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I have to change my situation because it’s me. I’m the constant to the situation.
They say you don’t actively remember anything before the age of five. I disagree with that. I remember two events vividly. The day my mom left us. I watched her walk out the door and I remember thinking I hated her. She only hugged Shade before she left. That day, my childhood evaporated. I can’t remember much about my parents being together, but I do recall them being young. My dad, a hot shot desert racer, was nineteen when I was born. My mom, seventeen. They fought constantly, each one trying to destroy the other for the purpose of who could hurt who more. But that day, it all changed. She walked out on three little boys. You don’t, nor can you understand until you feel responsible for the ones who are supposed to be responsible for you. That day, I knew nothing would be the same again. She changed her situation for reasons I will never know or understand, but in turn, she destroyed any sense of family we knew.
The next event, my dad dying in Baja. I remember the heat of the day, the dust, the blinding sun in my eyes when his mechanic pulled us into the trailer and said, “I’m sorry, guys, he didn’t make it.” They found him a hundred miles from the finish.
Shade was too young. Four at the time. He didn’t give a flying fuck what happened, just that he wanted the toy he’d been promised earlier in the day for sitting still during the riders’ meeting. Tiller at five, just entering his accelerating self-destructive behavior, he’d spent the last hour trying to bait a scorpion into the trailer; he didn’t care either. I don’t think either one of them understood it, or even grasped the gravity of the situation until years later when the one man we counted on was no longer present, our lives forever changed.
I can’t sleep. Usually I can drown out the noise from the ever-present party that never seems to die down at our house. Tonight, I can’t. I end up finding keys on the counter and click the remote until I find out whose it is. It happens to be a yellow Lamborghini Huracan. Lucky me.
Where do you think I end up once I’m in the car? For one, it’s technically stolen so I do take it for spin, but like it or not, I end up at her house. I park up the block so she doesn’t see the car and also, so I don’t wake her mom. While I know exactly where her dad is tonight, her mom is another story. If I walk up to the door at three in the morning, guaranteed she’d cut my balls off because she’ll know I’m more than just a friend to her daughter.
I try throwing rocks at her window, but I end up breaking it.
“Shit.” I look behind me thinking I should either run or stand there and wait it out. Maybe she’ll come to the window. Maybe she’ll tell me to leave.
A second later, as I’m climbing the tree outside her window, she’s standing at the window glancing down at me. “What are you doing here?” she asks, helping me inside.
“I wish I knew.” I lie on her bed, unsure what to do next. Do you notice the tears in her eyes when she lies next to me? What about the way she curls against me? You can take everything that’s happened between us, all that shit, and you can’t deny that there is still something between us. She doesn’tnotwant me here.
For twenty minutes, we don’t say a word.
The first word comes from me and it’s “Did he hurt you?”
“Who?” she whispers into my shoulder, gripping my shirt tightly as she continues to cry.
My words shake around “Don’t make me say it.”
“No,” she admits, but doesn’t expand.
Jealousy courses through my veins. I hate it. I fucking hate that in a moment of weakness, she chose him. I don’t know that I can ever get past this, but I can’t let her leave for college like this. I kiss her, because it’s all I know. To cover up. To avoid. To redirect the pain.
“You don’t know how much it kills me that he had you first.”
In the darkness, her eyes search mine. “Is that all this will ever be between us?”
It might be, but I can’t say that to her.
The kiss takes on a new urgency knowing this might be the last time I see her. She could leave for college and never talk to me, and I don’t want her leaving without giving her a piece of me. Something I’ve held onto for so long because I was afraid of what it would do to us.
Reality creeps in when she starts to cry, her delicate frame clinging to mine. My body aches with physical pain to take hers away, but I also know having sex with her isn’t going to fix any of that. It will only complicate it even more. She’s too young, too vulnerable, desperately in love and if I wanted, if I was someone like Tiller, I could take full advantage and never think twice about it.
But… I’m not him.
I sit up and run my hand over my face and attempt to control myself and not blow up on her again. My heart races, my stomach knotting. “I should go.”
She sits up. “You should.”
Guilt for not telling her the truth and betrayal for her not willing to see it take over and I’m left with nothing else to say. Nothing that will make any difference. Nodding, I leave the same way I came in. No words, no goodbye, nothing. I don’t offer her comfort, or even tell her that I wish her luck in college. Because truthfully, I don’t like that she’s leaving. I tried to talk her out of going. But maybe distance is what we need.
Back at the house, the party is dying down and Carl is waiting outside at the door for me. “I really wish you’d stop going places alone.”
I toss the keys in the air. “Find out who these belong to.”
He catches them midair. “Can I ask you something?”
I look at him over my shoulder, unsure I want to open the door to his questions because if I had to guess by the tightness of his eyes, the way he rubs the back of his neck and the hard smile, he doesn’t want to ask either. But it’s his daughter and he wants to know. “What’s going on with you and my daughter?”
I don’t meet his eyes when I mumble, “Nothing.”