Part 85
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:42 pm
Arriving home without Maria and Dylan was the worst thing that night. Noticing his dad’s car in the driveway was the second-worst thing.
Michael’s plan was to just ignore him when he walked in, but as usual, his dad made that impossible. “Well, well, well,” he chimed from the kitchen. “If it isn’t my son the lifeguard.”
Ha, ha, he thought sarcastically. Apparently his mom had already filled his dad in about what had happened. Sweet. Now he didn’t have to be the one to tell him. He just had to endure all the taunting about it.
“Jumpin’ off a bridge to save that kid . . .” His dad poured a can of beer into a wine glass, as if that would make it more sophisticated somehow. “That’s real heroic. But then again, you are the reason his life was in danger in the first place. But what the hell.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. “Cheers.”
Michael stood there, watching him drink, and as awful as it was to admit . . . part of him wanted to be doing the exact same thing, to join him.
His dad cleared his throat once all the beer was gone and started tracing his fingers around the rim of the glass to collect any remaining liquid. “Glad to hear he’s gonna be okay, of course,” he said. “Sounds like it could’ve been pretty bad.”
“Could’ve been,” Michael muttered. It was bad enough as it was. He took a seat at the kitchen table, where there were still a few cups from the beer pong set-up. Ironic, he’d been sitting all day, and it had been driving him crazy. But now he felt too tired to stand or even walk upstairs.
His dad fell silent for a moment as he got another beer can out of the fridge. But as soon as he popped open the tab, he just started chuckling, slow at first, and then faster and louder.
“What’s so funny?” Michael growled.
Through airy laughs, his dad responded, “Oh, everything. Me. You. You are definitely my son.”
“Yeah, whether you like it or not.”
“See, this one time when you were two, you crawled into the dryer. I almost turned it on with you in there. I screwed up. Of course, this is worse, though. You really screwed up.”
“Gee, thanks.” Knowing his dad, he’d probably tossed him into that dryer on purpose.
“So where’s Maria?” his dad snooped. “Still at the hospital?”
“No.” He didn’t plan to elaborate, but his dad gave him this curious look, and Michael suspected he’d just keep asking about it until he relented and explained. “She’s staying with her mom tonight. Her and Dylan.” That was one hell of a bitter pill to swallow.
“Ooh.” His dad grimaced. “Well, can’t say I didn’t see this coming.”
“Really?” Michael challenged. “You knew Dylan was gonna get kidnapped and fall off a bridge?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” his father acknowledged. “But I knew you were gonna do somethin’ to fuck things up. It’s in your nature, your DNA. That’s why this whole thing is my big, fat chance to say ‘I told you so.’”
“Told me so,” Michael echoed. “Told me what?”
His dad sloppily poured his second glass of beer, seemingly disappointed when some sloshed over the sides. “That you weren’t ready, that you wouldn’t be able to handle being a father and a spouse and just an adult in general.”
Michael grunted. “Weird, because I’ve had such a great role model in that regard.”
“Hey, I just call it like I see it,” his dad said with a shrug. “Your girl goes off, leaves you in charge and trusts you with the one person she loves more than anything in the world. All you had to do was look after him, keep him safe and sound for one week.” He chuckled again, as if he were finding some savage delight in this failure. “You couldn’t do it.”
Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Michael struggled to not show much of a response. He wished he had some witty comeback, wished he could disagree with him and point out all the ways he was wrong. But the disturbing thing was, he couldn’t do that. As much as he hated to admit it, for once in his pathetic, miserable, no-good life . . . his dad was right.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria watched Dylan sleep that night, wondering what he was dreaming about. Was he having a nightmare or a good dream? She would never know, but she liked to think it was a good dream. He wasn’t tossing and turning or whimpering or doing anything that would lead her to believe differently. In fact, he looked perfectly content as he lay on his side, sucking his thumb.
“Maria?”
She gasped when she felt her mom’s hand on her shoulder. Having been so entranced watching Dylan, she hadn’t even heard her come into the room.
“Sorry,” her mom apologized. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay.” She readjusted Dylan’s blankets since he’d started to kick them off.
Her mom sat down on the foot of the bed, reaching up to stroke Dylan’s cheek. “He looks cozy,” she remarked.
“Yeah.” That was the goal. Keep him warm, safe, cozy, and happy. The poor kid had just spent nearly twenty-four hours in a hospital bed.
“You should get some sleep, Maria,” her mom suggested. “He’s fine here.”
Maria shook her head stubbornly. “No, I don’t wanna leave him.” She’d already done that, and look what a mistake it had been.
“He’s fine,” her mom insisted. “I’ll sit here with him if you want.”
Reluctantly, she took a look at her mom and nodded. She did need to rest after being on the road all last night. She hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since Friday night. “Let me know if he needs anything,” she said, slowly getting to her feet.
“Sleep well,” her mother said.
Hmm. That wasn’t likely.
Instead of going into the bedroom right away, she slipped into the bathroom to take a shower. Another thing she hadn’t gotten to do since Friday night. She felt gross, and the thought of a warm, relaxing shower sounded nice.
It wasn’t relaxing, though. The minute that water hit her skin, she started to imagine Dylan, flailing helplessly in the depths of water that could have killed him. She started to feel breathless, because it freaked her out knowing that he hadn’t been able to breathe. He must have been so scared. So scared.
Just to calm herself down, she had to put her hand to her chest and take a few deep breaths. Dylan was breathing just fine now. He was warm under his blankets. Completely safe. And apparently completely un-traumatized thanks to some fortunate selective forgetting.
She felt traumatized, though, even though she hadn’t lived through it. Just the thought of her own son almost losing his life . . . it was too much. Too much to handle, too much to think about. And she started to cry. Her tears mixed with the water pouring down on her seamlessly, and she wished there were someone there to wipe them away.
But he wasn’t there. For a very good reason.
She started to cry harder. It wasn’t just the fact that Dylan had endured this horrific event that was so gut-wrenching; it was the fact that he wouldn’t have had to go through it at all if Michael hadn’t been so careless. Just thinking about it filled her with so much anger and disappointment and despair that she couldn’t distinguish one feeling from the next.
The more she cried, the louder she got, and at some point, she was sure her mom would be able to hear her. Dylan’s room wasn’t that far down the hall, and even with the water running . . . surely her tears were no secret. And that was okay. After everything that had happened, there was no reason for them to be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
School was buzzing on Monday. Not a surprise. Everyone was talking about what had transpired at Michael’s party Saturday night. Kyle had braced himself for it, knowing all along that it would be the subject of every conversation. How could it not be? The only thing that had generated a bigger buzz in the hallways of West Roswell had been Isabel’s sex tape, and that had been a much different kind of buzz.
With it being the second-to-last day of school for the seniors, nobody had anything to do, so they just stood around in the hallways, gossiping. A lot of people approached Kyle, wanting to know more about what had happened. But out of respect for Michael and Maria, he refused to talk about it. At all.
The downside of that was that he had to stand around and just listen to the story get more and more exaggerated and inaccurate every time somebody told it. Jase was probably the biggest culprit when it came to peddling the story to his own advantage. As someone who always longed to be the center of attention but rarely ever was, he circulated the rumor that he had seen the whole thing go down, that Max had shown up with a gun and threatened to kill them all, and that he and Antonio had beat him up and chased him off the property, thereby saving everyone’s lives. The worst part was that there were plenty of people who seemed to believe his warped version of events.
By the time fourth period rolled around, even though they were all supposed to be in class, people were mostly just loitering, and teachers didn’t seem to mind. The senior hallway was littered with students, many of whom Kyle had to step over on his way to Isabel. She was sitting by her locker, alone, taking selfies and sending them out to someone. Probably her new boyfriend. It was so weird to see her alone. Back at the beginning of the year, she’d been popular, maybe the most popular girl in the whole school. Now, she kept to herself, and if she was sad about that, she didn’t let it show.
“Hey,” he greeted, towering over her.
“Oh, hey, Kyle,” she said. “How’s it going?”
He shrugged. “Been better.” Truth be told, this wasn’t exactly his ideal way to spend the last two days of high school. His best friend wasn’t even there.
“Yeah,” she agreed, putting her phone away. “I get that.”
He supposed she did. When she’d started off the school year, she probably had never envisioned ending it like this. No Michael, no Tess, no graduation speech to prepare for.
“Can we go talk somewhere?” he asked her. This hallway wasn’t the place for it. It was too noisy, too distracting.
She nodded, climbing to her feet.
They got quite a few curious looks from people as they slipped around the corner and into the eraser room. Good, Kyle thought. Let’s give them something else to talk about.
Isabel smiled a little. “Gotta say, I never thought I’d slip into the eraser room with you, Kyle.”
He laughed lightly. “I know, right?”
She looked around, her eyes glossing over as if she were remembering something, and then she murmured, “Michael and I used to . . .” before trailing off and blushing. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Overshare.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I think every couple in this school’s done it in here a few times,” he assured her. “That kinda makes me not wanna touch anything.”
She laughed a little, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were now trying to avoid all contact with anything in that little room, too. “So what’s up?” she asked him.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “I just wanted to touch base with you. Seems you and I are two of the only people who actually know what happened the other night.”
“Seems like,” she agreed. “It’s kinda annoying how people keep talking about it like it’s a storyline on a TV show or something.”
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “They don’t get it. It’s like entertainment to them. But, I mean . . . it’s not. It’s my best friend. It’s your brother. It’s different for us.”
She looked down at the floor and nodded sadly. “Yeah.”
Fishing for a little info, Kyle probed, “What’s the status on your brother anyway? He still high as a kite?”
“Thankfully, no,” she answered. “Actually, he, uh . . . he left town. To go get some . . . help with his problems.”
“Oh.” He had to admit, that surprised him. Apparently Max had a smidgen of common sense left in him after all.
“I’m sure Michael and Maria will be relieved,” she said softly.
“Yeah, they will be.” He could see that she wasn’t so relieved, though. It was pretty clear that she already missed him. “Sorry,” he said. “That sucks for you. I know you and he had really started to bond.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. People leave. I’m leaving in a few months. I should just be all about college now, you know?”
He chuckled inwardly. “Oh, trust me, I know.” No one was more focused on college than he was. He had to be. It was going to pave the way for the rest of his life.
The bell rang, signaling the start of fifth period, and conversation from the hallways rattled even louder than before. Isabel made no effort to leave the room, though. Instead, she kicked at a few stray erasers on the floor and mumbled, “How’s Michael?” as though she were ashamed to even be curious.
Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. Hard to say.”
“I noticed he wasn’t here today.”
“No. I didn’t expect him to be.” They’d exchanged a few texts last night, and Michael had told him that Maria took Dylan to her mom’s house. But then the texts had stopped, a clear indicator that Michael didn’t want to talk about it. So Kyle had left him alone, hadn’t bothered him this morning, either. But he knew it wasn’t a good idea to leave Michael alone for too long when he was upset, or he might end up doing something he’d regret. Like getting completely wasted, for starters.
“I think I’m gonna go check on him over lunch,” Kyle revealed. “I’d invite you to come, but . . .”
“That’s probably not a good idea.” She touched her left shoulder as if she were recalling the way he’d shoved her in the hospital. “Tell him . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head, abandoning whatever she’d been thinking about saying. “Never mind.”
He couldn’t even try to fill in the blank. There were so many things that Isabel probably wanted to say to Michael, about so many things, but with Princeton on the horizon, she probably never would. And given their complicated history, maybe that was for the best.
He reached for the doorknob, but she stopped him before he walked out.
“Kyle,” she said. “You’re a really good friend. Michael’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
He sighed, feeling like he’d failed in that responsibility recently. “Thanks,” he said anyway. But then he wondered . . . Who’s looking out for you, Isabel? It was impossible not to notice the despair written all over her face. She didn’t have her brother around anymore, and she and Tess had severed things long ago. That had to be scary, feeling like you had no one. But what could he do? He couldn’t look out for her, too, not when he had his hands full with Michael. And honestly, without Michael serving as a common link between them, he and Isabel weren’t very close.
He had a feeling she would stay in that dirty, dark room all by herself while everyone else ate lunch.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The thin sliver of sunlight peeking in through the blinds aggravated Michael to no end. He had them closed for a reason, because he wanted to mope. To sulk. Whatever it was called. And it was way easier to do that in the dark.
He’d lay awake all night, wishing Maria was there, feeling foolish that he’d actually believed she would want to come back home with him after all this. But to go stay with her mom of all people, a woman she couldn’t seem to have a civilized conversation with for more than five minutes at a time . . . it felt like the ultimate slap in the face. A complete an utter rejection. Which, he supposed, he deserved. But still, it would have been easier to suck it up if she’d just gotten a motel room instead.
He lay on his bed, tossing a small plastic football into the air repeatedly. There was something calming about the monotony of catching it over and over again. When the door to his bedroom opened, though, he got distracted, and it bounced off his fingertips as it came back down. It rolled on the floor, stopping right at Kyle’s feet as he stood in the doorway.
“Hey, man,” his friend greeted. “Brought you a Crashdown burger.” He took a fairly substantial wrapped burger out of a paper sack and tossed it to him, but Michael only halfheartedly reached for it since he wasn’t even hungry. It slipped right through his hands and landed beside him on the bed.
Kyle chuckled and shook his head. “You’ve had better catches.”
“Well, you’ve had better throws,” Michael countered, wondering who Kyle’s receivers would be at the college level. This new roommate, probably. Someone better than him? Someone who caught the game-winning pass instead of dropping it?
