“And now that you’ve met me?”
“I admit, we got off to a very rocky start.”
“One that I’ll need to apologize for a thousand times over.”
She fans away my apology as though it means nothing.
“Yeah. You were a very convincing moron and a diabolical asshole.”
“Jesus, Beth.”
“I’m just being honest here,” she nods at me.
I tackle her and she yelps beneath me. “I’m still a diabolical asshole.”
“True...but now you’re my diabolical asshole.”
Her hand cups my face and she smiles up at me, her eyes softening. Seconds later, she’s pulling me down to her and my head rests against her chest as I listen to the quickening beats of her heart.
“You’re not really an asshole,” she says.
“I wear the title proudly. Take it away and I’m nothing.”
“You’ve already done the honors yourself,” she says. “A true asshole would have filed a restraining order against Jessica. He would have left me in the pool that first day I came here, and he wouldn’t care as much as you do about the fact that he can’t remember his mom.”
Her arm tightens around me and I know she’s stopping me from running.
“Fine.” I sulk.
“Maverick?”
“Yeah.”
Her heartbeat increases and mine mirrors hers. “There are pieces of my puzzle that are missing too,” she says. “Could you tell me what happened to her? Do you remember that?”
The lump that develops in my throat isn’t fist sized. It’s the size of the entire universe. I’m not unhappy about it. If I try to swallow my shock, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to choke to death.
I think about lying to Beth. It would be the easier route to take. We’d be done with this and I wouldn’t need to take a trip down nightmare lane. But even as I try to form the words, my mouth seals shut on itself and I can’t seem to do it.
“Only if you want to,” she adds and a part of me hates how easy it is for her to speak right now. That feeling only dies when the sound of her heartbeat comes back into focus. If it thumps any harder, it’ll drill a hole right through her chest.
She cared about my mother. Loved her even. And now, here she is, very close to loving me. I feel like a monster. A traitor. The biggest sin. So much of me wants to take off for the hills. Run away and never look back.
But there’s a different part of me that is stronger, stupider, less of a coward. That part of me is willing and ready to see the look of love in Beth’s eyes turn to the vilest form of hate. That part of me is searching for just another reason to hate myself.
I swallow hard, working my throat to speak the truest words I’ve ever spoken. Words I’ve been reminded of a thousand times over, by my dreams. My nightmares. My father.
“I killed my mother,” I say and watch as all the blood drains from Beth’s face.
37
I feel like my skin is not my own. Strangely enough, it’s not a feeling that is foreign to me, but somehow, when Beth looks at me and I see the monster that I am glistening in her eyes, it makes it just that much harder to breathe. I saw this coming. An admission like that doesn’t get greeted with roses and sunshine. I put that look on her face and I did it because I needed a reason to break. Instead of staying like I should have, I push down on the bed and find my footing, shaky as it might be.
I’d like to say that I’m calm and collected when I leave the room, but I am not anything close to that. Like a madman, I rush into my pants, throw a shirt over my body and hightail it out of the condo.
Beth finds her voice just as I’ve made it through the door. But she doesn’t stop me from leaving. That’s all I can think about as the elevator doors close behind me – the fact that my admission has rendered her speechless... immobile. The fact that even though she didn’t look like she was judging me, she very clearly was.
Some men want a woman who believes in them. A woman who doesn’t question their truths. Right now, I’m not that man. Right now, all I need is for her to challenge me, to tell me that I’m a liar, that I could never do such a thing. To hold me, to comfort me, to not believe my truths.
The air feels like ice-blades against my skin as I step out into the open. I don’t know where I’m going, but as I shove my hands into my pockets and brush against the metal of my keys, I know that I have the means to get very far away from here and so I do just that. I drive without purpose. I drive without direction. I drive until the tears have dried in streaks down my face and my breaths are no longer heaved in chaos.
There’s a part of me that blames Beth for what’s happening here. She didn’t push too far. It wouldn’t be fair of me to say that. But the fact of the matter is, she pushed and the house of straw I’d been hiding under came tumbling down. What I also know is that no matter how much I care to blame her for forcing these feelings out of me, she’s also the only person who has made me feel human in a very long time.
Not right now, though.
Right now, I feel like a monster.
And so I do exactly what it is that monsters do.
I challenge God.
38
There’s a dining room in this massive condo, complete with cushiony chairs and an oversized lamp that almost brushes the surface of a perfectly polished wooden table. It’s one of those rooms that look too perfect to use while being too much of a waste if not taken advantage of. There’s no reason why I’m standing in here, other than the fact that I’ve been pacing around this condo for about three hours, waiting for Maverick to come home while, at the same time, dreading the moment he walks through the door.
What will I do?
What will I say?
How will I act?
So many questions and no answers that feel concrete enough to enforce confidence.
I take a seat in one of the chairs and allow my head to loll back while I think.
The thing is, I know enough about Maverick to know that I should panic, and I should worry and I should pick up the phone and call every single one of his friends. I should make sure that he’s okay. Call the cops if that’s what it takes to keep track of him. But I hesitate. I tell myself that this is different from all those other times where I’ve seen Maverick try to find himself at the bottom of a bottle. Back then, he was lost. Back then, he was lonely. Back then, he had friends who would egg him on. Cheer as he attempted to drink himself into the underworld. Right now, he’s just a boy missing his mother. A boy who wants to miss her in private, mourn her in private.
The truth of the matter is, however, I doubt Maverick is alone.
He’s likely with those very friends. Doing those very things he shouldn’t be
doing.
“As long as he’s not alone,” I think out loud, reflecting on the time Maverick called to ask me to pick him up. Even as highly intoxicated as he was, he still had his wits about him. He could have gotten behind the wheel and left the rest up to fate, but he called. The problem here is that he doesn’t have his phone with him. It’s sitting pretty on the nightstand in the bedroom, asking for a code to be punched in before it so much as budges. It’s the reason I haven’t phoned his friends. That and the fact that I might be overreacting. But seriously, it’s been three hours and the way he left...