After I return from Seattle, the days drag by with a slowness that eventually becomes aggravating. Even when I’m competing or just blowing off steam on the track, nothing seems the same anymore.
At the house, a place where I usually felt comfortable is full of tension. Roan and Tiller are fighting constantly, but there’s a distance between all of us and a lawsuit filed against us over the use of our track. Not at all what any of us wanted to deal with.
I spend most days in a zombielike state of numbness—not angry, not sad, just, there. . . going through the motions of life. Truly, I think I’m in denial. I can’t face reality yet, so I’m hiding under a melancholy blanket.
It’s hard to feel bad when I’m not letting myself feel anything at all.
“Get out of my fucking face,” Tiller mumbles, uninterested in explaining himself any more than he has already.
You’re thinking Tiller is constantly antagonizing him, aren’t you? Roan’s not completely innocent here either. Don’t let the big brother mentality fool you. He’s precariously balancing extreme talent and being an idiot. He once played Russian roulette with a guy in a bar.
Scary part?
The revolver he used was fucking loaded with a bullet. He went through six chambers and the gun didn’t fire. To this day I have no idea how he’s still alive. It doesn’t make any sense.
Willa comes walking outside, her and Ricky parting ways. She sits down next to me in one of the lounge chairs. “What do you think of Scarlet?”
I raise an eyebrow but don’t remove my sunglasses and reach for my third beer in front of me. “Who?”
“The girl we interviewed in Seattle. And a lot of help you were while we were there.”
“I’d fuck her.” I’m not sure who we’re talking about, but this is an assumption on my part because these days I fuck a lot of chicks I usually wouldn’t. There’s a good chance there’s one in my bed from last night, and I wasn’t even in my bed last night.
I’m staring at Tiller and Roan, but I can see from my peripheral that Willa isn’t pleased with me. “I’m curious why you made me go.”
“You’re disgusting,” she mutters, still staring at me. “You’ll be spending a lot of time around her. I wanted to see how the two of you would interact together.”
“All the more reason for me to want to fuck her.” I’m being completely honest when I say, “And I’ve got no interest in spending time with anyone.”
Willa sighs, her eyes quietly searching my face. “Shade, c’mon. You’re making this difficult and you’re pissing me off. What did you think of her?”
I shrug, vaguely remembering the chick from the hotel with the wild blonde curls. I picture her face then, and the nipple rings peaking out from under her blue dress. Right. That chick. “I’d fuck her,” I say again.
For some reason, that’s not a persuasive argument for her. I don’t see why not.
Willa leans forward and rips my sunglasses off my face. “No. You’re not going to touch her.” She tosses them aside on the table. I don’t like it when people touch my sunglasses. It actually pisses me off. “She’d be your personal assistant. I’m not interested in what you think of her physically. I’m interested to know if you think she can handle this shit show?” Her eyes catch Roan and Tiller who were playing basketball with the neighbor kid, Camden, only now it’s a game of dodge ball and who can throw the basketball the hardest. It’s a game they play often and usually results with Tiller close to snapping Roan’s neck.
Luckily that’s never happened, but the day’s still early, so we’ll see if today’s the day.
Have you ever been hit with a basketball in the face? It fucking hurts. It’s like taking a rock to the head.
Reaching across the table, I retrieve my sunglasses and put them back on my face. “I don’t know. That’s your decision. Aside from the fact that she’s hot, and probably a little crazy, that’s your decision.” I finish my beer in one drink and slam the bottle on the table. “Do what you want. Nobody in their right mind would last a week here with these jackoffs.” Myself included. But I don’t add the last part.
Just then, to prove my point, Tiller shrugs to something our ten-year-old neighbor, Camden, asked him and says, “As long as you wash it out with bleach, it’s no problem. You can re-use them.”
You’re thinking to yourself, nah, he’s not talking about what I think he is, is he?
Let’s hope not, but with Tiller, you can never be too sure.
Willa leans in, catching my stare. “About the lawsuit on the track. . . the track requires a conditional use permit and a limited hours of operation. None exist for the track as of yet, but we’ve filed for one as of yesterday.” She sighs, shaking her head. “Not sure what the judge will think, but we’ll see how it goes. They requested nobody ride on the track until then.”
I roll my eyes. “Fuck that. They can’t make us. We’ve been riding on it for the last ten fucking years, why now? It’s not a commercial venue. We’re not charging anyone to ride here, so we shouldn’t be treated like one.”
“I’ll take care of it.” She motions with a flick of her wrist toward Camden making his way toward us. “You know it was his father who filed the lawsuit, right?”