Kyle stepped into the room and shut the door, leaning back against it. “So no school today, huh?” he remarked.
“Nope.”
“You comin’ tomorrow?”
Michael grunted. “Yeah, right. That’s the last place I wanna be.”
“But tomorrow’s the last day,” Kyle reminded him.
“Great.” It didn’t matter. He still wasn’t going. Everyone would probably be talking about all the crap that had gone down over the weekend, just like they were undoubtedly talking about it today. He didn’t want to have to deal with that.
“Well, I guess it is kinda pointless,” Kyle acknowledged, sauntering forward. “It’s not bad, though. Today in Spanish, we watched Selena.”
“Yeah, well, you can tell Senora Martinez I’ve seen that stupid movie a thousand times,” Michael grumbled. “So I’m not coming to . . . el escuelo.”
Kyle stared at him in disbelief. “La escuela,” he corrected, shaking his head and laughing. “Man.”
“I suck at Spanish,” Michael admitted, adding on quietly, “I suck at everything.”
Kyle sighed, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “See, this is why I think you should come to school tomorrow. You’re just sittin’ here feelin’ down on yourself.”
Well . . . there was a lot to feel down about. “School, huh?” Michael sat up, giving his friend a serious look. “Kyle . . . I’d rather rip my dick off and throw it in the river.”
“Okay, imagery.”
“And for the record, I haven’t just been sittin’ here all day. I went out this morning,” he revealed. “To the police station.”
“Oh, really?” Kyle’s eyebrows rose with intrigue. “What for?”
Michael shrugged. “Just wanted to see if they were gonna charge Max with anything serious. Of course they’re not, though, so that really pissed me off.”
“I’m sure.”
“I mean . . .” God, it made his blood boil just thinking about it. He clenched his hands into fists momentarily before quickly unclenching them again. “The guy kidnapped his own kid. You were here; you saw it. But he’s gettin’ off scot-free ‘cause of all these stupid technicalities.”
Kyle nodded sympathetically. “Because he’s Dylan’s biological father.”
“Yeah, and ‘cause there was no custody order or restraining order in place. And because they say he had no intent to harm or conceal him. Never mind the fact that he did harm him. I mean, they got in a freakin’ car accident ‘cause he was so high, but apparently those are the only charges they pinned on him. Drug charges.” He snorted at the ridiculousness of it all. “It’s like a slap on the wrist.”
“It is,” Kyle agreed. “I’m sorry, man.”
“Oh, and the best part . . .” Michael laughed angrily. “The best part was when they told me I’d better drop it, ‘cause I both possessed and distributed a whole lot of alcohol to minors that night, and consumed plenty myself. So if they wanted to dig a little deeper, they’d probably start with me.” He narrowed his eyes in contempt, balling his hands into fists again. “Isn’t that fucked up?”
“Oh, yeah, but that’s how the legal system works,” Kyle said. “Maybe I could talk to my dad, see what he could do. He is the sheriff, after all.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Michael muttered unenthusiastically, for he doubted it would do any good.
Kyle unwrapped the Crashdown burger that was still just lying on the bed, holding it out for Michael. When Michael shook his head to decline, Kyle shrugged and took a bite of it himself. In between chews, he announced, “Hey, I do have one piece of good news, though.”
“Really?” It had been a while since he’d heard any.
“Yeah.” Kyle set the burger aside and revealed, “Max left town.”
Michael immediately sat up straighter. Hell . . . that was good news. “How do you know?” he asked.
“I talked to Isabel today. She said he went to . . . I don’t know, detox or rehab or somethin’. Somewhere to go get help.”
“Yeah, he needs a fuckin’ lot of it,” Michael mumbled. “Hmm.”
“It’s good news, right?” Kyle said. “Now you don’t have to deal with him.”
“Yeah.” It was a small weight off his shoulders, which was better than nothing. Now he could concentrate all of his energy on Maria and Dylan without having to worry that Max was going to show up again and rear his ugly head. The only bad part, as childish as it sounded, was that he never really had gotten to kick Max’s ass before he’d left. That fight on the bridge definitely wasn’t a fight he had won, and he was embarrassed to admit that.
“I’m sure it’ll come as a relief to Maria, too,” Kyle said.
He winced. Maria.
God, he missed his girl.
“Did you guys talk at all today?” Kyle asked.
He shook his head wordlessly. He’d tried calling her a few times, sent her a few texts, too. No response.
“Well, if you want, I could swing on by her mom’s place today,” Kyle offered, “check up on her and Dylan, see how they’re doin’.”
Michael nodded, liking that idea. “Thanks, Kyle.” Getting some info from his friend was better than getting nothing at all.
“Yeah, no problem,” Kyle said, standing up. He groaned as he stretched, then told Michael, “Eat something. Get up. Take a shower. You really stink.”
Michael chuckled. Yeah, he probably did.
As his friend was leaving the room, he called out to him to stop him. “Hey, Kyle?”
Kyle swiveled back around.
It took him a moment to ask the question he was afraid to hear the answer for. “Do you think I ruined what Maria and I have together?”
Kyle didn’t answer right away, but when he did, it was a reassuring one. “Of course not,” he said. “She loves you, man. That’s all that matters.”
Michael sighed, repeating that sentence again in his mind. That’s all that matters. That’s all that matters. Hopefully that was true, because with the way he’d screwed things up, his only shot at redemption was if nothing else mattered more.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dylan seemed to have made a friend. An animal friend, anyway. There was a squirrel in the front yard that was not at all afraid of people, and while it was digging at something in the ground, Dylan chased after him. Maria sat back on her mom’s new porch swing with a blanket over her lap, watching him, getting a kick out of how much fun he was having. This single squirrel had been amusing him for half an hour now. He just couldn’t get enough.
He was inquisitive. Young. So very innocent. Just like she had probably once been.
Her mom came outside with an afghan around her shoulders and a cup of tea in her hand. It was chillier than usual out today, but still not cold.
“Here you go,” her mom said, handing her the tea.
“Thanks.” She kept her eyes glued to Dylan, slowly bringing the cup up to her mouth to take a sip. She winced a bit because of how hot it was.
Her mom sat down beside her in the swing, watching Dylan adoringly for a moment, too. “Look at him,” she said. “Sure is resilient, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Maria gripped the mug tightly, wishing she had that same kind of resilience. “He doesn’t remember what happened to him,” she revealed so that her mom could have a better understanding of just how he was managing to bounce back from this so fast. “The doctor told me that’s not uncommon after a . . . traumatic event, I guess.”
Amy frowned, as if she were concerned or confused or some combination of the two. “What, like a repressed memory?”
Maria shrugged. “If it means he never has to remember what happened that night, I’m fine with it being repressed.”
Her mother thought about it for a moment, then conceded, “I guess that’s the way to look at it. I just hate that he has any memories worth repressing, don’t you?”
Maria shivered a bit, looking down at the liquid in her mug. “Yeah.” She wasn’t an idiot; she knew that was her mom’s subtle way of throwing an insult at Michael. But this time, it was probably warranted, so she let it slide.
“But it happened,” her mother stated simply. “There’s nothing we can do about it. So maybe instead of dwelling on the past, it’s time to think about the future.”
Maria rolled her eyes, giving her mother an impatient look. “Why don’t you just come right out and say it?”
“Say what?”
“Mom . . .” She wasn’t buying the act. Her mom’s conversations always came with an agenda attached.
Amy sighed in admittance. “Okay, fine,” she said. “We’re both thinking the same thing anyway.”
Oh god. Were they?
Her mom reached over and put her hand on her lap, probably in an effort to appear supportive. “I think we both know you have some tough decisions to make.”
Maria gripped the cup of tea so hard, she could have sworn it was about to crack.
Thankfully, a car pulled up along the sidewalk, and a distraction in the form of Kyle Valenti emerged. “Excuse me,” she said, handing her mother the tea. She tossed her blanket aside and got up, giving Dylan’s shoulder a quick squeeze as she walked past him and met Kyle at his car. “Hey,” she said, relieved that he was alone and didn’t have Michael tagging along with him. “What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, just wanted to check up on you and Dylan,” he replied. “He looks good.”
“Yeah.” She glanced back over her shoulder, smiling as Dylan crept closer to the squirrel. It just stared at him, then darted away again, and Dylan chased after it, yelling, “Frankie!” Apparently he had named it now, which probably meant that he was going to feel really bad when she told him he couldn’t keep it as a pet.
Returning her focus to Kyle, she blatantly asked, “Did Michael send you?”
“What? No,” he insisted. “I came on my own. Honest.”
She wasn’t quite sure if she believed that, but then again, she wasn’t quite sure if she cared. Whether Kyle reported everything she said back to Michael or not, it didn’t really matter. Either way, he already knew how upset she was.
“I just . . . I feel like I need to clear the air about something.”
Maria frowned, unsure where this was going. “Okay . . .” She couldn’t remember ever seeing him look anything less than completely confident, but right now, he did.
“The party Michael was hosting on Saturday night . . .” Kyle sighed, his shoulders slumping. “It wasn’t his idea. Actually, it wasn’t even my idea. This guy at school, Jase . . . it was his idea. Like a last hurrah for all of us, especially for Michael and me, since we both got engaged.”
Maria reached down and touched the ring on her finger. The mood ring that was just meant to be a placeholder for her lost engagement ring. It had been orange for a very, very long time now.
“Michael didn’t want anything to do with the party,” Kyle informed her nobly, “but I convinced him to have it. I told him it wasn’t a big deal, that it’d all be fine. ‘cause I really thought it would be.”
The sudden breeze blew her hair in front of her face, and she brushed it aside. “Why are you telling me this, Kyle?”
“Because you need to know,” he said. “It’s my fault what happened that night. Michael would’ve never agreed to that party if I hadn’t persuaded him.”
Maria narrowed her eyes, studying him intently, his body language, his eyes, trying to figure out if this was the truth or if Kyle was just making it all up to try to get his best friend back in her good graces. But of course it was true. Kyle was a stand-up guy, not the lying type. But still . . .
It didn’t change anything. “You know, I’m really starting to get tired of people trying to take the fall for Michael here. First Tina, now you. You guys know it’s not your fault.”
“It is, though,” Kyle persisted.
“No, it’s not.”
“Oh, come on, Maria. You and I both know Michael relies on me to be the responsible one, to make good decisions, to help keep him on the right path.”
“He should be able to do that on his own,” she argued. “You shouldn’t constantly have to be setting the example for him, Kyle. He’s eighteen years old; he’s perfectly capable of making his own decisions.”
“Yeah, I know, but . . .” Kyle trailed off in frustration. “I’m just saying, I should’ve known better.”
“You should’ve known better?” As admirable as it was that he held himself to higher standards, this was complete nonsense. He wasn’t the one who Dylan called Daddy. His name wasn’t the name on the back of the jersey her little boy slept in every night. It wasn’t up to him to know better; it was all up to Michael.
“I just wanted to apologize,” he reaffirmed, “and come clean with you. Whether you blame me for any of this or not, I really do feel like it’s partly my fault.”
She shook her head, disagreeing completely. “It’s not,” she told him. “Just like it’s not Tina’s. It’s Max’s fault, Kyle.” She felt a lump in her throat when she added, “And Michael’s.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Waking up wasn’t getting any easier. For two nights in a row now, Michael had slept alone and woken up the same way. It was depressing as hell, and it didn’t exactly motivate him to start the damn day off on the right foot.
That morning, he busied himself with making the last tally mark on his wall. The last one out of a hundred and eighty lines. His mom was going to be so pissed at him for destroying that wall, but making those marks had helped him get through the year. And what a year it had been.
He wasn’t the same guy he’d been when he’d put the first line up there. Whether he was a better or worse guy now was up for debate and probably depended on who you asked. Isabel would say he was worse. Kyle and his mom would say he was better. And Maria . . .
God. What would Maria say about him?
Thinking about her made him want to talk to her, so he reached for his phone. Instead of calling her though, he looked back through all the texts he had sent her yesterday. There were dozens of them, each one more desperate than the next. Not a single reply, though.
She was shutting him out, hence the reason why he was shutting himself up in his room.
Crap. He felt his determination to stay home fading, and reluctantly, he set his phone back down on his nightstand and got out of bed.
He dragged himself through his morning routine and out the front door. He didn’t expect Kyle to be sitting out there in his truck waiting for him, but there he was. When he saw that Michael was dressed for school, he grinned, rolled down his window, and said, “I had a feeling you’d change your mind.” He motioned to the empty passenger’s seat and coaxed, “Get in.”
Michael sighed and lumbered across the front yard. He tossed his useless backpack into the back of the truck and climbed in, figuring it was either this or a repeat of his pointless yesterday.
On the way to school, Kyle did most of the talking, until Michael decided to chime in. “You know there’s only one reason I’m comin’ today, right?”
“Because it’s the last day?” Kyle guessed.
“No, I don’t care about that.”
“Uh, then maybe because it’s only fitting we end the year together since we started it together.”
“Nope.” Football games held nostalgia and sentimental value for him and Kyle. Classes didn’t.
“It’s ‘cause you wanna slam Mr. Frost’s face into a locker, isn’t it?” Kyle concluded.
“No. Well, yeah, but that’s not why I’m goin’.”
“Hmm.” Kyle frowned contemplatively. “Then I assume you’re goin’ so you can prove to everyone at school that you don’t care what they’re sayin’ about you or thinkin’ about you right now.”
