“She deserves better,” I said.
“Yeah, she does. She deserves better than you. Better than this drunk asshole who storms around wanting to take his anger out on the world.”
“Thanks for being in my corner.”
“I’m your best friend. I’m always in your corner. But I’ll also tell you how it is.”
“And how is it?” I asked.
“You need to let the Delilah thing go,” he said. “And you need to face what it really means.”
I didn’t respond to Aaron.
He let a minute of silence go by.
“You can’t come back to my house,” he finally said.
I laughed. “The warden says no, huh?”
“Thanks for asking how it’s going.”
I looked at him. “You know, you’re riding my ass about letting things go? How about you let things go too. Let go of the fact that your parents lost each other. I’m sorry they got divorced. They had the perfect marriage until it fell apart. And the same thing could happen to you and Rae. Or maybe you two will be together forever. You need to ask the question if it’s inside you.”
“So, I have your blessing to marry her.”
“You don’t need my blessing. She hates me. Because I see the truth. You two are a disaster together. The best thing about you two is Toby. That kid is going to grow up in a fucked-up house if you don’t figure out your-”
Aaron threw a right fist and got me in the mouth. I felt my lips throb and tasted blood instantly.
I laughed. “There he is. There’s my best friend.”
“Shut the fuck up, Josh,” Aaron said. “When the fuck have you ever loved anyone?”
“You really want to ask me that right now?”
“Forget about it,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”
Aaron drove and we were both silent the entire way back to my place.
He pulled up to my apartment building and didn’t even put the car into park.
“If you don’t figure it out, someone else will,” I said.
“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked.
“Rae will leave. Or someone else will get her heart. Then what?”
“Maybe you should ask yourself the same thing, Josh. Everything is in front of you and you’re blinded by the bottle.”
I nodded. “Still best friends?”
“Always,” Aaron said.
He put out a fist and I bumped mine to his.
“I’m not sorry for punching you,” he said as I climbed out of the car.
“I didn’t ask you to apologize,” I said. “You should go home and propose to Rae right now.”
“And you should finally let the Delilah thing go.”
I shut the car door and Aaron drove away.
I went to my apartment and had the sinking feeling of need.
A need to see Amelia.
I wanted her there.
I wanted to see her.
I wanted to hold her.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to tell her everything.
But my apartment was empty.
Amelia was gone.
The letter was on the kitchen floor where I had left it.
I crouched to get the letter and lost my balance and smashed my face off the cabinet.
I fell to my ass and sat there, clutching the letter that was supposed to fix everything.
All it did was make everything worse.
Chapter 36
Miles Alone
THEN
(Amelia)
“Look what I found,” Margaret said as she lifted the lid of a wooden garden box and showed me the pack of cigarettes.
I gasped and shook my head. “Where…”
“My mother’s,” she said.
“Donna smokes? What about Dr. Bill? He’d lose his mind.”
“They both used to smoke, Amelia,” Margaret said.
“What?”
“I guess back in college or whatever. They smoked all the time. I think Dad sneaks one here and there. Maybe after a long surgery. But Mom… she has a secret stash.”
“This is wild,” I said.
I looked at the back of the giant, perfect house Margaret called home. The backyard, even on a slight hill, was filled with careful gardening. Every flower and every color in a certain place for a certain reason.
And yet they had their secrets.
It made me shiver.
They were human and I didn’t like that.
This place was my escape. In the stories I wrote for Mom, this house was the castle where the princess went to survive. This house was the safe place the animals who could talk would hide in to feel safe.
“Let’s try one,” Margaret said, breaking up my thoughts.
I gasped. “What?”
“Why not?”
“They’re bad for you,” I said.
“Not one. Only if you get addicted to them. We learned about this in school. Plus, my dad’s a doctor. If anything happened, he’d save us.”
I swallowed hard.
What was my dad?
He was a loser alcoholic who threw punches when he was angry. I guess he was good at fixing cars, but even then, he hadn’t had a real job in a long time. There was this one time when Dr. Bill’s car had a problem and I thought about saying something about my father. But Dr. Bill had a special dealership to take his car to where they gave him a rental while they fixed his.
I hated feeling useless.
I wasn’t invisible though. Dr. Bill and Donna made sure of that.
But useless…
“Come on,” Margaret said. “It’ll be fun. I’ll go first.”
I slowly nodded. “Okay. Cool.”
I watched as Margaret fumbled to get the cigarette out of the pack as though it were a lit stick of dynamite. That told me she definitely hadn’t done this before. Which meant she was trusting me to do this with her. We were going to be best friends forever. Definitely.
She put the cigarette between her lips and fought with the lighter. I didn’t know how to use the lighter and neither did Margaret. When she got the lighter to spark into a flame, she squealed and dropped the cigarette. We both laughed and Margaret started over.
This time it was much cooler and smoother.
She put the cigarette between her lips.
She got the lighter to work.
She put the flame to the cigarette, and I swore I heard the paper sizzling for a quick second.
She shut her eyes and took a deep drag.
The tip of the cigarette burned with a red-orange glow.
Margaret then quickly took the cigarette from her mouth with her thumb and pointer finger and started to cough. Smoke danced around her head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She coughed hard, smacking her chest.
“Here,” she said. “Do it. Right now. Do it.”
I licked my lips and brought the tan end of the cigarette to my lips. My eyes crossed as I watched it smoke. This was so totally wrong, but I couldn’t help myself.
Me and Margaret were going to be best friends forever. We were going to talk about this when we got older.
I put my lips around the cigarette and quickly took a drag.
I shut my eyes and winced, waiting for pain.