Jason
“If I get fired, I’m killing you in your sleep. I’m not kidding, man. I’ll even smile doing it,” I warned Max.
He just gave me a blank stare and said, “Your threat is empty, just like your soul.” He ended it with a hiccup then pounded his chest. “Shit, I think I’m still drunk.”
“You’re swaying.” Reid poked him with the lighter.
Max grabbed onto the side of the house to steady himself for a couple minutes. Colt finally appeared from the front door, backpack in hand.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that?”
“Your old backpack.”
“No shit. Why do you have it?”
“You’re reliving all the things, and during this time,” Max announced, “you had a blue backpack, and in that blue backpack…”
“Yeah, I know...” my gut clenched, “…I kept candy, twenty-four seven, because the girl I loved was so damn sweet.” God, I was an idiot. No wonder she left me. Did I really say shit like that? Out loud? To another human? It’s a miracle I ever got laid!
“Blesses—” Max burped and pounded his chest, “—my heart.”
I fanned my hand in his face. “Rum and broken promises, that’s what you smell like.”
“Thanks, man.” He patted me on the shoulder while Colt handed me the backpack. “All right, day one of ‘find your heart and stop thinking with your dick’ has officially started. Go get ‘em, tiger.”
I started sweating immediately.
I walked up to her door with a stupid blue backpack, wearing jeans and a t-shirt like I had all through high school, and knew what I was about to subject myself to.
Last night it had sounded good.
So had a hotdog.
I should have chosen the hotdog and gone to bed. Damn it!
I knocked once, twice, and was about to knock a third time, when the door swung open and little Annabelle stared up at me with wide blue eyes. “You’re tall.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, well, you’re short.”
She gasped. “That’s not nice.”
“Why not?” I leaned down until I was hunched on the ground at eye-level. “Being short’s the best. You can sneak in places tall, bulky people like me can’t. I bet you’re the best at hide and seek, would probably beat me every time.”
She smiled so big and bright, I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut. Her toothless grin was so trusting, so innocent.
Damnit, Sara, what happened to you? I wished I could say I was surprised, but the drug problems in this country were no joke, and it could happen to anyone, even straight-A students with full rides to NYU.
“I am the best at hide and seek!” she confirmed, jolting my thoughts away from Sara. “Everyone says so.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Papa, Grandma, Aunt Maddy.”
“That’s everyone that counts,” I agreed.
She giggled. “Are you here for Aunt Maddy?”
“Yeah, could you run along and grab her for me?”
“She yelled at you last night.”
I cringed. “She had reason to.”
“You can’t be mean to her,” she announced with a lift of her chin, “or else I’ll tell.”
I loved her threat, her little protectiveness over Maddy. “I cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Stick a billion…” she yelled the billion part, “…needles in your eye!”
“A billion, that’s rough, and yes, stick a billion needles in my eye.”
“Now pinky promise.” She held out her tiny hand.
I linked my pinky with hers and forced a smile. Our own daughter would have looked a lot like this, the little girl I’d wanted with Maddy, the family I’d wanted to start.
Get a grip, Jason.
We released fingers just as Maddy bounded down the stairs in roughed-up black skinny jeans, Converse, and a loose-fitting white tank that hung a bit on her curvy body. She had an old blue Mets hat covering her bouncing curls, and from what I could see, minimal makeup, just the way I always remembered her — fresh, beautiful. She was the epitome of the girl next door, and she’d been mine — until she wasn’t anymore.
Maddy didn’t give me one second of her attention; everything was focused on Annabelle. “Make sure you brush your teeth after breakfast, and don’t give Papa a hard time if he tells you to rest a bit in your room after lunch, all right?”
Annabelle sighed. “I’m too old for naps.”
“You’re seven. Think of it more like a happy time-out. You can bring in four books.”
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Six.”
Maddy groaned. “Five. And not one more.”
Annabelle beamed. “Thanks, Aunt Maddy. Love you.” She wrapped her arms around her leg, and Maddy leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
“Love you too, munchkin.”
“Have fun on your date!” she called, just as the door slammed.
Maddy turned and opened her mouth, while I grinned to myself and held out my hand.
“Remember,” I said, my hand mid-air, “no ugly past, only the good parts, and the present. You ready for a good time?”
She rolled her eyes and took my hand. “That’s the last thing you said to me before I got my first speeding ticket.”
“And I was right. It was a good time.” I shrugged.
Maddy elbowed me. “Oh yeah, it was fantastic until the cop gave me a ticket, and my dad grounded me from my own car for a month.”
“Eh, my truck had more backseat space.”
Her face lit up crimson.
I couldn’t look away from that blush, had never been able to; something about the way she wore her feelings so apparent on her skin was such a damn turn on, I was hard as a rock every time I teased her — which was about as often as it was awkward.
As it was, I was having a hard time keeping myself in check; if my pants were any tighter, I was going to have to have a talk with my zipper and the way it kept rubbing.
I opened up my old truck door for her. The one I’d driven in high school, not the one that was currently sporting a missing door. I figured it would be best to just drive the thing and risk more injuries to something older. My parents would kill me if I ruined their new Benz. I didn’t want to take the chance that the universe was still against me.
I got in on my side and fired up the engine.
It still smelled the same, like old gasoline and spearmint gum.
My eyes fell to the heart she’d drawn in permanent marker on the steering wheel with her name on it. It had been my reminder that I had special cargo next to me, and that I needed to keep it safe at all costs.
And I had.
Not one ticket.
Maddy glanced over at me. Her eyes fell to the space between us that she used to fill. I’d hated her sitting far away.
I bit down on my lip. If we were going to do this, we needed to do it right. With a sigh, I grabbed her leg and pulled her body toward the center. She came without a fight. My hands shook as I reached for the steering wheel and then her hand was on my thigh as if nothing had changed in the last decade.
When everything had.
The smell of the truck, of her, of the memories slamming into me, was almost too much. I squeezed my eyes shut and inhaled.
“Let’s go,” I said with a weary sigh, trying like hell not to react to her touch and trying even harder to keep my anger and resentment on hold. If she could do this, I could do this. After all, I needed to get over her, over us. I needed to see that it wasn’t the same anymore. We’d grown apart. We were different people.
Closure meant I could move on. Really move on.
And I needed that more than I realized.
Because the minute I started driving down the road, my heart sprang to life in my chest. Ten years I’d been holding onto this dream of her, of us.
It was damn time to let go.