When I was in law school, my lecturer showed up at my doorstep inside the dorms one day, unannounced. I remember clasping the door as he stood on the threshold, a seventy-something-year-old man with wafer-thin white hair and too many wrinkles to distinguish his facial features, and said, “You need to change courses.”
“What?” I asked, laughing. I come from a family of lawyers, and this was the point where I still wanted to make my father proud. Or at least, the thought of disappointing my parents made me feel slightly uncomfortable. “Why would you say that?”
“You can’t be a lawyer.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re no better than a thug.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I see you, Mr. James. I watch you all the time, and when you don’t like something, you snap. You don’t have the self-control to become a lawyer. You’re a hothead. You don’t have the patience for it either. You’d make a horrible chess player.”
“Thank you,” I said, shutting the door in his face. I graduated with honors, but he was right.
I am hotheaded.
I can be ruthless.
Especially when something of mine is in danger.
Ryan is about to learn that we have something in common the hard way.
The minute after Remi fell asleep, I drove to her old house. I knew Ryan would be here. I didn’t expect the big silver truck with the slogan, “National Pipes: We Create Careers, Not Jobs,” to be parked right outside the house. Her dad is here, too. The slogan against this rotting, out-of-shape neighborhood is enough to make me chuckle. That is, if I still thought there was something to laugh about in this whole twisted situation.
I’m wearing my work clothes. Dress pants, crisp black dress shirt, and my brown Oxfords. I walk over to the door and knock once, twice, knowing they are here. The Harley Davidson is parked in its designated yellow-grassed spot, too.
The shuffling sound and indistinct chatter stir something in me. Not because I am worried about these two idiots, but because it kills me that this is the soundtrack of Remi’s life.
Ryan opens the screen door, fiddling with the rusty lock. Everything rattles. I wait, still and composed, but mentally gearing up for a fight, wondering when the hell this asshole is going to look up and see that I’m not one of his drug-dealer friends.
“Yo, what’s…” The door flings open, and he stands there in a dirty wifebeater, a six-day stubble, and that dazed look of a man who isn’t sure what day or time it is. “What the fuck?” He blinks.
“The fuck is that you and I are going to have a long conversation tonight, whether you like it or not.” I grab him by the throat and walk him back into the house. Ryan Anderson doesn’t put up a fight. Not yet, anyway. My grip on his neck isn’t as tight as I want it to be and I am taller and bigger. More menacing. Then there is my tone. My voice. I sound like a man you don’t want to mess around with. Because I’m not.
I stop when he is next to his dining table and let go of his throat, throwing him into one of the eaten wooden chairs. Everything in the place reeks, him included. Ryan lolls his head from side to side and laughs manically.
“You’re him,” he says. My blood freezes in my veins. For a second there, I think he recognizes me from his time with Gwen. From the black hole that seems to have sucked me deeper into depression until Remington Stringer strode into my life with her long legs and pouty lips and gave me some of her light. “You’re the motherfucking teacher, dude.”
He’s high. Wasted. Completely fucked up. He looks jaded, his eyes bloodshot, purple rings adorning his eye sockets. His skin is clammy all over. His arms and the sliver of flesh that peeks from his wifebeater. His chest. I grab a chair, spinning it around and plopping down, my arms embracing the back of it.
“Where’s your deadbeat dad?”
“You mean Remi’s dad?” He sniffs loudly and rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Not giving you shit, man. Why would I even talk to you? Unless I get money out of it, of course.”
“It’s simple, Anderson. You will talk to me, because I’m the only person who can prevent you from being thrown into jail for a long time.”
“You’re full of shit,” he spits to the floor. I stare at him like he is dirt.
“Dealing weapons and drugs? You’re looking at fifteen years if you’re lucky. But you aren’t that lucky, are you? If you were, you’d be out of this shithole by now. So, let’s try again. Where’s Daddy Stringer?”
“He’s fucking the neighbor next door. Her husband works with him at the same company, and he’s gone on a long drive for the night. Want to go there and congratulate him on his pity fuck?”
Jesus, this guy is all class. I smile politely. “Guess it’s just you and me then, pal. Do you know why I’m here, Ryan?”
He sits back and lights a cigarette, exhaling loudly. “Because you’re a fucking pedo and you’re looking for another piece of young ass from a neighborhood where girls don’t have enough money to sue your fancy ass?”
“That’s a lot of big words from a very simple man.” I lean forward and tap his nose like he is adorable, and he swats my hand away and growls.
“It’s a good thing you came here, Teach. I have a bone to pick with you, too.”
“You do? How nice. We should do it more often,” I say, but my heart is picking up speed, fast. My stomach lurches. Maybe he is bullshitting, but I doubt it. Very much so.
“Yeah. I mean, I have pictures of you hanging out with my sister.” Ryan tousles his blond hair with the same hand that holds his cigarette, slouching backwards and staring at nothing in particular, looking deep in thought. “Why would you fucking take her on your boat and out to eat? You’re supposed to educate her, you feelin’ me? Just give her tools for her future. You’re giving her your tool, all right. But I don’t think it’s what they had in mind.” He bursts out laughing.
I shake my head. “I don’t think you understand. I have hard evidence against you, Anderson.”
“You have a hard-on for teenage girls. That’s what you have.”