Michael looked out the window, wishing it were something like that. But actually, it was way simpler and less inspired. “Actually it’s just ‘cause I have nothin’ better to do,” he admitted. “It’s either this or sit up in my room sending unanswered texts to Maria all day.”
“Oh.” Kyle made a face. “Yeah, this is slightly more productive.”
Emphasis on slightly, Michael grumbled inwardly. He didn’t plan on doing much of anything while he was at school today. In fact, it would probably be a miracle if he lasted past first period.
“Maybe you should track down those freshmen girls we met in Frazier Woods at the beginning of the year,” Kyle suggested, “find out if you really did have a threesome.”
“Oh, I did,” Michael boasted surely.
“How do you know? I thought you didn’t remember it.”
“I don’t, but I know I did,” he insisted. “I was like a pimp at the beginning of the year.”
Kyle chuckled lightly. “A lot’s changed since then.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed solemnly. At the beginning of the year, he hadn’t felt like such a worthless piece of shit, even though he’d been one. And if he’d started to feel that way back then, he wouldn’t have cared about it. At the beginning of the year, he’d had no desire whatsoever to be anyone’s husband or anyone’s father. Maria had only been the waitress. He hadn’t known her, and he hadn’t loved her, and he hadn’t known that he would end up falling in love with her. At the beginning of the year, he’d doubted he was even capable of love.
Oh, yeah. A lot had changed.
From the moment he stepped out of the truck and started through the parking lot with Kyle, he felt like he was being scrutinized. Other people in the parking lot were looking at him and then whispering to each other, probably saying things like, “Look, he’s back,” and “There he is.” It wasn’t narcissism that made him think people were talking about him; they really were. The whole fucking school revolved around him and Kyle, Isabel and Tess, and the select few other people who bore the burden of being popular. But usually the good things revolved around Kyle, and the bad things revolved around him.
“Just brace yourself, alright?” Kyle cautioned him as they walked in the heavy double doors. “You knew people would be talking.”
He rolled his eyes. Whatever. He was determined not to care.
He probably would have drawn fewer inquisitive stares if he’d walked in naked. People stopped whatever they were doing when they saw him, and the hallway got unusually quiet.
Kyle gave no sign of being fazed by it, though. He walked ahead with Michael, carrying on a normal conversation. “So I Skyped with my college roommate last night,” he revealed. “We had to figure out who’s bringin’ what to the dorm.”
“Oh, yeah?” Michael was relieved when the conversations around him started to pick up again. “Does he seem cool?”
Kyle grunted. “Not as cool as I first thought. He pretty much wants me to bring everything.”
“That sucks,” Michael sympathized. “I wish I was goin’ to college with you.”
Kyle gave him a surprised look. “Do you really?”
Oh, shit. He really hadn’t meant to say that. “No. I mean . . . I don’t know. Sometimes.” He had his whole plan to take a year off from school, and then he really did intend to go. But sometimes plans changed, and his plans were never really planned that well right from the start so . . . maybe he’d just have to get used to watching Alabama football games from the stands.
As awkward as talking about college could be, it was a hell of a lot worse when Jase rounded the corner and came towards them, grinning like an idiot. “Michael!” he exclaimed. “Dude, I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Neither did I,” he muttered.
“Man, everyone’s talkin’ about Saturday,” he rambled. “I hope you don’t mind, I told a lot of people what happened. I just wanted to make sure they got the facts, you know, so they weren’t just spreading rumors.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Jase embellished everything. His girlfriend’s hotness. His sexual experiences. The amount of alcohol he could consume without passing out. And now probably this, too.
“Hey, Jase, speaking of rumors, you should go find Antonio,” Kyle suggested. “I don’t know what’s going on, but everyone’s sayin’ he’s been makin’ time with your girl.”
“What the hell?” Jase looked utterly confused. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. You should go ask him about it.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll see you guys later.” Looking shocked and perplexed, Jase walked back in the direction he had come from, around the corner and out of sight.
“Is that true?” Michael asked Kyle. “About Antonio.”
“No, I just wanted to get him to leave.”
Michael laughed a little. “Thanks.” He was pretty damn thankful to have an awesome best friend.
They had only taken a few more steps when Roxie skittered up to them next. She practically threw herself on top of Michael, her hands roaming all over his chest as she babbled, “Oh my god, Michael, are you okay? Everyone’s saying you got shot.”
“What?”
“Yeah, and they’re saying Maria’s ex-boyfriend threw you off a bridge. Is that true?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.” Maybe that was just Jase’s version of something he knew nothing about.
“Well, that’s what everybody is saying.”
“Actually . . .” Ryan sidled up to them, sliding his hand around Roxie’s petite waste. “Everyone’s saying your girl kicked you to the curb.” He looked Michael up and down, then smirked. “Gotta say, I believe that one.”
That was it. Michael felt the switch inside flip, and he was set off. Dealing with Jase’s idiocy and Roxie’s stupidity was one thing, but Ryan fucking Adderman was another. “Shut the fuck up, you motherfucker!” he roared, shoving Ryan back against the lockers, pinning him there with his elbow against his throat.
“Whoa, hey . . .” Kyle grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away. “Calm down, alright?”
Michael shook his shoulders out of his friend’s grasp, feeling anything but calm. “I can’t . . .” He shook his head angrily, fleeing the scene. It would have been nice to kick Ryan’s ass—hell, wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that this year. But then he’d just be giving people something else to talk about.
He stormed through the cafeteria and made his way to the office. Thankfully, there was a girl who was on her way out of Topolsky’s office, because he couldn’t wait. He barged right in, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Michael.” Topolsky sounded a little bit alarmed, but just a little bit. She was, after all, used to seeing him worked up like this. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” He paced back and forth in the small space, unwilling to sit down, unable to stand still.
“What’s wrong?” she asked calmly.
He clenched his mouth shut, afraid of just going off on a tirade if he didn’t collect himself for a moment. “Did you hear about what happened this weekend?” he mumbled tensely, but he already knew the answer. Roswell wasn’t a big town. There were no real secrets here.
“I did,” she replied.
“Yeah, everyone did.” Everyone knew how he’d fucked things up, but with rumors circulating out of control, some people probably couldn’t even explain how he’d fucked things up; they just knew he had.
“I’m glad you came to see me, and I’m glad you came to school today,” she said. “I’ve been wondering how you’ve been doing.”
“Not good,” he admitted. And that had to be obvious. He probably looked like he was hanging on by a thread, which he was at this point. “I need my check-out sheet. I’m not gonna make it through the school day.”
She gave him a pleading look. “Michael . . .”
“No, I can’t stay here,” he decided. “It’s pointless anyway. I just wanna get outta here and go back home.”
Reluctantly, she reached underneath a stack of papers on her desk, took out a blank student check-out form, and wrote his name at the top of it. “What’re you gonna do when you get home?” she asked, handing it to him.
“Don’t know.” He folded the form in half, sliding it into his pocket. “I can tell you what I wanna do, though: get drunk.”
“Well, you could do that here,” she pointed out. “Don’t you have alcohol in your locker?”
“Don’t you have an obligation to report that?” he retorted.
“Oh, I already did. Never seems to do much good.”
“Well, yeah, I got alcohol in there,” he admitted. “I can’t go drink it, though. No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I do, then I’m proving them all right.”
“Them?” she echoed.
“Yeah, them. Everyone out there. And Maria’s mom. My dad. All of ‘em.” He resumed his pacing as his ranting intensified. “They don’t really know me; they don’t know what I can do. Amy and my dad just point out every single flaw every chance they get, ‘cause they think I’m destined to be this loser. And all those people out there . . . they just use me. For popularity. For entertainment. When I screw up, it entertains them.”
“So stop screwing up,” she suggested.
“I can’t.” That was the worst part. He been trying so hard this year to change himself for the better, but he still felt like he was no good. Cheating on Isabel, endangering Dylan . . . what was next? Maybe Maria was wondering the same thing. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t text or call him back.
He flopped down in the chair across her desk, the one he’d sat in so many times this year. Not one of those times had he felt as awful as he did right now. “Maria’s really pissed off at me,” he revealed sadly. “No, not . . . that’s not even the right word.” It wasn’t strong enough.
“Do you understand why she’s upset with you?” Topolsky asked.
“Oh, yeah. Believe me, I’m upset with myself,” he told her. “I just . . .” He swallowed hard, staring off into nothingness as he pondered, “I wonder if she’ll be able to forgive me.”
Topolsky gave him a small, encouraging smile. “I’m sure she will.”
“Yeah.” He wanted to be sure, too; he really wanted to. “But her son almost died because I wasn’t a good enough dad.” Tears stung his eyes. “How do you forgive someone for that?”
For the first time since he’d known her, his guidance counselor couldn’t seem to give him an answer.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Meeting with Topolsky calmed Michael down enough that he was able to make the rounds before the first bell of the day rang. He had to get his stupid check-out sheet signed by every single teacher to show that he had had no incompletes in the gradebook and had turned any textbooks or other materials in. Once he was done with that, he was out of there.
He stopped by Ms. Alvarez’s room first, knocking on the doorframe. She glanced up from the pile of papers on her desk and semi-smiled. “Michael,” she greeted. “I think this is the first time you’ve ever gotten to my class early.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, shuffling into the room. “I’m not stayin’. I just need you to sign my check-out thing.”
“Oh.” She motioned him over and picked up a pen. “There you go,” she said, scribbling her initials in the signature box for English. “I guess I’ll see you at graduation then.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if I’m goin’ to that, either,” he revealed. “I kinda got some stuff goin’ on.”
She nodded in understanding. “Well . . . best of luck then.”
“Yeah.” Right now, he needed luck in a major way. “Hey, listen, I know I was a real piece of shit this year. Probably didn’t make your first year any easier on you.”
She laughed a little. “Well . . .”
“But you did pretty good,” he told her. “I’m just a bad student.”
“No, you’re not a bad student, Michael,” she corrected him. “You’re . . . challenging.”
“Hmm.” That was probably the nice way to put it. “Well, thanks,” he said, refolding his check-out sheet. He shoved it back into his pocket, gave her a flippant wave, and headed out the door.
He went to a few of his other teachers before stopping at his locker to get his chemistry textbook. He brought it in to Mr. Frost, dropping it onto his desk, interrupting another vitally important game of Solitaire.
“I’m signing out early,” he informed him.
Mr. Frost opened the front cover of his textbook, then flipped through a few pages. “Mint condition,” he remarked. “Looks like you never used it.”
“I never did,” Michael admitted.
Mr. Frost rolled his eyes, mumbling something under his breath, and signed Michael’s check-out sheet. “Good riddance, Guerin.”
Michael stared at him incredulously, trying to fathom how or even why he’d become a teacher. Maybe he’d just been doing it for so long that he hated it now, or maybe he just found one student every year to be a complete dick to. Not that Michael minded, because he enjoyed being a dick in return.
“You’re an ass,” he told his teacher, seizing his check-out sheet back again.
After forging the initials of the teachers whose rooms were located on the opposite side of the school, Michael returned to the office and dropped his sheet off with the secretaries. And that was it. He was done, through with school. At long last. It seemed completely anti-climactic.
The bell rang, and he pushed his way through dozens of people going in the opposite direction as him. Ryan spotted him again in the senior hallway, and he started taunting him. “Hey, Guerin, if your girlfriend’s done with you, toss her on over to me for a couple hours. I wanna give you another stepson.”
God, did this guy ever learn? Michael shoved him against the lockers, then kept on walking. He would have done more if he wasn’t in such a hurry to get out of there.
Since Kyle had driven him, he was going to have to walk home, but that was fine. It wasn’t like he was in any big hurry to get home and sit up in his room all alone. Maybe he wouldn’t even go home. His mom could probably use some help at the library now that Maria was done working there. Maybe he’d swing by and make himself useful for once.
Halfway through the parking lot, he spotted Isabel getting out of her car, scrambling for her purse. It had either been a rough morning or a late night for her. She didn’t look as put-together as she usually did, and she was running very late. She’d probably been with Jesse, maybe making another porno or just making out. Whichever.
“Isabel,” he called, feeling like it was fate that he’d run into her out here. He couldn’t leave without saying something to her.
“What do you want?” she grumbled impatiently.
Oh, so many things, he thought, but when it came to her, he just wanted to apologize. So he did. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned suspiciously, then asked, “For what?”
Did she really have to ask? “For everything.” He’d accumulated a laundry list of screw-ups with her in the past two years, and he felt bad about every single one of them.
“What if that’s not enough?” she challenged.
He shrugged. “It’s all I got.” Feeling like he’d said what he needed to, he walked along, leaving her in the parking lot by herself as the tardy bell rang from inside. If she actually made an effort to accept his apology, then maybe she could enjoy her last day of high school.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria lay in bed longer than she should have that day, perusing the massive amount of texts that Michael had sent her yesterday. There were a lot of apologies, along with pleas to text him back or call him. More than once, she thought about doing that, but then she changed her mind. What was there to say that she hadn’t already said? She was still mad at him, still heartbroken. Still confused about what she should do now.
Somewhere along the way, browsing through texts morphed into looking at all the pictures on her phone. He had taken most of them. There were lots of pictures of him kissing her cheek while she just smiled giddily, and pictures of her cuddling up against him in bed. Dylan was in a lot of the pictures, too. The ones of him and Michael together made her tear up a little, and then a lot.
