Affton
AFTER HIS BREAKDOWN and my admission that it was terrifying to watch him fall apart—that it was scary to see his vulnerable underbelly he hid so well—Cable kept his distance even more than he had been.
He was typically gone when I got up in the morning; a hastily scrawled note telling me he was on the water was my only hint that he was going to be gone for most of the day. At first, it annoyed me because he wasn’t supposed to be out of my sight, but so far, all his drug tests had come back clean, and he never showed back up at the house bleary-eyed or obviously strung out. All the hours he spent in the sun and sand while he was surfing had him looking healthier and sturdier than I’d ever seen him. Which I was happy to report back to his mother. It was nice to give her some shred of hope that there was redemption waiting for her son. She called every other day to check in and lately I’d had nothing new to report. She didn’t need to know that his blond hair now had streaks almost as white as mine. Or that if he wasn’t spending the day on the water, he holed himself up in the media room or perched himself in the shade of the deck with his sketch pad. He seemed a million miles away. I’d never spent so much time near someone who felt so out of reach. It was unnerving, and I found myself trying to bridge the growing gap that yawned wide between us.
I asked him if he wanted company during his gore movie fests and got no response.
I asked him if he wanted to study for his GED and was blatantly ignored.
I suggested he wait for me one morning and he could teach me how to surf, and wasn’t surprised when I got up that he was once again gone until the sun came down.
I was living with a very attractive ghost. One who couldn’t see, hear, or interact with me at all. One who was haunting me. The more he vanished into himself and got lost inside his own head, the harder I tried to grab ahold of him, but it was like trying to clutch smoke between my fingers. He drifted away as soon as I touched him.
In a last-ditch effort to figure out a way to pull him back from whatever brink he was standing on, I had started peppering Miglena with questions. The housekeeper was much younger and far more beautiful than I expected her to be. The first time I encountered her in the kitchen, I thought she was one of the beach bunnies who followed Cable around like he was the Pied Piper of sex and satisfaction. I was going to run her off and chew Cable a new asshole for sneaking in a piece of ass I didn’t thoroughly check when the woman offered to make me an omelet and told me she really didn’t mind cooking for me while I was Cable’s keeper.
She resembled a super sexy Bond villain with her sleek, dark hair and milky white skin. She sounded like one as well with her thick Eastern European accent. In our chats, she told me she was from Bulgaria originally and that she had been working for the McCaffreys since she was a teenager. She was extremely friendly, super chatty, and it was obvious she had a soft spot a mile wide for Cable. She indulged him by buying all the crap I refused to get for him and not once did she scold him or seem annoyed at his careless, sloppy ways. I couldn’t count the times I tripped over his discarded shoes or found myself picking up items of clothing he had left lying haphazardly around. The boy couldn’t seem to keep a shirt on . . . not that I really could complain about it . . . and his wet board shorts were always draped over the deck railing or one of the chairs that dotted the kitchen island. It bugged me on principle since I was still scared to touch anything in the overly extravagant house. But Miglena didn’t seem phased. When I asked her about it, she told me, “Cable’s a sweet boy. He’s always gone out of his way to get his parents’ attention, but they never noticed. I don’t mind cleaning up after him. It lets him know someone is watching out for him.”
I wondered if Cable had it in him to recognize that the simple act of someone throwing his wet clothes in the wash was still someone taking care of him, showing him that he wasn’t as alone as he seemed to think.
It was an afternoon after one of his random drug tests, one that seemed to put him in an irrationally sour mood, that I made the mistake of pointing out he had people on his side even if he was choosing to ignore them.
We got back to the house after an incredibly tense and silent ride home, and I followed behind him as he not only stripped off his shirt but kicked off his shoes into the middle of the entryway. He was running his hands through his hair in aggravation, and every line of his tattooed back was tense. He resembled a wild animal poised to attack, and I should have known that I was the only prey available as I picked up one of his Chucks and tossed it at him. It hit his arm and fell to the floor with a thump. I immediately regretted my actions as he turned on me, nearly black eyes blazing with too many different emotions to name.
I gulped down the sudden spurt of fear that burst across my tongue and crossed my arms over my chest because I was subconsciously trying to protect my heart. “It won’t kill you to take those with you or to leave them neatly by the door, you know.” I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I was going to get out of him, but I knew the second I threw the shoe at him I was going to get one. Whatever it was going to be had to be better than the deep freeze he’d been giving me lately.
He scowled at me and copied my pose, though his had a definite aura of menace to it. “Why do you care? Miglena will grab them and toss them wherever they need to go.”