“I have photos of you running around and giving teenage kids Glocks wrapped around a towel. Selling a pregnant lady fucking coke.”
“Who the fuck are you to lecture me!” Ryan flings his arms in the air, spitting as he yells, “Look at you and your own mess. You’re fucking a teenage girl, for fuck’s sake.”
“I can put you in jail for a long time.” I feel my voice rising along with the level of panic in my body.
“So can I.”
“She’s eighteen.” What am I saying? What in the world am I admitting to?
“You’re fucking done,” Ryan spits.
“You killed my sister,” I snap loudly. More clearly, as Ryan’s face twists in confusion before recognition settles on it. “You killed Gwen. My sister. She’s gone.”
There is a beat of silence in which both of us take deep, huge breaths, and then before we know it, we are on the floor. I am punching him in the face, feeling his bones crack under my fist. He flails. I throw him across the room and launch at him again. This time he grabs my arm, ready for me, and twists it hard. I feel the pain but can’t bring myself to care. The things that go through my head… They are more important than what I am feeling physically.
Gwen.
Remington.
The past.
The future.
My present. My present is a secret, but not for long, I decide. She craves normalcy. She needs stability. We’d never be normal, but the best things never are. I will be her constant. Her safety net. Someone she will learn to trust and not be afraid to depend on.
Ryan and I are a pile of limbs and blood before I hear my phone buzzing. It is the middle of the night, and there is only one person who could call me at this time.
I right myself, standing up and pushing my foot over his face, standing over him, stepping over his cheek.
“Hello?” I ask, breathing hard. “Remi? Hello? Are you there?”
I hear papers shuffling, the little sucks of air she takes in between. Then the phone goes dead.
Shit.
Even before I open my eyes, I know that I’m alone.
It’s a feeling I’ve grown accustomed to in recent years. The chill of the sheets wrapping around me. I’m not even sure what wakes me up, but once my eyes blink open, I send a hand to the nightstand, feeling around for my phone, but coming up empty-handed.
I look to Pierce’s alarm clock and check the time. Half past two a.m. The Jack and Jill bathroom light is off, the rest of the house dark and quiet. I wait for a while, willing myself to fall back asleep to no avail.
I sigh.
I check the time again. Three minutes past three.
Where the hell is he?
Walking over to his fruitwood walk-in closet, I borrow one of his white tees, inhaling the scent of his manhood, enjoying the soft fabric of the Balmain top caressing my body.
I decide to check his office. This wouldn’t be the first time Pierce wandered down there at unspeakable hours. I walk down the steps and head toward the only other place, besides his kitchen, that I’ve been in this house. My knock is light, but it still makes the cracked door open wider. His brown leather executive chair is empty. The phone on his desk calls for me to use it. The same phone I studied religiously—it’s a vintage rotary dial that probably costs a fortune—while I was bent over it, my face just an inch from the golden numbers that stared back at me.
I plop down in his chair and pick up the phone, dialing the number I memorized by heart long before I ever used it, and wait for him to pick up. I accidentally bump the mouse to his computer—who uses a mouse anymore?—and his monitor lights up, illuminating his desk. He doesn’t answer. Fear gnaws at my gut, tugging an invisible string of panic. I’m about to hang up and recalculate my plan, but then I see something that makes me pause.
A manila envelope, not unlike the one I saw handed to him outside the café after school that day.
I hesitate. As much as I hate secrets—secrets are what threw my life into chaos and turmoil, what got Christian in the hospital—I recognize that it’s not for me to read. At the same time, I think about all the things I’m not privy to. All the stuff Pierce James keeps away from me.
His family.
His sister.
His history.
His story.
To read or not to read—debate this, Mr. James.
My fingers find their way to the envelope. Slowly. Unsurely. They take their time, just like I do as I weigh the consequences. My father thinks I’m a liar. Ryan thinks I’m a slut. And Pierce…who knows what Pierce thinks. That I’m incapable of taking care of myself. Or maybe that I’m too young to fully understand whatever is going on around me.
But I understand it. Crystal clear. And I have a feeling things are only going to feel more real after I open this envelope, marked with the word confidential over it in bold, red letters.
I dump the contents of the envelope onto the desk with a soft thud and stare at it for a moment before I realize what I’m seeing. Before the names pop up. Before my name appears.
There are pictures.
There are testimonies.
There are unveiled secrets.
There is truth.
“Hello? Remi?” Pierce’s gruff voice inquires on the other line, startling me.
“Sweetheart.” He sounds like he is out of breath. “Is everything okay?”
I let the phone slip from my fingers, and it hits the desk with a bang.
It was all a lie.
He never wanted me.
It was all a lie.
He used me.
It was all a lie.
We’re nothing. Not even a secret. We’re nothing but sin.
Pierce is still talking, but all I can hear is the sound of my own heart in my ears. The fact that it is still beating is almost reassuring, because it’s hurting. Hurting so bad. Aching, breaking, slipping away. Suddenly, I’m weightless. Restless. I’m floating outside my body, and I look at everything that’s happened to me in recent weeks—in recent months, really, ever since I started my senior year—and clarity washes over me like electric shock.
I drop the phone, clutching the papers in one of my hands.
My legs carry me to the front door, where I stop. My feet are bare, and I’m still wearing his clothes. How far can you run when the only thing that fuels you is anger, secrets, and deceit?
I’m about to find that out.