Just thinking that as I stand in the kitchen, watching the two of them in the dining room makes me feel like a pervert. She’s only sixteen, although her curves make her look like more of a woman and less of a girl.
He gives her little touches as they sit next to each other watching something on his laptop. Her laugh makes him smile.
He’s foolish to think she’ll stay with him. Girls like that don’t stay with men like us. He can keep pretending if he wants to. He can keep bringing her home and cuddling up with her because he doesn’t know how easy it is for people to shove you away.
She’ll shove, she’ll push, she’ll leave. And I can’t blame her.
Her shoulders shake as she laughs and leans into him. His broad smile grows and like the kid he is, he wraps his arm around her shoulders.
The smile dies when Addison leans forward and away.
He doesn’t know she needs space.
It’s not his fault though. Tyler has a lot to learn. Hard life lessons.
Like the ones I’ve had to endure.
Cancer took our mother and left us a bitter father who likes the belt a little too much. Not to mention a pile of bills that a single person couldn’t possibly afford. It’s taken years to turn my father’s small-time dealing into a thriving business. Years of destroying what little life I had left.
“Let’s not,” I hear Addison say and when I look up her eyes are on me. Caught in her gaze, I hold her there, but it doesn’t last long. Tyler’s always there to reclaim her attention.
A sense of loss runs through me, followed by disgust.
I haven’t been a good person in so long, maybe I’ve forgotten how. Or maybe I never was a good person to begin with.
“You and Carter going out tonight?” my father asks as he interrupts the view I have of Tyler and his girlfriend.
It’s only ever Carter and me. Never my other brothers. We’re the oldest, after all. The ones who need to pick up my father’s slack. The ones who pay these bills and make the business what it is.
We’re the ones who have to shoulder the burden. And really it’s Carter’s hard work and brutal business tactics that make any of this possible. It sure as fuck isn’t my father. He’s good at hiding his pain. But every time he remembers my mother, I know he copes with a different addiction. One that makes using that belt easier.
Only ever for Carter and me though.
“Yeah,” I tell him and wait for him to hint that he wants us to bring some of the supply back for his personal use. Friday marks four years since our mother’s been gone and I know a relapse is coming. He’ll disappear for days, maybe even weeks. It was worse when she first passed. I guess I should be grateful that he’s better now than he was then.
“Be careful coming home. I heard there’s a patrol on the east side so maybe come up the back way after you get the shipment.”
A second passes and then another before I nod.
Some days I wonder if he cares for me anymore. He was always a hard man. But when Mom passed, he was nothing but angry. The years have maybe changed him to be less full of hate. But it doesn’t mean he has anything in him to take its place.
I give him another nod and look past him as the sound of Tyler and Addison getting up from the table catches my attention.
My father glances over his shoulder in the direction I’m staring and then turns back to me. He only shakes his head and makes to leave, but I hear him mutter, “She isn’t yours.”
I hate him even more in this moment. Because he’s right.
The sad, pretty girl doesn’t belong to me.
No matter how much I think she’d take my pain away.
Chapter Fifteen
Addison
I wonder what the girl I used to be would think of me.
The girl who still had both her parents and a life worth living for.
I think she’d make up excuses for my poor behavior. She’d say I was sad, but she has no idea how pathetic I am.
Grief isn’t static. It’s not a point on a chart where you can say, “Here, at this time, I grieved.” Because grief doesn’t know time. It comes and goes as it pleases, then small things taunt it back into your life. The memories haunt you forever and carry the grief with them. Yes, grief is carried. That’s a good way to put it.
I pull a pillow on the sofa into my lap and stare at the television screen although my eyes are puffy and sore and I don’t even know what’s on.
Playing with the small zipper on the side of the pillow absently, I think about what happened. How it all unraveled.
I think it started with his scar, the past being brought up. But just like scars, some of our past will never leave us. The old wounds were showing. That’s what it was really about.
I always knew Daniel was broken in ways Tyler wasn’t. But I didn’t know about his father. I didn’t know any of that. I don’t even know if Tyler knew.
But what happened between Daniel and me, that … I don’t even have a word for it. It was like a light switch being turned off. Everything was fine, better than fine. Then darkness was abrupt and sudden, with no way to escape.
My eyes dart to the screen as a commercial appears and its volume is louder than whatever show or movie was playing. I sniffle as I flick the TV off and look at my phone again.
I’m sorry. Daniel messaged me earlier and I do believe he is, but I don’t know if that will be enough. My happy little bubble of lust has been popped and the self-awareness isn’t pretty.
I’m sorry too. It’s all I can say back to him and he reads it. But there’s nothing left for either of us to say now. I wonder if this will be the end of us.
We can’t have a conversation about the bad things that have happened. That’s the simple truth. It’s awkward, tense. And we can’t escape the moments coming up in conversation. There’s no way getting around that.
It’s easy to blame it on my past. On things I had no control over and things I can’t change.
It’s a lot like what I did when I left Dixon Falls. But really I was running, just like I had been since the day my parents died. Tyler was a distraction, a pleasant one that made me feel something other than the agonizing loneliness that had turned me bitter.
And then there was Daniel. He left me breathless and wanting, and that’s a hard temptation to run away from.
I’m woman enough to admit that.
So sure, I can blame it on our past.
It’s easy to blame it on grief, but it’s still a lie. It’s because neither of us can talk about what happened.
I startle at the vibration of the phone on the coffee table.
My heart beats hard with each passing second; all the while a long-lost voice in the back of my head begs me to answer a simple question. What am I doing?
Or maybe the right question is, What did I expect?
My gaze drifts across each photo on the far wall of the living room and it stops on three. Each of the photos meant something more when I took them. There are a little more than a dozen in total. Each photographed in a moment of time when I knew I was changing.
I keep them hung up because they look pretty from a distance; the pictures themselves are pleasant and invoke warm feelings.
More than that, the photos are a timeline of moments I never want to forget. I refuse to let myself forget.