I nod. I know. Do you see that kid approaching me with Tiller? The one with the dusty-blonde hair and bright, curious green eyes? That’s Camden Rivera. The coolest dude in Pasadena. Besides me of course.
His father? Not cool. Jerad Rivera is a criminal lawyer who has it out for me and my brothers because of our track that kicks up dust and noise. Now it wouldn’t bother that fucker much, given he’s never fucking home, but it bothers his half-his-age-mail-order bride, Rachel.
Camden’s mom died when he was seven and his new mommy? Hot as hell, but essentially a fucking bitch. She treats Camden like a slave, so we let him come over whenever he wants. Hence why she hates us.
“Your mom’s a bitch,” I tell him when he sits down, trying to take my beer from me.
When I rip it away, he slumps back in the chair, smiling. “Stepmom. And I could have told you that. She’s mean.”
Tiller laughs and reaches for his own beer in the fridge next to the outdoor kitchen. “Like what kind of mean are we talkin’ about here, Camden?”
He shrugs, taking my phone. He likes to check out all the chicks on Instagram sending me pictures of their tits, but I rip that away too. He’s ten. He doesn’t need to see that shit yet. “Like she won’t let me do anything.”
Tiller raises an eyebrow. “Anything as in?”
Camden shrugs again. “Stuff.”
“Jesus, it’s like talking to a ten-year-old.”
Camden’s brow furrows. “I am ten, Tiller.”
I said he was cool, not smart.
I laugh, staring out at the setting sun. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
Do you think he shrugs again?
You’d be right. “Oh, probably,” he says, then grins and steals my sunglasses. What’s with people and taking my shit today? “Can I sleep over?”
“No,” Tiller says immediately. Last time we let him, he ended up witnessing his first live porno. From then on, we banned the kid from being here after dark. “But your mom can. Maybe then I can fuck some sense into the pretentious bitch.”
I could be wrong here, but maybe this is why his dad doesn’t like us?
Camden groans and covers his face with his hands. “Stepmom.”
Camden doesn’t leave right away; instead, he challenges Tiller to a backflip contest while Auden arrives. I reach for my sunglasses, right them on my face, and then I’m back to drinking.
Auden sits down across from me, immediately lighting a cigarette and then takes notice of the empty cans on the table surrounding me.
“What’s with you?” Auden asks, watching me open another beer. I don’t even like beer that much. It’s just a way to pass that unbearable time moving at turtle speed these days.
I shoot him a glare. “That’s a pretty stupid fuckin’ question, don’t you think, A?”
He sits there for a moment and then reaches into his pocket and hands me a crumpled-up piece of paper. I don’t take it and he sets it on the table. I know what it is. I know exactly what it is and it has me seeing red that he kept it.
“I don’t want that.”
“You need to read it.”
“Did you read it?”
He bows his head, his focus on the edge of the table he’s running his thumb along and murmurs, “That’s not my name on the letter. It’s yours. And I think you need it. I get why you didn’t read the letter and threw it away, but you need to read it now.”
I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want her fucking excuses or reasons or whatever else it holds. “I don’t want to.”
Auden stands, his shoulders sagging as if he’s tired of seeing this, the part where I fall apart slowly. . . and then all at once. “You should.”
Should I?
Do you see that guy sitting in the lounge chair? The one with no shirt, hiding behind shades because his despondent bloodshot eyes give too much away?
How’d he go from winning medals at the X-Games and Gravity Games the year before to this guy? The one drinking beer at ten in the morning.
At first, I don’t look at the letter. I’m blindsided Auden kept it after I threw it on her grave.
Had I thought about the letter since her funeral?
Yeah, sure I did. But I still didn’t want to read it. The simple thought of knowing why makes me dizzy, like someone’s given me a shot of painkillers only the dose is too strong.
But then I think if I knew why, maybe I could forget her and all the ways she destroyed me. Maybe I could find me again when all I ever did was think of her. I spent so long being who she needed, I had no fucking clue who I was, and that was where all this stemmed from, isn’t it?
I need to read it. At least then I can move on.
Before Auden leaves, he says to me, “I’m your boy, Shade. I’ve got your back, no matter what. But you sent me in there and I had to see her, like that, her brains on the goddamn wall.” A shudder rolls through his shoulders, his jaw tensing. “And now I have to watch you destroy yourself too? I don’t fucking think so.”
He has a point, doesn’t he? And all this time I took him for granted. I led him there, to check on her and I never stopped to think about what Auden saw. I had my own visions of what I thought he must have witnessed that night, but I didn’t know for sure.
Now I do.