She sat up, stumbling across a video he had recorded just a few weeks ago, back before she’d ever made that fateful decision to go on that mini-music tour. Back before Max had ever shown up in town. Back when things had been simple, and amazing.
Even though she knew it would only make her feel worse, she pressed play and watched miniature versions of herself and Michael cuddling and chattering playfully in bed, both of them fully-clothed but still so intimate.
“Michael, what—what’re you doing?” she sputtered as he held her phone up over the two of them.
“Filming,” he replied simply. “This is some great cinematography right here.”
“Okay, we are not making a sex tape,” she told him emphatically.
“Who said anything about a sex tape?” He gave her a look. “Maria . . .”
“What?”
“Is your mind in the gutter again?”
She rolled her eyes at his teasing. “Okay, why are you filming this?”
“Because, it’s a memory,” he answered. “We can show it to our grandkids someday.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Prove to them how hot we once were.”
She laughed, pulling the covers up over her head.
“Hey, what’re you doin’? Come back out. The camera loves you.” He pulled the blankets back down, smiling at her adoringly. “I love you.”
She gazed at him wistfully, blushing. He always knew how to make her blush.
“Come on, say it, say it,” he urged. “You know you wanna say it.”
Oh, yes, she definitely did. “I love you, too.”
He grinned, leaning in to kiss her lips, the camera in his hand shaking as he did so. “Sex tape? Sex tape?” he murmured against her lips hopefully.
She shook her head, nuzzling her nose against his. “No.”
“Come on, let’s make love, baby.”
She kissed him again, whispering, “Turn the camera off.”
And just like that, the video ended.
Maria inhaled shakily, trying to be less affected by such a short, simple video. But it did affect her. There was no way she could lie in bed next to Michael and play around like that right now. In a way, it seemed like a different life, one she wasn’t sure they would ever be able to get back to.
She felt the tears forming, but when her mom came into her room, she shoved them back down.
“Maria, why are you still in bed?” she asked. “It’s after 9:00.”
She sniffed, setting her phone down. “Yeah, I just . . .”
“Well, Dylan’s already up,” her mother cut in, “and he’s full of energy. I wish I could say the same. I have to go into work.”
Maria nodded skeptically, surveying her mother’s choice of wardrobe for the day. Short black skirt, nice red shirt that accentuated her curves. Even high heels. “Kinda dressy for work, don’t you think?”
Her mother tugged down on her skirt, confessing, “If you must know, I’m meeting Jim for lunch today.”
Of course you are, Maria thought. It was painfully obvious. “So this is how it’s gonna be?” she said. “He screws things up with you, but eventually you just take him back and wait for him to screw up again?”
Her mother narrowed her eyes, advising, “Maybe you should be asking yourself the same question.”
Maria averted her eyes, lacking any snappy comeback, any quick response for that one. She didn’t want to ask herself that question. And she really didn’t want to answer it.
“Have a good day,” her mother said, her heels clicking on the wood floor as she walked out.
Maria sighed heavily, picking up her phone again. Her thumb hovered over the speed dial button for Michael momentarily, but then she tossed it down to the foot of the bed and leaned forward, holding her head in her hands, trying to forget all those texts, that video, and the questions she was supposed to be contemplating.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Isabel sat atop the counter in Jesse’s kitchen while he whipped up some Mexican lasagna for the two of them. An old family recipe, he said, one he’d made a dozen times and could make with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. It did smell good, but Isabel had never known her boyfriend to do much cooking before. He’d insisted on doing it tonight, though, as a way of celebrating the end of one very long chapter in her life.
“So how’s it feel to be done with high school?” he asked, sprinkling yet another layer of cheese atop his already cheesy creation.
She shrugged. “Not all that different, actually. Besides, am I really done with high school if I haven’t gone to graduation yet?”
“Ah, graduation’s just a formality,” he dismissed. “You don’t have to go.”
“No, I want to,” she said decisively. “I wanna sit there and listen to how bad Raymond Sullivan’s valedictorian speech sucks.”
He chuckled, opening up the oven. “Well, I for one am glad you’re outta high school now,” he told her, sliding his lasagna onto the top rack. “Now when I tell my mom about you, I don’t have to start out with, ‘Okay, don’t freak out, Mama, but she’s still in high school.”
Isabel laughed. “Yeah, that must be a relief.”
“But you know . . .” He shut the oven and stepped in front of her, pulling both her legs apart so she could wrap them around his waist. “I never really thought of you as a high school girl. That place was never big enough for you.” He stroked her hair, then leaned in and kissed the side of her neck.
“Well, soon I’ll be at Princeton,” she reminded him, draping her arms over his board, muscular shoulders. “That should be big enough.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, nuzzling her skin. “Too far away, though.”
It was far. And they hadn’t really talked about it. Maybe it was time to. “So what exactly is our plan?” she asked, leaning back a bit. “Do we have one?”
He grinned, touching her cheek. “I don’t know about you, but I plan on having the summer of my life with you, and then we’ll take it from there.”
She tried to smile, but really, that answer made her nervous. Was that his way of reassuring her that he was into her and wanted to do the long-distance thing? Or was it a subtle hint that this relationship of theirs would be short-lived? She didn’t even want to think about that, because even though Jesse wasn’t everyone’s dream guy, he was good to her. Kind. Understanding. She wasn’t ready to lose him yet.
“You alright?” he asked.
She forced a smile, an unconcerned one. “Yeah.” As long as she had these moments with him to escape to, she was perfectly fine.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The fact that merely doing the dishes with him seemed to delight his mother made Michael feel bad for her. Just how awful had her life become that this was the highlight of her day? She put on a brave face for him, for Tina, for just about everyone, but he knew she wasn’t happy. Apparently she was happy to spend time with him, though, since he’d been hanging out with her all day and she hadn’t told him to go away yet.
“I really liked having you help out at the library today,” she said, passing him another plate to dry. “And now with the dishes . . . I don’t think I recall you ever being so helpful.”
He shrugged, wiping an already damp towel against the wet plate. “I just wanna stay busy.” He’d gone to the library after leaving school today because the thought of coming home and sitting up in his room all alone for another day was just too damn depressing. Being productive, as unnatural as it was for him, was a good distraction from how bad his life sucked right now.
“You can come help out tomorrow, too, if you want,” she offered.
He nodded mutely, considering that. He wasn’t about to wake up at 7:00 a.m. like she would, but maybe once he got up and around, he’d stumble on in there and give the card catalog another shot. Or maybe he’d go do something else.
It was a perfectly fine moment he and his mom were having until his dad came tripping downstairs, his mere presence enough to ruin it all. “Well, well, well,” he said, looking them over. “Never thought I’d see my boy doin’ the domestics.”
“Maria and I used to cook and do dishes and stuff all the time,” Michael reminded him. They hadn’t done any of those things well or particularly fast due to the massive amounts of flirting that had gotten in the way, but still, they’d done them.
“Ah, yes, Maria.” His dad grinned cruelly, slipping past him to the refrigerator. “Pretty blonde girl, right? Used to live in my house.”
“Andy, stop,” his mom ordered warningly.
But of course he didn’t stop. He never did. Didn’t stop insulting. Couldn’t stop drinking. Wouldn’t stop being an ass for even one second. “I’m just statin’ the obvious,” he said, rummaging around for a beer. “Clearly she’s done with us.” He shot Michael a look, making sure to add pointedly, “All of us.”
Michael gripped the plate in his hands tightly, resisting the urge to slam it down against the counter and watch it break.
His dad chuckled, teasing him even though basically half his head was in the refrigerator now. “God, you must feel like a fool.”
Even his mom’s hand on his shoulder didn’t help.
“You gave up college for her!”
“Don’t listen to him,” his mom told him quietly.
But how could he not? All his life, there was one voice he’d always heard echoing in the back of his head, and it was his father’s. A taunting, seething, accusatory voice that wasn’t quieting down with time. If anything, it was getting louder and louder with every passing day.
He put the dishtowel and plate down on the counter with the other dry dishes, hastily marching towards the front door.
“Michael, wait!” his mom called. “Where are you going?”
He was already on his way out the door when he heard his dad respond for him, “Where do you think?”
It was true that his destination was no secret. He drove over there in record time, trying to convince himself that it couldn’t possibly be true. Maria wasn’t really done with him. She was just taking a step back, just for now. Maybe if he talked to her and she just listened, then maybe she wouldn’t be so mad anymore. She could forgive him, and things could be good again, and they could do everything they’d planned to do before any of this had ever happened.
He knocked on the DeLuca front door normally at first, then more insistently, and then even more so. By the time it finally opened, he felt like his hand was going to break.
Disappointment engulfed him, because it wasn’t even Maria standing there to greet him. It was Amy, and she had that same expression on her face his dad had had on his.
“I had a feeling you’d show up here sooner or later,” she said. “Although I thought it’d be sooner.”
“I was giving Maria some space,” he said, not willing to let her think that he just didn’t care. “Can I see her?”
Amy laughed in ridicule. “Absolutely not.”
“Come on, please?” He tried to look past her to see inside, but it was mostly dark in the living room, except for the light coming from the TV, and no one else seemed to be downstairs.
“If Maria ever wants to see you again, she will,” Amy said. “If she does.”
He groaned inwardly, fighting hard to keep his cool. Lashing out at Max and Isabel at the hospital hadn’t done any good, and lashing out at Amy wouldn’t here. “I just wanna talk to her,” he said, feeling pathetic that he was literally at her mercy here. If she took pity on him, he’d get what he wanted. If she hated him too much, he wouldn’t.
“She doesn’t wanna talk,” Amy said.
“Why don’t you let her tell me what she wants?” he suggested.
“Because she doesn’t know what she wants.”
He frowned. What the hell did that mean? Amy really thought this was going to drive them apart for all time, didn’t she? Well, she didn’t know shit. What he and Maria had was stronger than this. All he had to do was talk to her and remind her, but this bitch of a woman was standing in the way.
“Go home, Michael,” she advised coldly. “Get drunk. From what I recall, that’s what you’re good at.”
No, he thought vehemently. No! That was what his dad was good at, not him. He wasn’t gonna be that man’s legacy, not if he could help it.
Even though his mind was screaming, words escaped him, and he just stood there like an idiot and let her close the door in his face.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria came downstairs upon hearing the front door shut. “Who was that?” she asked her mom.
“Oh, just Mr. Marcel from across the street,” her mother replied. “He needed to borrow some milk.”
Maria nodded, pulling the sleeves of her shirt down over her wrists. “Can we . . .” She wasn’t able to finish asking if they could sit down and talk, because suddenly, Dylan’s voice called out from upstairs. He was crying the way he always did when he had a bad dream or thought he saw a monster.
“Oh, no,” her mother said. “That doesn’t sound good. I’ll go take care of it.”
“No, that’s okay, I got it,” Maria assured her. She turned and took a few steps back up the stairs, but she paused when she heard what Dylan was yelling.
“What is it?” her mother asked.
She felt an ache in her stomach as he called out over and over again for the only person who had ever managed to put his fears about monsters to rest. “I’m not the one he’s crying out for,” she said sadly, waiting a few more seconds before heading upstairs anyway. Maybe she was only the second best choice when it came to vanquishing those pretend monsters that lurked in closets and under the bed, but she could still put his little mind at ease.
When she opened the door to his room, he was sitting up in the middle of his bed, clutching his blankets to his chest, shrieking and crying, “Daddy! Daddy!”
Hoping he wasn’t too disappointed to see her, Maria shut the door and shuffled towards him. “Hey, it’s okay,” she cooed. “You’re fine.”
“No!” he cried. “Monster!”
“There’s no monster.”
“Yeah-huh.”
She shook her head, insisting, “There’s not.”
“Where’s Daddy?” he asked, pouting.
She sighed, wishing there was a way to answer that question so that he could understand. But there wasn’t, so she decided not to answer it at all. “Mommy’s here, Dylan. If there is a monster, I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Daddy fights the monsters,” Dylan mumbled.
“I can fight ‘em, too,” she offered. “Where are they?”
He fearfully pointed towards the floor.
“Under the bed?” she guessed. Playing along, she got down on the floor and lifted up the bedspread, looking underneath. “I think it’s gone now,” she told him. “We scared him off.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “Nope.”
“Come look. There’s nothing here.”
He adamantly scooted back on the bed, pressing himself against his wall, holding the blankets up over everything but his eyes now.
Clearly her attempt to calm him down wasn’t working, so she asked, “What do I have to do?”
“You—you gotta . . .” He frowned. “Get Daddy.”
“Daddy’s not . . .” She caught herself and corrected. “Michael’s not here right now, Dylan. I’m gonna have to do.”
“No!” he screamed, slamming his hands down at his sides. “I want Daddy!”
“I’m sorry.” She climbed back up on the bed, hoping he’d change his mind and decide the monster was gone, decide that what she’d done had been enough. Michael had the magic touch when it came to this sort of thing, for whatever reason. He made Dylan feel completely safe, even though, when it had really counted, he hadn’t kept him safe at all.
“I want Daddy!” Dylan yelled again. “Daddy! Daddy!” He started throwing a full-on temper tantrum, hitting at the mattress, the wall, his pillow, and even her. She had to grab his hands to stop him.
“Dylan, don’t hit!”
That only made him scream and cry some more.
“Dylan, stop!”
He didn’t stop. And eventually, feeling helpless and like a failure of a mother, Maria started to cry, too. Her screams stayed on the inside, but they were still there.
