Do you see that guy standing outside a long building scowling at it?
That’s me. I’m never stepping foot inside that hell-hole again. Worst thirty days of my life.
I’m just kidding. It wasn’t the worst. Two years ago, I spent a week in a jail in Tijuana. I have no idea how I got out, just that I did. But just so we’re clear, there is absolutely no difference between criminals and cops in Tijuana other than the cops have badges and can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal. That’s a story for another day though, and as a matter of a fact, probably one I won’t tell you.
Grunner finds me. “It’s about time you left, asshole.”
I smile and run my hand through my hair. “You’re gonna miss me.”
He turns, raising his middle finger in the air. “The fuck I will.”
A horn honking draws my attention to the pull-thru drive.
I’m released on a Thursday. I was born on a Thursday and for a while, I hated Thursdays. Maybe I still do, but it all comes back to one woman. Do you know who I’m talking about? I don’t mention her much, if at all, because my mind wants to forget.
I learned a few things in rehab. Forgiveness. They say you’re supposed to let go of all negative emotions and memories from your past and move on with whatever positives remains. If nothing remain, then the relationship was all negative—abusive, even if invisibly so.
For longer than I’d like to admit, I punished myself for my mom walking out. For not choosing us against alcohol or drugs, or men. I had guilt of failure, the weight of my own let down had left me in a living nightmare.
Did I want to forgive her? No. I didn’t.
My brothers don’t know I saw her, years later. I was eleven when I knew the truth. That she’d left my dad for Rod Mulin.
Shade and Scarlet pick me up from rehab. It’s the first time I say to him, “I met our mom. She was fucked up at the time and I told her I hoped she overdosed. She also had an affair with Rod Mulin. It’s why I hate him.”
Admit it, even you weren’t expecting me to admit all that, were you? Hell, I don’t think I was either. It just sort of came out.
Scarlet stares at me, then Shade. He raises his sunglasses, sets them on the dash of his truck. “Hey to you too, bro.”
I breathe out, my stomach tight with nerves. “I just needed to get that out before anything else.”
“Anything else?” He tips to Scarlet beside him. “Did you fuck him? Is that why you like him so much?”
She gasps and smacks his head. “Stop that. I’ve never had sex with him.”
Leaning forward, I reach over the seat and pull Scarlet’s hair. “Ah, Northwest, tell him the truth. He deserves to know about us.”
Laughter erupts in the cab of the truck. Shade knows the truth. He thinks. For a minute. Then reaches for his sunglasses and then starts the truck. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Our mom?” He nods. “Yeah. I think she’s buried next to her parents in Montebello.”
“Have you ever been there?” Scarlet asks, twisting around from the front seat and looking at me.
“No.” I haven’t. I’ve never even been to my dad’s grave and it’s in the same city I’ve grown up in. I don’t know why, probably out of fear.
Shade pulls out of the parking lot.
“Take me there,” I tell him. His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror, then he slips his sunglasses on.
We drive to Montebello.
It’s an hour drive and then we’re standing in front of a grave. I stare at the weathered stone time has forgotten with overgrown grass. The sky’s bright, the air cooler as fall begins. Everything dirt brown and in need of nourishment.
A mother should love you enough. Willa did. She appreciated there was more to me. Loving a child isn’t just a feeling, or something you should do. It’s a decision, a judgment, and a promise. One she couldn’t give us growing up. I don’t know why she couldn’t, but I don’t think about it anymore. I won’t.
Cynthia Sawyer, I won’t think of you.
My jaw clenches, words stall, but then I say, “We were your kids. How could you not fight for us?”
Once I say it out loud, I realize how trite that sounds. Pot meet kettle, right? Either way, she left an imprint on my life, for better or worse. Some people can bury the past, hide it, run from it, whatever you chose, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t with her.
Are you surprised? Don’t be.
Shade doesn’t say anything, but he’s strangely focused on the ground. “Feel better?”
I shrug. “I guess. You?”
“I don’t remember anything about her. Not a goddamn thing.”
I kneel, brush away dirt and dried leaves from the headstone and I look at Shade. “It’s not even her grave.”
He laughs. “Oh well.”
We leave. Scarlet drives and Shade tells her he’s going to have her license revoked. I can’t say I disagree. In a state full of asshole drivers, I can honestly say Scarlet is one of the worst.