I scoffed at him, bravado I didn’t really feel, but made my words sharp. “Miglena isn’t always going to be around to take care of you. At some point, you need to start taking care of yourself, Cable.”
It had been a little over three weeks, and so far he had gone to all his counseling appointments and hadn’t missed one of his mandatory drug tests. In the great scheme of things, he was doing far better than I thought he would be after finding him plastered and pissed off that first night. He was sloppy and inconsiderate, but he was taking care of himself better than he had been back in Loveless. I should give him credit for that, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was purposely needling him, pointedly aggravating him, because I hated how easy it was for him to move through and around me. I’d gotten used to him looking at me. I couldn’t stand him looking through me.
He glanced down at the fallen shoe and then back at me. An ugly smile twisted his face as he lifted a brow at me. It was a nasty look, one that made me shiver and fall back a step.
“Miglena isn’t going anywhere.” He scoffed a little bit and lifted his chin defiantly. “She treats all my dad’s kids the same . . . even the two he left her with before moving on to someone else.”
I let out a startled gasp that made his grin darken. I was the one angling for a reaction, but without any effort, he was ripping one from me. He always seemed to have the upper hand, which wasn’t fair. He was the one who was a mess. I theoretically had my shit together, had a plan and purpose that never failed me. I shouldn’t be the one scrambling to keep up with him all the time. It should be the other way around.
“That’s right, Reed. Miglena doesn’t just take care of this house and me because she’s a sweetheart. She does it because once upon a time she got to play house with my old man here. All those kids she has, two of them are my half-sisters. Sisters I’ve never met because my mom pays Miglena to keep them away. Sisters my dad has never claimed and never mentioned. Not once. My dad knocked her up when she was barely legal. Promised her the sun and the moon until a younger, prettier distraction came along. She did her best to prove she was perfect wife material, which included taking care of poor, unpredictable Cable. She’s a nice lady, one in a long line that my old man has fucked over, but don’t, for a single second, think she actually gives two shits about my well-being.”
I let my hands fall and stood there in the hallway staring at him with my mouth hanging open. I always thought my home life was tragic and complicated, but it didn’t have anything on the soap opera happening in the McCaffrey’s household. No wonder his mom and dad had missed his headlong slide into addiction. They were too busy fucking other people and each other over to have any time to help their son. It was all so tragically preventable if anyone bothered to put in the effort.
“You’re wrong.” I shifted and took a step toward him so I could pick up both discarded shoes. “She may have ulterior motives, but she does care about you.” I was sure of it. Her voice softened when she talked about him, and she watched him with the same kind of watchful concern I found myself watching him with. “You make it really hard, Cable, but you can’t stop someone from caring about you. You can’t stop them from wanting what’s best for you.”
I let out a startled yelp when he was suddenly standing directly in front of me, his rough hands wrapped around my upper arms. His fingers squeezed as he pulled me up onto my toes so that we were nose to nose. His black eyes burned into mine and those damn shoes that were so inconsequential fell back to the floor with a thump as his stare paralyzed me with both fear and fascination.
He didn’t feel like vapor anymore.
He wasn’t going around me.
He wasn’t oblivious to my presence. If the way he was breathing hard and fast was any indication, my presence was finally unsettling him as much as his unsettled me.
“I can’t stop them, but I can warn them. Don’t care about me, Reed. Don’t worry about what’s best for me. The only thing I have to offer anyone is disappointment. If I start picking up my shoes and throwing my shit in the laundry, Miglena might get the idea that I’m trying.” He lowered his head until his forehead touched mine. His skin was hot, and his words were scented with ash and disgust. “I’m not trying, Affton. That’s not something I do.”
His fingers bit into my arms, and I almost fell over when he suddenly released me and took a step back. We stared at each other, waging a war I was fairly certain neither one of us could ever win. I struggled to keep my expression blank as he deliberately popped the button on his jeans and pushed the denim down over his hips. I was used to seeing him in the baggy board shorts he wore when he went surfing, but the sight of him in nothing more than tight, black boxer briefs was enough to make me blush and swallow . . . hard. He did it to be aggravating. I would never tell him I was tempted instead.
I reached up and pushed my hair out of my face. I bent back down to pick up his shoes and his clothes. When I stood back up, I gave him a once over and told him sincerely, “Every single day you don’t use, you are trying, Cable. Every appointment you keep with Doc Howard, you’re trying, and as long as you try, even if you fail, that’s not a disappointment. That’s all anyone can expect.” My mom hadn’t bothered to try and that had led to something far worse than disappointment.