TBC . . .
-April
Michael’s plan was to just ignore him when he walked in, but as usual, his dad made that impossible. “Well, well, well,” he chimed from the kitchen. “If it isn’t my son the lifeguard.”
Ha, ha, he thought sarcastically. Apparently his mom had already filled his dad in about what had happened. Sweet. Now he didn’t have to be the one to tell him. He just had to endure all the taunting about it.
“Jumpin’ off a bridge to save that kid . . .” His dad poured a can of beer into a wine glass, as if that would make it more sophisticated somehow. “That’s real heroic. But then again, you are the reason his life was in danger in the first place. But what the hell.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. “Cheers.”
Michael stood there, watching him drink, and as awful as it was to admit . . . part of him wanted to be doing the exact same thing, to join him.
His dad cleared his throat once all the beer was gone and started tracing his fingers around the rim of the glass to collect any remaining liquid. “Glad to hear he’s gonna be okay, of course,” he said. “Sounds like it could’ve been pretty bad.”
“Could’ve been,” Michael muttered. It was bad enough as it was. He took a seat at the kitchen table, where there were still a few cups from the beer pong set-up. Ironic, he’d been sitting all day, and it had been driving him crazy. But now he felt too tired to stand or even walk upstairs.
His dad fell silent for a moment as he got another beer can out of the fridge. But as soon as he popped open the tab, he just started chuckling, slow at first, and then faster and louder.
“What’s so funny?” Michael growled.
Through airy laughs, his dad responded, “Oh, everything. Me. You. You are definitely my son.”
“Yeah, whether you like it or not.”
“See, this one time when you were two, you crawled into the dryer. I almost turned it on with you in there. I screwed up. Of course, this is worse, though. You really screwed up.”
“Gee, thanks.” Knowing his dad, he’d probably tossed him into that dryer on purpose.
“So where’s Maria?” his dad snooped. “Still at the hospital?”
“No.” He didn’t plan to elaborate, but his dad gave him this curious look, and Michael suspected he’d just keep asking about it until he relented and explained. “She’s staying with her mom tonight. Her and Dylan.” That was one hell of a bitter pill to swallow.
“Ooh.” His dad grimaced. “Well, can’t say I didn’t see this coming.”
“Really?” Michael challenged. “You knew Dylan was gonna get kidnapped and fall off a bridge?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” his father acknowledged. “But I knew you were gonna do somethin’ to fuck things up. It’s in your nature, your DNA. That’s why this whole thing is my big, fat chance to say ‘I told you so.’”
“Told me so,” Michael echoed. “Told me what?”
His dad sloppily poured his second glass of beer, seemingly disappointed when some sloshed over the sides. “That you weren’t ready, that you wouldn’t be able to handle being a father and a spouse and just an adult in general.”
Michael grunted. “Weird, because I’ve had such a great role model in that regard.”
“Hey, I just call it like I see it,” his dad said with a shrug. “Your girl goes off, leaves you in charge and trusts you with the one person she loves more than anything in the world. All you had to do was look after him, keep him safe and sound for one week.” He chuckled again, as if he were finding some savage delight in this failure. “You couldn’t do it.”
Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Michael struggled to not show much of a response. He wished he had some witty comeback, wished he could disagree with him and point out all the ways he was wrong. But the disturbing thing was, he couldn’t do that. As much as he hated to admit it, for once in his pathetic, miserable, no-good life . . . his dad was right.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria watched Dylan sleep that night, wondering what he was dreaming about. Was he having a nightmare or a good dream? She would never know, but she liked to think it was a good dream. He wasn’t tossing and turning or whimpering or doing anything that would lead her to believe differently. In fact, he looked perfectly content as he lay on his side, sucking his thumb.
“Maria?”
She gasped when she felt her mom’s hand on her shoulder. Having been so entranced watching Dylan, she hadn’t even heard her come into the room.
“Sorry,” her mom apologized. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay.” She readjusted Dylan’s blankets since he’d started to kick them off.
Her mom sat down on the foot of the bed, reaching up to stroke Dylan’s cheek. “He looks cozy,” she remarked.
“Yeah.” That was the goal. Keep him warm, safe, cozy, and happy. The poor kid had just spent nearly twenty-four hours in a hospital bed.
“You should get some sleep, Maria,” her mom suggested. “He’s fine here.”
Maria shook her head stubbornly. “No, I don’t wanna leave him.” She’d already done that, and look what a mistake it had been.
“He’s fine,” her mom insisted. “I’ll sit here with him if you want.”
Reluctantly, she took a look at her mom and nodded. She did need to rest after being on the road all last night. She hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since Friday night. “Let me know if he needs anything,” she said, slowly getting to her feet.
“Sleep well,” her mother said.
Hmm. That wasn’t likely.
Instead of going into the bedroom right away, she slipped into the bathroom to take a shower. Another thing she hadn’t gotten to do since Friday night. She felt gross, and the thought of a warm, relaxing shower sounded nice.
It wasn’t relaxing, though. The minute that water hit her skin, she started to imagine Dylan, flailing helplessly in the depths of water that could have killed him. She started to feel breathless, because it freaked her out knowing that he hadn’t been able to breathe. He must have been so scared. So scared.
Just to calm herself down, she had to put her hand to her chest and take a few deep breaths. Dylan was breathing just fine now. He was warm under his blankets. Completely safe. And apparently completely un-traumatized thanks to some fortunate selective forgetting.
She felt traumatized, though, even though she hadn’t lived through it. Just the thought of her own son almost losing his life . . . it was too much. Too much to handle, too much to think about. And she started to cry. Her tears mixed with the water pouring down on her seamlessly, and she wished there were someone there to wipe them away.
But he wasn’t there. For a very good reason.
She started to cry harder. It wasn’t just the fact that Dylan had endured this horrific event that was so gut-wrenching; it was the fact that he wouldn’t have had to go through it at all if Michael hadn’t been so careless. Just thinking about it filled her with so much anger and disappointment and despair that she couldn’t distinguish one feeling from the next.
The more she cried, the louder she got, and at some point, she was sure her mom would be able to hear her. Dylan’s room wasn’t that far down the hall, and even with the water running . . . surely her tears were no secret. And that was okay. After everything that had happened, there was no reason for them to be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
School was buzzing on Monday. Not a surprise. Everyone was talking about what had transpired at Michael’s party Saturday night. Kyle had braced himself for it, knowing all along that it would be the subject of every conversation. How could it not be? The only thing that had generated a bigger buzz in the hallways of West Roswell had been Isabel’s sex tape, and that had been a much different kind of buzz.
With it being the second-to-last day of school for the seniors, nobody had anything to do, so they just stood around in the hallways, gossiping. A lot of people approached Kyle, wanting to know more about what had happened. But out of respect for Michael and Maria, he refused to talk about it. At all.
The downside of that was that he had to stand around and just listen to the story get more and more exaggerated and inaccurate every time somebody told it. Jase was probably the biggest culprit when it came to peddling the story to his own advantage. As someone who always longed to be the center of attention but rarely ever was, he circulated the rumor that he had seen the whole thing go down, that Max had shown up with a gun and threatened to kill them all, and that he and Antonio had beat him up and chased him off the property, thereby saving everyone’s lives. The worst part was that there were plenty of people who seemed to believe his warped version of events.
By the time fourth period rolled around, even though they were all supposed to be in class, people were mostly just loitering, and teachers didn’t seem to mind. The senior hallway was littered with students, many of whom Kyle had to step over on his way to Isabel. She was sitting by her locker, alone, taking selfies and sending them out to someone. Probably her new boyfriend. It was so weird to see her alone. Back at the beginning of the year, she’d been popular, maybe the most popular girl in the whole school. Now, she kept to herself, and if she was sad about that, she didn’t let it show.
“Hey,” he greeted, towering over her.
“Oh, hey, Kyle,” she said. “How’s it going?”
He shrugged. “Been better.” Truth be told, this wasn’t exactly his ideal way to spend the last two days of high school. His best friend wasn’t even there.
“Yeah,” she agreed, putting her phone away. “I get that.”
He supposed she did. When she’d started off the school year, she probably had never envisioned ending it like this. No Michael, no Tess, no graduation speech to prepare for.
“Can we go talk somewhere?” he asked her. This hallway wasn’t the place for it. It was too noisy, too distracting.
She nodded, climbing to her feet.
They got quite a few curious looks from people as they slipped around the corner and into the eraser room. Good, Kyle thought. Let’s give them something else to talk about.
Isabel smiled a little. “Gotta say, I never thought I’d slip into the eraser room with you, Kyle.”
He laughed lightly. “I know, right?”
She looked around, her eyes glossing over as if she were remembering something, and then she murmured, “Michael and I used to . . .” before trailing off and blushing. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Overshare.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I think every couple in this school’s done it in here a few times,” he assured her. “That kinda makes me not wanna touch anything.”
She laughed a little, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were now trying to avoid all contact with anything in that little room, too. “So what’s up?” she asked him.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “I just wanted to touch base with you. Seems you and I are two of the only people who actually know what happened the other night.”
“Seems like,” she agreed. “It’s kinda annoying how people keep talking about it like it’s a storyline on a TV show or something.”
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “They don’t get it. It’s like entertainment to them. But, I mean . . . it’s not. It’s my best friend. It’s your brother. It’s different for us.”
She looked down at the floor and nodded sadly. “Yeah.”
Fishing for a little info, Kyle probed, “What’s the status on your brother anyway? He still high as a kite?”
“Thankfully, no,” she answered. “Actually, he, uh . . . he left town. To go get some . . . help with his problems.”
“Oh.” He had to admit, that surprised him. Apparently Max had a smidgen of common sense left in him after all.
“I’m sure Michael and Maria will be relieved,” she said softly.
“Yeah, they will be.” He could see that she wasn’t so relieved, though. It was pretty clear that she already missed him. “Sorry,” he said. “That sucks for you. I know you and he had really started to bond.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. People leave. I’m leaving in a few months. I should just be all about college now, you know?”
He chuckled inwardly. “Oh, trust me, I know.” No one was more focused on college than he was. He had to be. It was going to pave the way for the rest of his life.
The bell rang, signaling the start of fifth period, and conversation from the hallways rattled even louder than before. Isabel made no effort to leave the room, though. Instead, she kicked at a few stray erasers on the floor and mumbled, “How’s Michael?” as though she were ashamed to even be curious.
Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. Hard to say.”
“I noticed he wasn’t here today.”
“No. I didn’t expect him to be.” They’d exchanged a few texts last night, and Michael had told him that Maria took Dylan to her mom’s house. But then the texts had stopped, a clear indicator that Michael didn’t want to talk about it. So Kyle had left him alone, hadn’t bothered him this morning, either. But he knew it wasn’t a good idea to leave Michael alone for too long when he was upset, or he might end up doing something he’d regret. Like getting completely wasted, for starters.
“I think I’m gonna go check on him over lunch,” Kyle revealed. “I’d invite you to come, but . . .”
“That’s probably not a good idea.” She touched her left shoulder as if she were recalling the way he’d shoved her in the hospital. “Tell him . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head, abandoning whatever she’d been thinking about saying. “Never mind.”
He couldn’t even try to fill in the blank. There were so many things that Isabel probably wanted to say to Michael, about so many things, but with Princeton on the horizon, she probably never would. And given their complicated history, maybe that was for the best.
He reached for the doorknob, but she stopped him before he walked out.
“Kyle,” she said. “You’re a really good friend. Michael’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
He sighed, feeling like he’d failed in that responsibility recently. “Thanks,” he said anyway. But then he wondered . . . Who’s looking out for you, Isabel? It was impossible not to notice the despair written all over her face. She didn’t have her brother around anymore, and she and Tess had severed things long ago. That had to be scary, feeling like you had no one. But what could he do? He couldn’t look out for her, too, not when he had his hands full with Michael. And honestly, without Michael serving as a common link between them, he and Isabel weren’t very close.
He had a feeling she would stay in that dirty, dark room all by herself while everyone else ate lunch.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The thin sliver of sunlight peeking in through the blinds aggravated Michael to no end. He had them closed for a reason, because he wanted to mope. To sulk. Whatever it was called. And it was way easier to do that in the dark.
He’d lay awake all night, wishing Maria was there, feeling foolish that he’d actually believed she would want to come back home with him after all this. But to go stay with her mom of all people, a woman she couldn’t seem to have a civilized conversation with for more than five minutes at a time . . . it felt like the ultimate slap in the face. A complete an utter rejection. Which, he supposed, he deserved. But still, it would have been easier to suck it up if she’d just gotten a motel room instead.
He lay on his bed, tossing a small plastic football into the air repeatedly. There was something calming about the monotony of catching it over and over again. When the door to his bedroom opened, though, he got distracted, and it bounced off his fingertips as it came back down. It rolled on the floor, stopping right at Kyle’s feet as he stood in the doorway.
“Hey, man,” his friend greeted. “Brought you a Crashdown burger.” He took a fairly substantial wrapped burger out of a paper sack and tossed it to him, but Michael only halfheartedly reached for it since he wasn’t even hungry. It slipped right through his hands and landed beside him on the bed.
Kyle chuckled and shook his head. “You’ve had better catches.”
“Well, you’ve had better throws,” Michael countered, wondering who Kyle’s receivers would be at the college level. This new roommate, probably. Someone better than him? Someone who caught the game-winning pass instead of dropping it?
