, sweetheart?” Evelyn asked.

  With a grunt, Jonathan sat the headboard down. “No. But I moved all my shit out. I’ll use Jason’s bathroom when I’m home.”

  “Were you afraid of sharing with a pregnant chick?” I teasingly asked.

  He merely responded with another glare before heading back downstairs. “Well, that was rude,” Evelyn huffed.

  “It’s okay. I don’t blame him for not wanting to share a bathroom with me.”

  She continued staring at the doorway. “I don’t know what is going on with him these days,” she acknowledged. Turning to me, she added, “Of course, just like we all are, he’s reeling from Jake’s death. But there’s something more—something he’s not telling us.”

  In a way, I had to agree. During the years I’d known him, Jonathan didn’t normally act like a dick. He’d always been friendly and a lot of laughs. He was actually more outgoing than Jason. As close as he was to Jake, I knew the loss had hit him hard. I just couldn’t imagine why he seemed so angry towards his parents and more importantly me.

  I made quick work unpacking my makeup and toiletry boxes. When I finished in the bathroom, the guys were starting to put my bed together, so I started hanging some of the clothes in the walk-in closet. I don’t know how long I’d been working in the closet when I stepped out to get some more boxes.

  I jumped at the sight of Jonathan carrying my nightstand. After our last altercation, I’d hoped to avoid him for the rest of the afternoon. Now I was not only having to see him, but we were somehow alone together. As tension cut through the air, I wished I’d stayed in the closet. “Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there,” I remarked lamely.

  Without looking at me, he sat the nightstand down. Of course, it happened to be on the wrong side I needed it to be. Motioning with my hand, I replied, “Sorry, but that’s actually supposed to go over there.”

  With a roll of his eyes, Jonathan swept up the nightstand and stalked around the side of the bed. You wouldn’t have to move it if you’d taken the time to ask me where I wanted it. After he plopped it down a little more forcefully than he needed to, he spun around and started for the door.

  Although the old Presley wanted to tell him to stop acting like a dick, I realized I needed to approach things a little more delicately. “Jonathan, wait.”

  He froze. After exhaling noisily, he turned around. “What?”

  “Look, I know you have a busy schedule with school and football, so it really means a lot that you’d come home to help me get moved in.” There. I’d actually managed to say something nice to him, and it hadn’t killed me.

  “My parents gave me the guilt trip from hell.”

  Right. Of course, he wouldn’t have willingly come home or done it out of the goodness of his heart like Noah and Maddie had. All my good intentions of being nice went out the window.

  Smirking at him, I replied, “It’s nice to see a twenty-year-old guy who is still afraid of his parents.”

  “Since they control my cash flow during football season, I do what I have to do.” He narrowed his blue eyes at me. “You should understand that more than anyone.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Scowling, Jonathan replied, “Come on, Presley. While I took you for a lot of things, stupid wasn’t one of them.”

  “I’m so sorry I can’t decipher your cryptic bullshit.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  Jonat
han rolled his eyes. “Having the baby.”

  I blinked at him. “I don’t understand. Why would you ask me that?”

  “It’s a perfectly legitimate question.”

  “I’m having the baby because I want it—I mean, her. More than anything in the world, I want her.”

  “Please. You’re the least maternal acting girl I know.”

  “While that might be true, it doesn’t mean I won’t be a good mother,” I countered defensively.

  “Seriously though, if Jake was still alive, would you still be having it?”

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told him the day he died: I was having the baby with or without his help.”

  “But he didn’t want to be with you. He’d bought a ring for Maddie for fuck’s sake.”

  Heat rushed my cheeks at his words. “I’m aware of how Jake felt about me romantically. Regardless of what he felt for Maddie, he was going to step up and honor his responsibility to his child.”

  “If he even acknowledged it.”

  “But he did.

  “That’s what you say. Jake’s not here to defend himself.”

  “But he did say—”

  “It just seems very convenient to me.”

  “Are you trying to accuse me of exploiting this baby?”

  With a shrug, Jonathan replied, “Free rent and childcare, not to mention the rest of the money my parents are throwing your way.”

  Seething at his accusations, I snapped, “You’re a fucking asshole!”

  “Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m telling the truth.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Maybe you’re a money-hungry opportunist who is going to suck my parents dry. Jesus, after all the guys you’ve spread your legs for, aren’t you lucky the one who knocked you up got killed?”

  Red streaked across my vision at Jonathan’s despicable words. I didn’t stop to think; I just reacted. Launching myself at Jonathan, I began smacking and clawing his face. Although Jonathan could’ve shoved me away or brought his arms up to deflect my hits, he merely stood there and took it.

  And I just kept going at him. Even the sound of Evelyn’s panicked voice didn’t stop me from striking him. All the pent-up anger and frustration and grief poured out through my hands.