Clearly done with the conversation and the confrontation, he disappeared into the house, and I heard him opening the door to the back deck. He wasn’t kidding when he said he loved the water. Whenever I couldn’t find him inside, he was out there somewhere, feet in the water, eyes focused on the horizon, silently looking for something, patiently waiting for anything.
I dumped his clothes in the laundry room and dropped his shoes outside his partially open bedroom door. I’d been in his room enough searching for any kind of hidden stash that I knew he actually tended to keep his personal space tidy. There was an occasional t-shirt on the floor, and he always seemed to have endless packs of cigarettes scattered across every surface, but he wasn’t a pig, which made the extra work he left lying around for Miglena even more irritating. Today, the black boxers he’d been sporting earlier were also on the floor from when he’d changed in a hurry. I didn’t want to think about Cable naked, but I was . . . more often than I was comfortable with. He was obviously doing it to prove a point, and it made me wonder if his mom might have been right when she told me he very well might relapse just to get back at her. He seemed incapable of making the right choice and intent on hurting those who wanted to help.
I was going to pull the door closed when the spiral notebook that always seemed to be within his reach caught my eye. It was open on his bed, several colorful images dotting the previously plain pages. Without thinking too much about it, I pushed the door open and walked into the room. I was snooping, but considering I regularly rifled through his underwear drawer looking for drugs, I didn’t bother to feel too bad about it.
I perched on the edge of the bed and pulled the notebook onto my lap.
For a split-second, I stopped breathing.
I was holding the ocean and the sun in my hands. The images on the paper were so realistic I could practically feel the water on my fingertips and the sun shining on my face. It didn’t seem possible that cold, distant, drifting Cable could capture something so warm and real with nothing more than a few strokes of a colored pencil. He was outrageously talented. Overwhelmingly so. The skill and artistry jumped off every single page I flipped through and hit me with a punch of awe.
He said he didn’t have anything he was interested in; he pretended the only thing he had going for him were his good looks and his ability to make women loopy with lust, but that was all a lie. The boy had a gift . . . was gifted . . . and he didn’t even seem to know it.
The pages were full of images ranging from the stunning landscapes to darker, harder stuff. Skulls, demons, dragons, and Grim Reapers all done in harsh black and gray, and all were realistic enough that they gave me chills. There were pages full of flowers and birds. There was a handful of images of very sexy, very naked women that made me blush. Then there were the pages covered in women in a bunch of different, dramatic outfits. There was a sexy nurse, a sexy cop, a sexy soldier, and a sexy mermaid. They were all done up in 1950’s pin-up style with big boobs and super tiny waists. He didn’t seem to have one singular preference. The pictures he drew were all over the place, but they were all amazing and too pretty to be trapped in a cheap sketch notebook from the grocery store.
I let out the breath I’d been holding and pushed to my feet. I closed the notebook and tiptoed out of the room. Even though I knew every nook and cranny of his personal space, when I went looking through his drawings, it occurred to me that I was looking inside of him, and it seemed incredibly invasive and intimate. His darkness was caught on those pages, but so was the light he tried so hard to keep from shining through.
I made my way down the hallway and out to the deck through the door Cable hadn’t bothered to close when he stormed out earlier. There was a light breeze whipping the salt-scented air, which immediately caught in my hair and tangled all around my face. Once I had it all wrangled and caught in a fist, I noticed that Cable was indeed down by the water and he wasn’t alone.
They were too far away to make out what the girl in the water with him looked like, but there was no missing she had curves for days, and they were barely contained by an itty-bitty, teal bikini. The barely contained mounds were also pressed up against Cable’s tanned, toned chest as she squealed and hollered loud enough to make my ears ring as wave after wave rolled over them. Cable wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t doing much of anything as the girl practically climbed all over him. His hands were on her waist, but his eyes were focused on something—or rather, someone—over her head.
That someone was me.
I hated that jealousy made me stiff. I hated that my stomach turned when the girl giggled obnoxiously and I could hear it over the wind. I hated that he watched me, that he instinctively knew the sight of him with her bothered me, and he was frolicking with her just to get under my skin. He didn’t need to bother. He was way under my skin. It was the other parts of me I was worried about him getting under and inside of now.
And I hated that it made me realize I was so far from hating Cable that I wasn’t sure how I got here, or if I would ever be able to find my way back.
I went inside when he started to lower his head toward the girl in the bikini, hating that he was wasting himself on her . . . and hating that I cared. I lost myself in the familiarity of it all, understanding those feelings and terrified of the ones still swirling after seeing all the brightness hidden deep inside his endless darkness.