Kyle stepped into the room and shut the door, leaning back against it. “So no school today, huh?” he remarked.
“Nope.”
“You comin’ tomorrow?”
Michael grunted. “Yeah, right. That’s the last place I wanna be.”
“But tomorrow’s the last day,” Kyle reminded him.
“Great.” It didn’t matter. He still wasn’t going. Everyone would probably be talking about all the crap that had gone down over the weekend, just like they were undoubtedly talking about it today. He didn’t want to have to deal with that.
“Well, I guess it is kinda pointless,” Kyle acknowledged, sauntering forward. “It’s not bad, though. Today in Spanish, we watched Selena.”
“Yeah, well, you can tell Senora Martinez I’ve seen that stupid movie a thousand times,” Michael grumbled. “So I’m not coming to . . . el escuelo.”
Kyle stared at him in disbelief. “La escuela,” he corrected, shaking his head and laughing. “Man.”
“I suck at Spanish,” Michael admitted, adding on quietly, “I suck at everything.”
Kyle sighed, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “See, this is why I think you should come to school tomorrow. You’re just sittin’ here feelin’ down on yourself.”
Well . . . there was a lot to feel down about. “School, huh?” Michael sat up, giving his friend a serious look. “Kyle . . . I’d rather rip my dick off and throw it in the river.”
“Okay, imagery.”
“And for the record, I haven’t just been sittin’ here all day. I went out this morning,” he revealed. “To the police station.”
“Oh, really?” Kyle’s eyebrows rose with intrigue. “What for?”
Michael shrugged. “Just wanted to see if they were gonna charge Max with anything serious. Of course they’re not, though, so that really pissed me off.”
“I’m sure.”
“I mean . . .” God, it made his blood boil just thinking about it. He clenched his hands into fists momentarily before quickly unclenching them again. “The guy kidnapped his own kid. You were here; you saw it. But he’s gettin’ off scot-free ‘cause of all these stupid technicalities.”
Kyle nodded sympathetically. “Because he’s Dylan’s biological father.”
“Yeah, and ‘cause there was no custody order or restraining order in place. And because they say he had no intent to harm or conceal him. Never mind the fact that he did harm him. I mean, they got in a freakin’ car accident ‘cause he was so high, but apparently those are the only charges they pinned on him. Drug charges.” He snorted at the ridiculousness of it all. “It’s like a slap on the wrist.”
“It is,” Kyle agreed. “I’m sorry, man.”
“Oh, and the best part . . .” Michael laughed angrily. “The best part was when they told me I’d better drop it, ‘cause I both possessed and distributed a whole lot of alcohol to minors that night, and consumed plenty myself. So if they wanted to dig a little deeper, they’d probably start with me.” He narrowed his eyes in contempt, balling his hands into fists again. “Isn’t that fucked up?”
“Oh, yeah, but that’s how the legal system works,” Kyle said. “Maybe I could talk to my dad, see what he could do. He is the sheriff, after all.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Michael muttered unenthusiastically, for he doubted it would do any good.
Kyle unwrapped the Crashdown burger that was still just lying on the bed, holding it out for Michael. When Michael shook his head to decline, Kyle shrugged and took a bite of it himself. In between chews, he announced, “Hey, I do have one piece of good news, though.”
“Really?” It had been a while since he’d heard any.
“Yeah.” Kyle set the burger aside and revealed, “Max left town.”
Michael immediately sat up straighter. Hell . . . that was good news. “How do you know?” he asked.
“I talked to Isabel today. She said he went to . . . I don’t know, detox or rehab or somethin’. Somewhere to go get help.”
“Yeah, he needs a fuckin’ lot of it,” Michael mumbled. “Hmm.”
“It’s good news, right?” Kyle said. “Now you don’t have to deal with him.”
“Yeah.” It was a small weight off his shoulders, which was better than nothing. Now he could concentrate all of his energy on Maria and Dylan without having to worry that Max was going to show up again and rear his ugly head. The only bad part, as childish as it sounded, was that he never really had gotten to kick Max’s ass before he’d left. That fight on the bridge definitely wasn’t a fight he had won, and he was embarrassed to admit that.
“I’m sure it’ll come as a relief to Maria, too,” Kyle said.
He winced. Maria.
God, he missed his girl.
“Did you guys talk at all today?” Kyle asked.
He shook his head wordlessly. He’d tried calling her a few times, sent her a few texts, too. No response.
“Well, if you want, I could swing on by her mom’s place today,” Kyle offered, “check up on her and Dylan, see how they’re doin’.”
Michael nodded, liking that idea. “Thanks, Kyle.” Getting some info from his friend was better than getting nothing at all.
“Yeah, no problem,” Kyle said, standing up. He groaned as he stretched, then told Michael, “Eat something. Get up. Take a shower. You really stink.”
Michael chuckled. Yeah, he probably did.
As his friend was leaving the room, he called out to him to stop him. “Hey, Kyle?”
Kyle swiveled back around.
It took him a moment to ask the question he was afraid to hear the answer for. “Do you think I ruined what Maria and I have together?”
Kyle didn’t answer right away, but when he did, it was a reassuring one. “Of course not,” he said. “She loves you, man. That’s all that matters.”
Michael sighed, repeating that sentence again in his mind. That’s all that matters. That’s all that matters. Hopefully that was true, because with the way he’d screwed things up, his only shot at redemption was if nothing else mattered more.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dylan seemed to have made a friend. An animal friend, anyway. There was a squirrel in the front yard that was not at all afraid of people, and while it was digging at something in the ground, Dylan chased after him. Maria sat back on her mom’s new porch swing with a blanket over her lap, watching him, getting a kick out of how much fun he was having. This single squirrel had been amusing him for half an hour now. He just couldn’t get enough.
He was inquisitive. Young. So very innocent. Just like she had probably once been.
Her mom came outside with an afghan around her shoulders and a cup of tea in her hand. It was chillier than usual out today, but still not cold.
“Here you go,” her mom said, handing her the tea.
“Thanks.” She kept her eyes glued to Dylan, slowly bringing the cup up to her mouth to take a sip. She winced a bit because of how hot it was.
Her mom sat down beside her in the swing, watching Dylan adoringly for a moment, too. “Look at him,” she said. “Sure is resilient, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Maria gripped the mug tightly, wishing she had that same kind of resilience. “He doesn’t remember what happened to him,” she revealed so that her mom could have a better understanding of just how he was managing to bounce back from this so fast. “The doctor told me that’s not uncommon after a . . . traumatic event, I guess.”
Amy frowned, as if she were concerned or confused or some combination of the two. “What, like a repressed memory?”
Maria shrugged. “If it means he never has to remember what happened that night, I’m fine with it being repressed.”
Her mother thought about it for a moment, then conceded, “I guess that’s the way to look at it. I just hate that he has any memories worth repressing, don’t you?”
Maria shivered a bit, looking down at the liquid in her mug. “Yeah.” She wasn’t an idiot; she knew that was her mom’s subtle way of throwing an insult at Michael. But this time, it was probably warranted, so she let it slide.
“But it happened,” her mother stated simply. “There’s nothing we can do about it. So maybe instead of dwelling on the past, it’s time to think about the future.”
Maria rolled her eyes, giving her mother an impatient look. “Why don’t you just come right out and say it?”
“Say what?”
“Mom . . .” She wasn’t buying the act. Her mom’s conversations always came with an agenda attached.
Amy sighed in admittance. “Okay, fine,” she said. “We’re both thinking the same thing anyway.”
Oh god. Were they?
Her mom reached over and put her hand on her lap, probably in an effort to appear supportive. “I think we both know you have some tough decisions to make.”
Maria gripped the cup of tea so hard, she could have sworn it was about to crack.
Thankfully, a car pulled up along the sidewalk, and a distraction in the form of Kyle Valenti emerged. “Excuse me,” she said, handing her mother the tea. She tossed her blanket aside and got up, giving Dylan’s shoulder a quick squeeze as she walked past him and met Kyle at his car. “Hey,” she said, relieved that he was alone and didn’t have Michael tagging along with him. “What’re you doing here?”
“Oh, just wanted to check up on you and Dylan,” he replied. “He looks good.”
“Yeah.” She glanced back over her shoulder, smiling as Dylan crept closer to the squirrel. It just stared at him, then darted away again, and Dylan chased after it, yelling, “Frankie!” Apparently he had named it now, which probably meant that he was going to feel really bad when she told him he couldn’t keep it as a pet.
Returning her focus to Kyle, she blatantly asked, “Did Michael send you?”
“What? No,” he insisted. “I came on my own. Honest.”
She wasn’t quite sure if she believed that, but then again, she wasn’t quite sure if she cared. Whether Kyle reported everything she said back to Michael or not, it didn’t really matter. Either way, he already knew how upset she was.
“I just . . . I feel like I need to clear the air about something.”
Maria frowned, unsure where this was going. “Okay . . .” She couldn’t remember ever seeing him look anything less than completely confident, but right now, he did.
“The party Michael was hosting on Saturday night . . .” Kyle sighed, his shoulders slumping. “It wasn’t his idea. Actually, it wasn’t even my idea. This guy at school, Jase . . . it was his idea. Like a last hurrah for all of us, especially for Michael and me, since we both got engaged.”
Maria reached down and touched the ring on her finger. The mood ring that was just meant to be a placeholder for her lost engagement ring. It had been orange for a very, very long time now.
“Michael didn’t want anything to do with the party,” Kyle informed her nobly, “but I convinced him to have it. I told him it wasn’t a big deal, that it’d all be fine. ‘cause I really thought it would be.”
The sudden breeze blew her hair in front of her face, and she brushed it aside. “Why are you telling me this, Kyle?”
“Because you need to know,” he said. “It’s my fault what happened that night. Michael would’ve never agreed to that party if I hadn’t persuaded him.”
Maria narrowed her eyes, studying him intently, his body language, his eyes, trying to figure out if this was the truth or if Kyle was just making it all up to try to get his best friend back in her good graces. But of course it was true. Kyle was a stand-up guy, not the lying type. But still . . .
It didn’t change anything. “You know, I’m really starting to get tired of people trying to take the fall for Michael here. First Tina, now you. You guys know it’s not your fault.”
“It is, though,” Kyle persisted.
“No, it’s not.”
“Oh, come on, Maria. You and I both know Michael relies on me to be the responsible one, to make good decisions, to help keep him on the right path.”
“He should be able to do that on his own,” she argued. “You shouldn’t constantly have to be setting the example for him, Kyle. He’s eighteen years old; he’s perfectly capable of making his own decisions.”
“Yeah, I know, but . . .” Kyle trailed off in frustration. “I’m just saying, I should’ve known better.”
“You should’ve known better?” As admirable as it was that he held himself to higher standards, this was complete nonsense. He wasn’t the one who Dylan called Daddy. His name wasn’t the name on the back of the jersey her little boy slept in every night. It wasn’t up to him to know better; it was all up to Michael.
“I just wanted to apologize,” he reaffirmed, “and come clean with you. Whether you blame me for any of this or not, I really do feel like it’s partly my fault.”
She shook her head, disagreeing completely. “It’s not,” she told him. “Just like it’s not Tina’s. It’s Max’s fault, Kyle.” She felt a lump in her throat when she added, “And Michael’s.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Waking up wasn’t getting any easier. For two nights in a row now, Michael had slept alone and woken up the same way. It was depressing as hell, and it didn’t exactly motivate him to start the damn day off on the right foot.
That morning, he busied himself with making the last tally mark on his wall. The last one out of a hundred and eighty lines. His mom was going to be so pissed at him for destroying that wall, but making those marks had helped him get through the year. And what a year it had been.
He wasn’t the same guy he’d been when he’d put the first line up there. Whether he was a better or worse guy now was up for debate and probably depended on who you asked. Isabel would say he was worse. Kyle and his mom would say he was better. And Maria . . .
God. What would Maria say about him?
Thinking about her made him want to talk to her, so he reached for his phone. Instead of calling her though, he looked back through all the texts he had sent her yesterday. There were dozens of them, each one more desperate than the next. Not a single reply, though.
She was shutting him out, hence the reason why he was shutting himself up in his room.
Crap. He felt his determination to stay home fading, and reluctantly, he set his phone back down on his nightstand and got out of bed.
He dragged himself through his morning routine and out the front door. He didn’t expect Kyle to be sitting out there in his truck waiting for him, but there he was. When he saw that Michael was dressed for school, he grinned, rolled down his window, and said, “I had a feeling you’d change your mind.” He motioned to the empty passenger’s seat and coaxed, “Get in.”
Michael sighed and lumbered across the front yard. He tossed his useless backpack into the back of the truck and climbed in, figuring it was either this or a repeat of his pointless yesterday.
On the way to school, Kyle did most of the talking, until Michael decided to chime in. “You know there’s only one reason I’m comin’ today, right?”
“Because it’s the last day?” Kyle guessed.
“No, I don’t care about that.”
“Uh, then maybe because it’s only fitting we end the year together since we started it together.”
“Nope.” Football games held nostalgia and sentimental value for him and Kyle. Classes didn’t.
“It’s ‘cause you wanna slam Mr. Frost’s face into a locker, isn’t it?” Kyle concluded.
“No. Well, yeah, but that’s not why I’m goin’.”
“Hmm.” Kyle frowned contemplatively. “Then I assume you’re goin’ so you can prove to everyone at school that you don’t care what they’re sayin’ about you or thinkin’ about you right now.”
