Reid smirks at me. “Who says I wanna ask something?”
I roll my eyes, letting out a half laugh. “You forget, dude, I’ve known you my whole life. I can tell when you’re struggling to keep your mouth shut. It doesn’t happen that often.”
“Fuck off,” he scoffs, punching me in the shoulder, both of us now laughing. “Okay, fine,” he says, sighing dramatically. “Your sister wanted me to check how you were doing.”
I burst out laughing, even as I’m reminded of Liz’s words to me earlier today. “Fuck me, you are so whipped.”
“So what, I own it,” Reid says, as though he’s actually proud of it. “It’s not exactly a bad thing, you know, especially when it’s—”
“Stop,” I say, cutting him off as I hold a hand up.
“What?” Reid asks in mock surprise, his hands out in question.
I roll my eyes again. “Whatever, but yes, I’m fine. You can tell her you asked me, and I said everything was fine.” It’s a total lie and I’d know that even without the guilt that now starts to eat at me on the inside.
“Yeah, except that would be total bullshit.” Reid says, calling me on it.
I glance at him again and see he’s still watching me, only his smirk is gone now. When I don’t say anything, Reid narrows his brow as he says, “Really, Caleb?”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he says, sarcastically. “You forget, I’ve known you my whole life, I can tell when you’re bullshitting,” he says, throwing my words back at me.
I exhale, knowing I’m not getting out of it, not with him. “And like I said, just ask it then.”
Reid lets out a huff as he turns onto the main street and we head down toward the Mexican place that I know my sister loves. He doesn’t say anything at first and I’m wondering if he’s just going to drop it.
“How’s it going with the therapy stuff?” he eventually asks.
I shrug, even though both of us are looking ahead. “I don’t know. I guess it’s helping, although it’s fucking weird talking about all this shit to a stranger.”
Reid nods, stopping at the door of the restaurant as he says, “You could talk about it with me.”
Before I have a chance to answer, he opens the door and walks inside. I follow him in as he goes up to the counter and gives the cashier his name. I pull my wallet from my pocket and hand him some cash, but he waves me off as he squares away the bill, before we grab the bags of food and walk back outside.
Silence surrounds us again as we slowly make our way back home, the streets now dark. Liz’s suggestion to talk to Sie is still there and I’m sure if she knew the full story of the three of us and our childhood, she’d be telling me to talk to Reid too. Telling me to answer his question.
But does he really want to hear this shit?
And can I really tell him?
I turn his words over in my head, wondering if he truly wants to know about what I talk about with Liz or all the shit that happened back in Providence. Whether he’d hate me if I told him all the things I thought, all the things I wished for after he and Sie left.
“I guess I just figured you guys probably didn’t want to know about what happened,” I eventually say.
Reid stops, turning to face me, a pissed off look on his face now. “What? Why the fuck would you think that?”
I stand opposite him, my eyes searching his face. “Why the fuck would you want to know about it, Reid?” I ask him.
“Jesus, I don’t know, cause I’m your best friend, I’m family?” he throws back at me and it takes me a second to realize he’s not pissed off at me, he’s hurt.
I hold up a hand. “I’m sorry, okay?” I start. “That was a shit thing to say.”
“Yeah, it really fucking was,” Reid spits out, still not moving.
I take a deep breath in before letting it out on a long slow exhale, before I finally admit, “I don’t know how to tell you.”
Reid’s face softens. “Why?” he asks. “Nothing you say is gonna change my opinion about you, you know that.”
I raise a brow in question, my heart beating rapidly in my chest now as my mind flicks back through the previous two years and all the shit he doesn’t know about. “Really?”
“Caleb,” he says, stepping closer as he puts a hand on my shoulder. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for you after Sie and I left, okay? I really can’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know or that you can’t talk to me about it.”
“Even if it involves your dad?” I say, testing how much he means what he’s saying.
His grip on my shoulder tightens. “Especially if it involves my dad,” he says, his voice low.
We stare at each other now, neither of us saying anything else. Eventually Reid sighs, letting go of my shoulder as he turns and starts walking again. I follow him, the two of us once again walking silently side by side.
“I used to think about all the ways I could turn him in,” I eventually say, my gaze focused on the path in front of us. From the corner of my eye I see Reid glance at me, before quickly turning away, almost as though he knows I can’t look at him while I say all of this.
“I used to dream about going to the cops or trying to record him when he came in and made his threats. He was good though; he knew what he was doing, and it was like he knew what I was thinking too.”
I pause as a shiver slides down the back of my neck. Reid still says nothing, just continues walking.
“I almost asked you about it once.”
“What?” he says, his gaze snapping to mine.
I give him a half smile. “Yeah, maybe six months after you left. You’d called to tell me something, I don’t know, maybe about football or whatever, and all I could think about was how that afternoon, your dad had been talking to me about the same thing. Telling me how I’d thrown away a promising football career to try and save my deadbeat dad.”
“Jesus, Caleb,” Reid says, his voice laced with sympathy and remorse as he stops walking again. “I didn’t know, man. I’m—”
“I know you didn’t,” I say, cutting him off. “That’s not why I’m telling you this.” Reid swallows hard as though he doesn’t know what to say. “I knew you didn’t know what your dad was doing, not all the shitty, illegal stuff I mean. Not the violence.”
“I swear, I really didn’t.”
I glance over at him with a smile. “I know,” I repeat.
Reid gives me a quick nod in acknowledgement before we start walking again. “What stopped you from asking me then?”
“I don’t know,” I stall. “I think I realized I didn’t want you to have the life I had. You’d left, you’d gotten away, Sie too and I knew I had to protect that. That neither of you deserved to be dragged back into the shithole we were all supposed to leave behind.”
Reid takes a deep breath as he shoves his free hand through his hair. I can tell he’s struggling with what I’m saying to him, with the knowledge that if he knew about things, so much of this could have been prevented. “I wish you had told me,” he says, his voice quiet. “I mean, I get why you didn’t, but I really wish you had.”