When Shade’s at a meeting with Red Bull and Honda, talking about the upcoming X Fighters season, Scarlet sits in the truck with me. I smoke, and she tells me to stop.
“Honda wants you to attend the final round of After Dark in Vegas in two weeks. Are you going to do it?”
I think about her question and sigh. I thought about competing a lot during those three weeks. When I’m on a bike, it’s the only true sense of freedom I’ve ever felt. I defy gravity, logic and sanity and essentially, I come to life when airborne. That feeling, the rush it gives me taunting disaster, it’s about being free and doing what you want with no idea how it’s going to end. If only for a second, my mind is nowhere else.
I can’t give them up. For me, that’s why. If only for seconds, I’m free from everything else. The sponsors, the brand of me they’re creating, the women, the other riders. In those seconds, I’m alive only for me.
“Yeah,” I finally answer, laying my head back against the seat, enjoying the coolness of the fall air. “I’m planning on it. Wasn’t sure if Honda still wanted me.” Given my drug-addled, hate-filled past, I behaved in ways that caused the industry shame. I wouldn’t have blamed my sponsors for dropping me after the way I acted. It wasn’t right, and I can’t even tell you why I did it other than rebelling. But still, they didn’t drop me. They covered, blamed my disappearance on my shoulder injury and hyped my return.
“What are you gonna do?” Scarlet asks, handing me my cell phone I didn’t have with me in rehab.
I stare at it. Sixty missed messages. None from her. “With what?”
She pauses, takes a drink of her iced coffee and stares at me. I say nothing. She rolls her eyes, hanging her hands on the steering wheel. “You know what. Amberly. River. Her birthday is in three days.”
I shrug, having no real plan of action. Other than groveling like a goddamn fool and hoping she finds pity on me. That could work, couldn’t it?
Probably not. “I don’t know.”
She twists in the seat, knocking her hand to my knee. “Well, in the books I read, the hero does something courageous to win the girl back and prove he’s worthy.”
“I can do courageous.”
Scarlet gives me that look. The one that screams, dude, you’re an idiot. “I said courageous, not stupid.”
I laugh. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes. Yes, there is.”
“Nah.” I shift in the seat, uncomfortable. Scarlet hands me an invitation.
“Are you going?”
It’s the invitation to River’s fourth birthday party. And while I don’t think I should go, I doubt anyone in attendance wants me there, I can’t not go.
“I need the flower from Beauty and the Beast.”
Scarlet raises an eyebrow, never looking up from her phone. “The enchanted rose from the movie?”
Of course she knows the name of it. River and Scarlet cried together at the end of when we watched it. All fifty times the three days I had her. “Yeah. Is that possible?”
“Not unless you plan on stealing it from Disney.” And then she looks at me. “Dude, no.”
“Fine. Can you get one like it?”
“Why?” Check out her face. She’s excited, isn’t she? She thinks this is me being courageous. I guess it might be, huh?
My nostrils flare and I close my eyes. “Fuck, because I asked you to. That’s why.”
“Is it for a girl?”
Scarlet doesn’t know when to quit.
I run my hand through my hair, tugging hard at the roots. I need a haircut, but then again, Amberly and River both like my Mohawk. “Maybe.”
She grins, as though I’ve told her I’m in love for the first time. And I guess—in a way—I am.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. It took me weeks of those dumb sessions I didn’t want to be at that I paid attention to some of what they had to say. What really hit home was when Grunner, the crazy fuck he was, threw a copy of “Tao Te Ching” at my head one night and said, “Stick it up your ass.”
I didn’t. That didn’t sound appealing. But I did read it. Didn’t stop until I was finished. I can quote tons of passages that meant something to me, but one makes me think of her. “Because she competes with no one, no one can compete with her.”
I think of her. Again. She has nothing to gain by taking me back. In fact, she has a lot to lose. And when I think of River, she’s a blessing that came into my life when I needed it most and I hadn’t realized until she was taken away.
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful beginnings.”
I realize this is what I want. Her. River. What I’ve been missing all along. She’s what I want and I’m hoping I’m not too late. It’s not like I had some grand plan to win her back. I could express my undying love, or some shit, but you don’t think I’ll come out and say I love you to a girl, do you?
Amberly has never been mine. There, I said it. But I’m irrationally hopeful she’ll forgive me and soul-crushingly disappointed she will. I know one thing. I don’t want to spend my whole life disappointing River as much as I disappoint myself.