Michael looked out the window, wishing it were something like that. But actually, it was way simpler and less inspired. “Actually it’s just ‘cause I have nothin’ better to do,” he admitted. “It’s either this or sit up in my room sending unanswered texts to Maria all day.”
“Oh.” Kyle made a face. “Yeah, this is slightly more productive.”
Emphasis on slightly, Michael grumbled inwardly. He didn’t plan on doing much of anything while he was at school today. In fact, it would probably be a miracle if he lasted past first period.
“Maybe you should track down those freshmen girls we met in Frazier Woods at the beginning of the year,” Kyle suggested, “find out if you really did have a threesome.”
“Oh, I did,” Michael boasted surely.
“How do you know? I thought you didn’t remember it.”
“I don’t, but I know I did,” he insisted. “I was like a pimp at the beginning of the year.”
Kyle chuckled lightly. “A lot’s changed since then.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed solemnly. At the beginning of the year, he hadn’t felt like such a worthless piece of shit, even though he’d been one. And if he’d started to feel that way back then, he wouldn’t have cared about it. At the beginning of the year, he’d had no desire whatsoever to be anyone’s husband or anyone’s father. Maria had only been the waitress. He hadn’t known her, and he hadn’t loved her, and he hadn’t known that he would end up falling in love with her. At the beginning of the year, he’d doubted he was even capable of love.
Oh, yeah. A lot had changed.
From the moment he stepped out of the truck and started through the parking lot with Kyle, he felt like he was being scrutinized. Other people in the parking lot were looking at him and then whispering to each other, probably saying things like, “Look, he’s back,” and “There he is.” It wasn’t narcissism that made him think people were talking about him; they really were. The whole fucking school revolved around him and Kyle, Isabel and Tess, and the select few other people who bore the burden of being popular. But usually the good things revolved around Kyle, and the bad things revolved around him.
“Just brace yourself, alright?” Kyle cautioned him as they walked in the heavy double doors. “You knew people would be talking.”
He rolled his eyes. Whatever. He was determined not to care.
He probably would have drawn fewer inquisitive stares if he’d walked in naked. People stopped whatever they were doing when they saw him, and the hallway got unusually quiet.
Kyle gave no sign of being fazed by it, though. He walked ahead with Michael, carrying on a normal conversation. “So I Skyped with my college roommate last night,” he revealed. “We had to figure out who’s bringin’ what to the dorm.”
“Oh, yeah?” Michael was relieved when the conversations around him started to pick up again. “Does he seem cool?”
Kyle grunted. “Not as cool as I first thought. He pretty much wants me to bring everything.”
“That sucks,” Michael sympathized. “I wish I was goin’ to college with you.”
Kyle gave him a surprised look. “Do you really?”
Oh, shit. He really hadn’t meant to say that. “No. I mean . . . I don’t know. Sometimes.” He had his whole plan to take a year off from school, and then he really did intend to go. But sometimes plans changed, and his plans were never really planned that well right from the start so . . . maybe he’d just have to get used to watching Alabama football games from the stands.
As awkward as talking about college could be, it was a hell of a lot worse when Jase rounded the corner and came towards them, grinning like an idiot. “Michael!” he exclaimed. “Dude, I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Neither did I,” he muttered.
“Man, everyone’s talkin’ about Saturday,” he rambled. “I hope you don’t mind, I told a lot of people what happened. I just wanted to make sure they got the facts, you know, so they weren’t just spreading rumors.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Jase embellished everything. His girlfriend’s hotness. His sexual experiences. The amount of alcohol he could consume without passing out. And now probably this, too.
“Hey, Jase, speaking of rumors, you should go find Antonio,” Kyle suggested. “I don’t know what’s going on, but everyone’s sayin’ he’s been makin’ time with your girl.”
“What the hell?” Jase looked utterly confused. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. You should go ask him about it.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll see you guys later.” Looking shocked and perplexed, Jase walked back in the direction he had come from, around the corner and out of sight.
“Is that true?” Michael asked Kyle. “About Antonio.”
“No, I just wanted to get him to leave.”
Michael laughed a little. “Thanks.” He was pretty damn thankful to have an awesome best friend.
They had only taken a few more steps when Roxie skittered up to them next. She practically threw herself on top of Michael, her hands roaming all over his chest as she babbled, “Oh my god, Michael, are you okay? Everyone’s saying you got shot.”
“What?”
“Yeah, and they’re saying Maria’s ex-boyfriend threw you off a bridge. Is that true?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.” Maybe that was just Jase’s version of something he knew nothing about.
“Well, that’s what everybody is saying.”
“Actually . . .” Ryan sidled up to them, sliding his hand around Roxie’s petite waste. “Everyone’s saying your girl kicked you to the curb.” He looked Michael up and down, then smirked. “Gotta say, I believe that one.”
That was it. Michael felt the switch inside flip, and he was set off. Dealing with Jase’s idiocy and Roxie’s stupidity was one thing, but Ryan fucking Adderman was another. “Shut the fuck up, you motherfucker!” he roared, shoving Ryan back against the lockers, pinning him there with his elbow against his throat.
“Whoa, hey . . .” Kyle grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away. “Calm down, alright?”
Michael shook his shoulders out of his friend’s grasp, feeling anything but calm. “I can’t . . .” He shook his head angrily, fleeing the scene. It would have been nice to kick Ryan’s ass—hell, wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that this year. But then he’d just be giving people something else to talk about.
He stormed through the cafeteria and made his way to the office. Thankfully, there was a girl who was on her way out of Topolsky’s office, because he couldn’t wait. He barged right in, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Michael.” Topolsky sounded a little bit alarmed, but just a little bit. She was, after all, used to seeing him worked up like this. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” He paced back and forth in the small space, unwilling to sit down, unable to stand still.
“What’s wrong?” she asked calmly.
He clenched his mouth shut, afraid of just going off on a tirade if he didn’t collect himself for a moment. “Did you hear about what happened this weekend?” he mumbled tensely, but he already knew the answer. Roswell wasn’t a big town. There were no real secrets here.
“I did,” she replied.
“Yeah, everyone did.” Everyone knew how he’d fucked things up, but with rumors circulating out of control, some people probably couldn’t even explain how he’d fucked things up; they just knew he had.
“I’m glad you came to see me, and I’m glad you came to school today,” she said. “I’ve been wondering how you’ve been doing.”
“Not good,” he admitted. And that had to be obvious. He probably looked like he was hanging on by a thread, which he was at this point. “I need my check-out sheet. I’m not gonna make it through the school day.”
She gave him a pleading look. “Michael . . .”
“No, I can’t stay here,” he decided. “It’s pointless anyway. I just wanna get outta here and go back home.”
Reluctantly, she reached underneath a stack of papers on her desk, took out a blank student check-out form, and wrote his name at the top of it. “What’re you gonna do when you get home?” she asked, handing it to him.
“Don’t know.” He folded the form in half, sliding it into his pocket. “I can tell you what I wanna do, though: get drunk.”
“Well, you could do that here,” she pointed out. “Don’t you have alcohol in your locker?”
“Don’t you have an obligation to report that?” he retorted.
“Oh, I already did. Never seems to do much good.”
“Well, yeah, I got alcohol in there,” he admitted. “I can’t go drink it, though. No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I do, then I’m proving them all right.”
“Them?” she echoed.
“Yeah, them. Everyone out there. And Maria’s mom. My dad. All of ‘em.” He resumed his pacing as his ranting intensified. “They don’t really know me; they don’t know what I can do. Amy and my dad just point out every single flaw every chance they get, ‘cause they think I’m destined to be this loser. And all those people out there . . . they just use me. For popularity. For entertainment. When I screw up, it entertains them.”
“So stop screwing up,” she suggested.
“I can’t.” That was the worst part. He been trying so hard this year to change himself for the better, but he still felt like he was no good. Cheating on Isabel, endangering Dylan . . . what was next? Maybe Maria was wondering the same thing. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t text or call him back.
He flopped down in the chair across her desk, the one he’d sat in so many times this year. Not one of those times had he felt as awful as he did right now. “Maria’s really pissed off at me,” he revealed sadly. “No, not . . . that’s not even the right word.” It wasn’t strong enough.
“Do you understand why she’s upset with you?” Topolsky asked.
“Oh, yeah. Believe me, I’m upset with myself,” he told her. “I just . . .” He swallowed hard, staring off into nothingness as he pondered, “I wonder if she’ll be able to forgive me.”
Topolsky gave him a small, encouraging smile. “I’m sure she will.”
“Yeah.” He wanted to be sure, too; he really wanted to. “But her son almost died because I wasn’t a good enough dad.” Tears stung his eyes. “How do you forgive someone for that?”
For the first time since he’d known her, his guidance counselor couldn’t seem to give him an answer.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Meeting with Topolsky calmed Michael down enough that he was able to make the rounds before the first bell of the day rang. He had to get his stupid check-out sheet signed by every single teacher to show that he had had no incompletes in the gradebook and had turned any textbooks or other materials in. Once he was done with that, he was out of there.
He stopped by Ms. Alvarez’s room first, knocking on the doorframe. She glanced up from the pile of papers on her desk and semi-smiled. “Michael,” she greeted. “I think this is the first time you’ve ever gotten to my class early.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, shuffling into the room. “I’m not stayin’. I just need you to sign my check-out thing.”
“Oh.” She motioned him over and picked up a pen. “There you go,” she said, scribbling her initials in the signature box for English. “I guess I’ll see you at graduation then.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if I’m goin’ to that, either,” he revealed. “I kinda got some stuff goin’ on.”
She nodded in understanding. “Well . . . best of luck then.”
“Yeah.” Right now, he needed luck in a major way. “Hey, listen, I know I was a real piece of shit this year. Probably didn’t make your first year any easier on you.”
She laughed a little. “Well . . .”
“But you did pretty good,” he told her. “I’m just a bad student.”
“No, you’re not a bad student, Michael,” she corrected him. “You’re . . . challenging.”
“Hmm.” That was probably the nice way to put it. “Well, thanks,” he said, refolding his check-out sheet. He shoved it back into his pocket, gave her a flippant wave, and headed out the door.
He went to a few of his other teachers before stopping at his locker to get his chemistry textbook. He brought it in to Mr. Frost, dropping it onto his desk, interrupting another vitally important game of Solitaire.
“I’m signing out early,” he informed him.
Mr. Frost opened the front cover of his textbook, then flipped through a few pages. “Mint condition,” he remarked. “Looks like you never used it.”
“I never did,” Michael admitted.
Mr. Frost rolled his eyes, mumbling something under his breath, and signed Michael’s check-out sheet. “Good riddance, Guerin.”
Michael stared at him incredulously, trying to fathom how or even why he’d become a teacher. Maybe he’d just been doing it for so long that he hated it now, or maybe he just found one student every year to be a complete dick to. Not that Michael minded, because he enjoyed being a dick in return.
“You’re an ass,” he told his teacher, seizing his check-out sheet back again.
After forging the initials of the teachers whose rooms were located on the opposite side of the school, Michael returned to the office and dropped his sheet off with the secretaries. And that was it. He was done, through with school. At long last. It seemed completely anti-climactic.
The bell rang, and he pushed his way through dozens of people going in the opposite direction as him. Ryan spotted him again in the senior hallway, and he started taunting him. “Hey, Guerin, if your girlfriend’s done with you, toss her on over to me for a couple hours. I wanna give you another stepson.”
God, did this guy ever learn? Michael shoved him against the lockers, then kept on walking. He would have done more if he wasn’t in such a hurry to get out of there.
Since Kyle had driven him, he was going to have to walk home, but that was fine. It wasn’t like he was in any big hurry to get home and sit up in his room all alone. Maybe he wouldn’t even go home. His mom could probably use some help at the library now that Maria was done working there. Maybe he’d swing by and make himself useful for once.
Halfway through the parking lot, he spotted Isabel getting out of her car, scrambling for her purse. It had either been a rough morning or a late night for her. She didn’t look as put-together as she usually did, and she was running very late. She’d probably been with Jesse, maybe making another porno or just making out. Whichever.
“Isabel,” he called, feeling like it was fate that he’d run into her out here. He couldn’t leave without saying something to her.
“What do you want?” she grumbled impatiently.
Oh, so many things, he thought, but when it came to her, he just wanted to apologize. So he did. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned suspiciously, then asked, “For what?”
Did she really have to ask? “For everything.” He’d accumulated a laundry list of screw-ups with her in the past two years, and he felt bad about every single one of them.
“What if that’s not enough?” she challenged.
He shrugged. “It’s all I got.” Feeling like he’d said what he needed to, he walked along, leaving her in the parking lot by herself as the tardy bell rang from inside. If she actually made an effort to accept his apology, then maybe she could enjoy her last day of high school.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria lay in bed longer than she should have that day, perusing the massive amount of texts that Michael had sent her yesterday. There were a lot of apologies, along with pleas to text him back or call him. More than once, she thought about doing that, but then she changed her mind. What was there to say that she hadn’t already said? She was still mad at him, still heartbroken. Still confused about what she should do now.
Somewhere along the way, browsing through texts morphed into looking at all the pictures on her phone. He had taken most of them. There were lots of pictures of him kissing her cheek while she just smiled giddily, and pictures of her cuddling up against him in bed. Dylan was in a lot of the pictures, too. The ones of him and Michael together made her tear up a little, and then a lot.
