“Oh.” She notices me. “Baby, is that her? Your girlfriend? William, she’s so pretty.”
It’s strange.
Hearing her call Will by his full name.
“Kassidy, is it? It’s so nice to meet you.” She holds out her hand to me.
I see it now.
She’s the kind of person you want to believe. Charismatic, seemingly harmless—manipulative. Must be how she keeps her son wrapped around her pinky. I lift my hand to meet hers, but Will stops me, catching my fingers into his.
“You’re not meeting her. We’re out of here. Come on.” He urges me toward the car.
“William!” She runs after us, too intoxicated to notice the glass cracking under her slippers. “Why are you leaving? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
Will spins. “What’s wrong is you fucking called Steve!”
His mom stops short.
“Honey, you have to understand, he… He’s helping me. He said he’d find me a job.”
Will’s anger decreases. Don’t tell me he’s falling for it. I squeeze his hand in the dumb hope it’ll knock some sense into him. Much to my surprise, it works.
“Let me guess, as his own personal whore?”
His mother’s jaw hits the floor, her skin paling.
“Save your breath. I saw him sneak out.”
She smacks her mouth shut, knowing damn well she’s busted.
“You were never looking for work, were you?”
“William, please. It’s just not the right time for me, I’ll… I’ll get back on my feet soon, I promise.”
Will opens my car door for me, willing me to slide into the passenger seat. As he rounds the vehicle to reach the driver’s side, his mom leaps in his way.
“William, wait,” I hear her beg through my opened window.
“What?” he snaps.
Slightly trembling, she has the audacity to ask, “Do you have it? The m-money?”
Wow.
“Are you kidding me?” he hisses. “That’s what you care about right now?”
“Of course not. Y-you know I love you, baby. So much,” she backpedals. “But I need it. I’ll pay you back when I find work. Please just… give it to me.”
He huffs a scoff.
Climbs inside the car.
And speeds away.
We spend the rest of the day driving around, listening to music and pretending like our “lunch” with his mom didn’t go to hell. I don’t bring up what happened once, talking about anything but the elephant in the room. Will seems to appreciate it, entertaining my drivel without hesitation.
The sun is setting by the time Will drives us up the hill he first took me when he came back into town, snatching a parking spot that’s the equivalent of a front-row seat to Mother Nature’s show. He kills the ignition, leaving the radio on and keeping quiet for a while.
“Do you see it now?” he eventually breathes out.
“See what?”
“Why I didn’t want to bring you into this?”
Pain spreads through my rib cage.
“Jesus, your first time meeting my mom and she…” He throws his head back against the headrest. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me.”
He can’t imagine what I must think of him?
“I’ll tell you what I think.”
I unbuckle my seat belt, propping my foot up on the seat and hugging my knee to my chest.
“I think you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”
“Right,” he scoffs.
“It’s true. I think you were dealt a shit hand in life, and you did the best you could with what you had.”
He once told me he didn’t want me to look at him like he was broken. What he doesn’t know is…
I’ve yet to meet someone who isn’t.
“Listen to me.” I snatch his hand into mine. “You’re insane if you think this could ever, in a hundred lifetimes, make me look at you differently. Are we clear?”
He stares blankly ahead of him, drawing small circles on the inside of my hand with his finger.
“Are we clear?” I press.
He doesn’t give me words.
But he gives me a nod.
Small victories.
“Can I ask who that guy was?” I change the topic.
He exhales deeply. “That was Steve, the dirtbag that got us off the street. Also the guy who got my mom into hard-core drugs when I was nine.”
My heart cracks.
How is he so casual about it?
“We moved in with him a year later. Long story short, he’s the typical abusive, piece-of-shit stepdad. Slapped my mom around for years, but he kept the dope coming, so she stayed. Then I started fighting.”
This piece of information alone fills a hundred gaps.
He learned to fight to protect her.
Not himself.
Her.
“He kept his hands to himself for a while. He knew I could take him. Until I moved out. The second I left, he started again. Gave her a black eye two months ago. So, Kendrick came over, and we returned the favor.”
There’s a whole part of him I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know my own brother.
“I got my mom into the car, moved her somewhere I knew he wouldn’t find her. She promised she wouldn’t tell him where she was. That she was done, and she’d get her shit in order, and well… you know how that turned out.”
I’m angry for him.
She went running back the second the withdrawal hit.
“And I know I shouldn’t give her money. I’m only enabling the problem, but I don’t know what else to fucking do. I… I can’t just sit back and watch her screw any willing dealer.”
I’m at a loss for words.
This is awful.
Downright awful.
“Anyway, there you go. My sob story summed up in a few sentences. Anything else you want to know?” He heaves a resentful laugh. I know he said it as a joke, and this may be the worst moment to bring this up, but…
I have to ask.
“Actually, there is.”
He waits for me to elaborate.
“Yesterday, when you were drunk, you… you said something about a girl. That asshole Dixon mentioned her at Zoey’s birthday, too. Lyla… I think?”
As if you don’t know what her name is.
That’s what knocks his façade down.
Her name.
He swallows hard, his eyes turning red as his jaw flexes. He sounded so detached telling me the truth today. Really had me thinking he was okay with all of this. But he’s not. He’s been flirting with the line since this morning, flirting with the edge. His heart isn’t as solid as he’d like me to think. And sooner or later, all that is fragile…
Breaks.
“She was Dixon’s stepsister.” He clears his throat. “And my girlfriend.”
I despise the sting of jealousy. Loathe it to my core. But it hurts all the same. A part of me always knew she had to be important to him, but I somehow deluded myself into thinking that she was a fling. That I was the first to gain the girlfriend title.
“What do you mean was Dixon’s stepsister?”
“She died. In the Blue River fire three years ago.”
Tragic newspaper articles flash in front of my eyes, memories of the devastating fire at a local high school compressing my lungs. I can still see the headline: Eight students perish during a Saturday detention. It was all everybody could talk about for months after it happened. Rumors and false information spread through town like wildfires. They’d say it was a cigarette that did it one day, and a faulty gas line the next. No one could figure out what started the fire.