She sat up, stumbling across a video he had recorded just a few weeks ago, back before she’d ever made that fateful decision to go on that mini-music tour. Back before Max had ever shown up in town. Back when things had been simple, and amazing.
Even though she knew it would only make her feel worse, she pressed play and watched miniature versions of herself and Michael cuddling and chattering playfully in bed, both of them fully-clothed but still so intimate.
“Michael, what—what’re you doing?” she sputtered as he held her phone up over the two of them.
“Filming,” he replied simply. “This is some great cinematography right here.”
“Okay, we are not making a sex tape,” she told him emphatically.
“Who said anything about a sex tape?” He gave her a look. “Maria . . .”
“What?”
“Is your mind in the gutter again?”
She rolled her eyes at his teasing. “Okay, why are you filming this?”
“Because, it’s a memory,” he answered. “We can show it to our grandkids someday.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Prove to them how hot we once were.”
She laughed, pulling the covers up over her head.
“Hey, what’re you doin’? Come back out. The camera loves you.” He pulled the blankets back down, smiling at her adoringly. “I love you.”
She gazed at him wistfully, blushing. He always knew how to make her blush.
“Come on, say it, say it,” he urged. “You know you wanna say it.”
Oh, yes, she definitely did. “I love you, too.”
He grinned, leaning in to kiss her lips, the camera in his hand shaking as he did so. “Sex tape? Sex tape?” he murmured against her lips hopefully.
She shook her head, nuzzling her nose against his. “No.”
“Come on, let’s make love, baby.”
She kissed him again, whispering, “Turn the camera off.”
And just like that, the video ended.
Maria inhaled shakily, trying to be less affected by such a short, simple video. But it did affect her. There was no way she could lie in bed next to Michael and play around like that right now. In a way, it seemed like a different life, one she wasn’t sure they would ever be able to get back to.
She felt the tears forming, but when her mom came into her room, she shoved them back down.
“Maria, why are you still in bed?” she asked. “It’s after 9:00.”
She sniffed, setting her phone down. “Yeah, I just . . .”
“Well, Dylan’s already up,” her mother cut in, “and he’s full of energy. I wish I could say the same. I have to go into work.”
Maria nodded skeptically, surveying her mother’s choice of wardrobe for the day. Short black skirt, nice red shirt that accentuated her curves. Even high heels. “Kinda dressy for work, don’t you think?”
Her mother tugged down on her skirt, confessing, “If you must know, I’m meeting Jim for lunch today.”
Of course you are, Maria thought. It was painfully obvious. “So this is how it’s gonna be?” she said. “He screws things up with you, but eventually you just take him back and wait for him to screw up again?”
Her mother narrowed her eyes, advising, “Maybe you should be asking yourself the same question.”
Maria averted her eyes, lacking any snappy comeback, any quick response for that one. She didn’t want to ask herself that question. And she really didn’t want to answer it.
“Have a good day,” her mother said, her heels clicking on the wood floor as she walked out.
Maria sighed heavily, picking up her phone again. Her thumb hovered over the speed dial button for Michael momentarily, but then she tossed it down to the foot of the bed and leaned forward, holding her head in her hands, trying to forget all those texts, that video, and the questions she was supposed to be contemplating.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Isabel sat atop the counter in Jesse’s kitchen while he whipped up some Mexican lasagna for the two of them. An old family recipe, he said, one he’d made a dozen times and could make with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. It did smell good, but Isabel had never known her boyfriend to do much cooking before. He’d insisted on doing it tonight, though, as a way of celebrating the end of one very long chapter in her life.
“So how’s it feel to be done with high school?” he asked, sprinkling yet another layer of cheese atop his already cheesy creation.
She shrugged. “Not all that different, actually. Besides, am I really done with high school if I haven’t gone to graduation yet?”
“Ah, graduation’s just a formality,” he dismissed. “You don’t have to go.”
“No, I want to,” she said decisively. “I wanna sit there and listen to how bad Raymond Sullivan’s valedictorian speech sucks.”
He chuckled, opening up the oven. “Well, I for one am glad you’re outta high school now,” he told her, sliding his lasagna onto the top rack. “Now when I tell my mom about you, I don’t have to start out with, ‘Okay, don’t freak out, Mama, but she’s still in high school.”
Isabel laughed. “Yeah, that must be a relief.”
“But you know . . .” He shut the oven and stepped in front of her, pulling both her legs apart so she could wrap them around his waist. “I never really thought of you as a high school girl. That place was never big enough for you.” He stroked her hair, then leaned in and kissed the side of her neck.
“Well, soon I’ll be at Princeton,” she reminded him, draping her arms over his board, muscular shoulders. “That should be big enough.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, nuzzling her skin. “Too far away, though.”
It was far. And they hadn’t really talked about it. Maybe it was time to. “So what exactly is our plan?” she asked, leaning back a bit. “Do we have one?”
He grinned, touching her cheek. “I don’t know about you, but I plan on having the summer of my life with you, and then we’ll take it from there.”
She tried to smile, but really, that answer made her nervous. Was that his way of reassuring her that he was into her and wanted to do the long-distance thing? Or was it a subtle hint that this relationship of theirs would be short-lived? She didn’t even want to think about that, because even though Jesse wasn’t everyone’s dream guy, he was good to her. Kind. Understanding. She wasn’t ready to lose him yet.
“You alright?” he asked.
She forced a smile, an unconcerned one. “Yeah.” As long as she had these moments with him to escape to, she was perfectly fine.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The fact that merely doing the dishes with him seemed to delight his mother made Michael feel bad for her. Just how awful had her life become that this was the highlight of her day? She put on a brave face for him, for Tina, for just about everyone, but he knew she wasn’t happy. Apparently she was happy to spend time with him, though, since he’d been hanging out with her all day and she hadn’t told him to go away yet.
“I really liked having you help out at the library today,” she said, passing him another plate to dry. “And now with the dishes . . . I don’t think I recall you ever being so helpful.”
He shrugged, wiping an already damp towel against the wet plate. “I just wanna stay busy.” He’d gone to the library after leaving school today because the thought of coming home and sitting up in his room all alone for another day was just too damn depressing. Being productive, as unnatural as it was for him, was a good distraction from how bad his life sucked right now.
“You can come help out tomorrow, too, if you want,” she offered.
He nodded mutely, considering that. He wasn’t about to wake up at 7:00 a.m. like she would, but maybe once he got up and around, he’d stumble on in there and give the card catalog another shot. Or maybe he’d go do something else.
It was a perfectly fine moment he and his mom were having until his dad came tripping downstairs, his mere presence enough to ruin it all. “Well, well, well,” he said, looking them over. “Never thought I’d see my boy doin’ the domestics.”
“Maria and I used to cook and do dishes and stuff all the time,” Michael reminded him. They hadn’t done any of those things well or particularly fast due to the massive amounts of flirting that had gotten in the way, but still, they’d done them.
“Ah, yes, Maria.” His dad grinned cruelly, slipping past him to the refrigerator. “Pretty blonde girl, right? Used to live in my house.”
“Andy, stop,” his mom ordered warningly.
But of course he didn’t stop. He never did. Didn’t stop insulting. Couldn’t stop drinking. Wouldn’t stop being an ass for even one second. “I’m just statin’ the obvious,” he said, rummaging around for a beer. “Clearly she’s done with us.” He shot Michael a look, making sure to add pointedly, “All of us.”
Michael gripped the plate in his hands tightly, resisting the urge to slam it down against the counter and watch it break.
His dad chuckled, teasing him even though basically half his head was in the refrigerator now. “God, you must feel like a fool.”
Even his mom’s hand on his shoulder didn’t help.
“You gave up college for her!”
“Don’t listen to him,” his mom told him quietly.
But how could he not? All his life, there was one voice he’d always heard echoing in the back of his head, and it was his father’s. A taunting, seething, accusatory voice that wasn’t quieting down with time. If anything, it was getting louder and louder with every passing day.
He put the dishtowel and plate down on the counter with the other dry dishes, hastily marching towards the front door.
“Michael, wait!” his mom called. “Where are you going?”
He was already on his way out the door when he heard his dad respond for him, “Where do you think?”
It was true that his destination was no secret. He drove over there in record time, trying to convince himself that it couldn’t possibly be true. Maria wasn’t really done with him. She was just taking a step back, just for now. Maybe if he talked to her and she just listened, then maybe she wouldn’t be so mad anymore. She could forgive him, and things could be good again, and they could do everything they’d planned to do before any of this had ever happened.
He knocked on the DeLuca front door normally at first, then more insistently, and then even more so. By the time it finally opened, he felt like his hand was going to break.
Disappointment engulfed him, because it wasn’t even Maria standing there to greet him. It was Amy, and she had that same expression on her face his dad had had on his.
“I had a feeling you’d show up here sooner or later,” she said. “Although I thought it’d be sooner.”
“I was giving Maria some space,” he said, not willing to let her think that he just didn’t care. “Can I see her?”
Amy laughed in ridicule. “Absolutely not.”
“Come on, please?” He tried to look past her to see inside, but it was mostly dark in the living room, except for the light coming from the TV, and no one else seemed to be downstairs.
“If Maria ever wants to see you again, she will,” Amy said. “If she does.”
He groaned inwardly, fighting hard to keep his cool. Lashing out at Max and Isabel at the hospital hadn’t done any good, and lashing out at Amy wouldn’t here. “I just wanna talk to her,” he said, feeling pathetic that he was literally at her mercy here. If she took pity on him, he’d get what he wanted. If she hated him too much, he wouldn’t.
“She doesn’t wanna talk,” Amy said.
“Why don’t you let her tell me what she wants?” he suggested.
“Because she doesn’t know what she wants.”
He frowned. What the hell did that mean? Amy really thought this was going to drive them apart for all time, didn’t she? Well, she didn’t know shit. What he and Maria had was stronger than this. All he had to do was talk to her and remind her, but this bitch of a woman was standing in the way.
“Go home, Michael,” she advised coldly. “Get drunk. From what I recall, that’s what you’re good at.”
No, he thought vehemently. No! That was what his dad was good at, not him. He wasn’t gonna be that man’s legacy, not if he could help it.
Even though his mind was screaming, words escaped him, and he just stood there like an idiot and let her close the door in his face.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria came downstairs upon hearing the front door shut. “Who was that?” she asked her mom.
“Oh, just Mr. Marcel from across the street,” her mother replied. “He needed to borrow some milk.”
Maria nodded, pulling the sleeves of her shirt down over her wrists. “Can we . . .” She wasn’t able to finish asking if they could sit down and talk, because suddenly, Dylan’s voice called out from upstairs. He was crying the way he always did when he had a bad dream or thought he saw a monster.
“Oh, no,” her mother said. “That doesn’t sound good. I’ll go take care of it.”
“No, that’s okay, I got it,” Maria assured her. She turned and took a few steps back up the stairs, but she paused when she heard what Dylan was yelling.
“What is it?” her mother asked.
She felt an ache in her stomach as he called out over and over again for the only person who had ever managed to put his fears about monsters to rest. “I’m not the one he’s crying out for,” she said sadly, waiting a few more seconds before heading upstairs anyway. Maybe she was only the second best choice when it came to vanquishing those pretend monsters that lurked in closets and under the bed, but she could still put his little mind at ease.
When she opened the door to his room, he was sitting up in the middle of his bed, clutching his blankets to his chest, shrieking and crying, “Daddy! Daddy!”
Hoping he wasn’t too disappointed to see her, Maria shut the door and shuffled towards him. “Hey, it’s okay,” she cooed. “You’re fine.”
“No!” he cried. “Monster!”
“There’s no monster.”
“Yeah-huh.”
She shook her head, insisting, “There’s not.”
“Where’s Daddy?” he asked, pouting.
She sighed, wishing there was a way to answer that question so that he could understand. But there wasn’t, so she decided not to answer it at all. “Mommy’s here, Dylan. If there is a monster, I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Daddy fights the monsters,” Dylan mumbled.
“I can fight ‘em, too,” she offered. “Where are they?”
He fearfully pointed towards the floor.
“Under the bed?” she guessed. Playing along, she got down on the floor and lifted up the bedspread, looking underneath. “I think it’s gone now,” she told him. “We scared him off.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “Nope.”
“Come look. There’s nothing here.”
He adamantly scooted back on the bed, pressing himself against his wall, holding the blankets up over everything but his eyes now.
Clearly her attempt to calm him down wasn’t working, so she asked, “What do I have to do?”
“You—you gotta . . .” He frowned. “Get Daddy.”
“Daddy’s not . . .” She caught herself and corrected. “Michael’s not here right now, Dylan. I’m gonna have to do.”
“No!” he screamed, slamming his hands down at his sides. “I want Daddy!”
“I’m sorry.” She climbed back up on the bed, hoping he’d change his mind and decide the monster was gone, decide that what she’d done had been enough. Michael had the magic touch when it came to this sort of thing, for whatever reason. He made Dylan feel completely safe, even though, when it had really counted, he hadn’t kept him safe at all.
“I want Daddy!” Dylan yelled again. “Daddy! Daddy!” He started throwing a full-on temper tantrum, hitting at the mattress, the wall, his pillow, and even her. She had to grab his hands to stop him.
“Dylan, don’t hit!”
That only made him scream and cry some more.
“Dylan, stop!”
He didn’t stop. And eventually, feeling helpless and like a failure of a mother, Maria started to cry, too. Her screams stayed on the inside, but they were still there.
TBC . . .
-April