On the Monday before final exams, I waited in a conference room with my attorney at the county courthouse. Scott was set to stand trial after the New Year, and the closer it got to the holidays, the more I thought about him sitting in jail and what it must have been like to detox in a prison cell. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but a nagging sense of culpability had eaten at me since the break-in.
“You’re certain this is what you want?” my attorney asked. He slid the stapled sheets of paper in front of me. “Look it over again. This is your last chance to change your mind.”
Simon was right; I couldn’t take responsibility for Scott’s actions. But I would shoulder the blame for my part. Truth was, I should have helped him sooner. Looking back on all the petty bullshit between us—missing rehearsals and flaking on the band—that was a poor excuse for turning my back on a friend when he didn’t have the will or wherewithal to help himself. Because if my circumstances had been different, I might have ended up like him somewhere along the way: angry, hopeless, and looking for anything to numb the pain of waking up and taking the next breath every day.
It didn’t matter why Scott got hooked. Hell, maybe it was a fucking accident that spiraled out of his control. I didn’t care about the why. Just that he be given a second chance to live a better life. I had gotten that when I needed it most, and it made all the difference.
“The prosecutor has already agreed to the terms,” my attorney said, scrolling through e-mails on his phone. “And I’m confident the judge will sign off on it as long as Scott consents to be remanded into his parents’ custody.”
A pair of thick wooden double doors creaked and groaned. Escorted between a uniformed officer and a public defender in a cheap gray suit, Scott shuffled in wearing orange hospital scrubs and slip-on shoes. His hands cuffed at his stomach and chained to the shackles at his ankles. He jingled with every short step scuffed across the shiny floor. Those jingles, his little old-man steps, they laughed at him. Set deep inside his pale, gaunt face, his sallow eyes held profane humiliation. It hurt to look at him.
“Scott...”
I had come to tell him I was dropping the charges. To meet face-to-face and say that I could forgive him as long as he took this opportunity to start over. My attorney had worked it out with the court that Scott could avoid more jail time if he checked into rehab and stayed clean. I’d foot the bill. But seeing him hunched over the table, a broken shell of his former self, I knew that facing me in his condition only deepened his shame. Because it wasn’t Scott who had threatened me or broken into my house. It wasn’t the kid I’d known since high school who had pulled a gun on me at the bar. That person was a chemical creation that died of the DTs weeks ago. In front of me was the leftovers, and they didn’t owe me anything.
So I left. My attorney stuck around to put the deal in writing and I got on with my life, leaving Scott in peace to do the same.
* * *
“Should we get you fit for a mouth guard?” I asked.
Punky gnawed on her bottom lip in agitation. She locked the back door and gave it a tug but released the handle without repeating the process.
“Or just have your mouth wired shut?”
“Fuck off,” she snapped, huffing her way through the living room to the alarm keypad in the foyer. “You wouldn’t last a week without a blow job.”
I wouldn’t last three days. Fucking sue me. After I’d made it past the pain and exhaustion post-surgery, I was a right cranky prick until Punky declared me well enough for a good lay.
Hadley had kept to her word and started seeing a therapist about her OCD. She wasn’t two weeks in before she bit my head off after I made the terrible mistake of praising her for her progress. She hated the adulation. Gold stars for achievement were not the way to motivate Punky, as I discovered. Rather than being encouraging, she found “attagirl” condescending, as if we were placating her. If there was one thing she hated, it was being treated like a child. So, she got no pats on the back from me, just a swift kick in the ass to tell her she’d done well. It seemed to work out and kept heavy objects from flying at my head.
As she locked the front door, her hand lingered with the key in the dead bolt. I waited a moment to see if she’d let go on her own. Hadley appeared frozen in place, warring with her instincts.
“Go ahead, Punky. By all means, take your time. We’ve got all day.”
She growled under her breath and kicked the front door, turning to flip me off. “Shithead.”
“I know.” I kissed her temple as she slid into my car. “Love you, too, sweetheart.”
We were on our way to campus for the showcase that was the final exam for my Jazz Composition class. My fingers played over the steering wheel, revising bars of music in my head. It wasn’t unheard of that I would rewrite an original work as I performed it for an audience.
“You look nervous,” Hadley said.
My speed was excessive as we cruised toward the highway. The barbell in my tongue flicked between my teeth and I gripped the stick shift too tightly.
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not nervous.” So I was half a liar.
Truthfully, it wasn’t the performance with my jazz ensemble that had me white-knuckling the steering wheel. Music was second nature. Getting the notes on paper had been the difficult part. Playing? I could do that in my sleep.
“The bulging vein in your head says otherwise.”
“That’s my Pestering Punky vein. It responds to how irritating you are.”
“Whatever. You can’t live without me.”
“You got me there.”
An hour later we were in the dressing room behind the stage of the campus music hall. My ensemble was up next, the musicians already waiting in the wings while I fucked with the bow tie on my tux and fingered the box hidden in my jacket pocket.
“I think you are nervous.” Punky straightened my tie and smoothed her hands over the shoulders of my jacket, picking lint off the fabric. “You’re stalling.”
“I don’t stall.” Though I could barely breathe and my vision was going a bit sideways.
Punky had always set me on edge, off kilter. She had a way of tilting the ground under my feet to send me sliding, struggling to stay upright. But in this moment, I had never felt so sure in my footing.
“We could run away,” she teased, sliding her hands down the front of my shirt. Hadley stared up at me, adventure and mischief in her eyes.
I pushed her hair behind her ear, running my fingertips along her neck. “Would you like that?”
“Hmm. Maybe. Screw our way across the country. Make love to me in every Springfield. Kick up trouble from one coast to the other. You could play guitar on street corners for tips and I would draw caricatures in the park. Happily-ever-after.”
“There’s no such thing. Endings are the saddest part.”
“Okay, if you want to get all existential about it.”
There was a knock at the door, followed by the stage manager’s two-minute warning.
“Hadley.” I wrapped my arms around her back, skimming my fingers along the skin above the top of her pants. “I know we said we were done apologizing, but I want to tell you I’m sorry.”
“Josh—”
“I’m sorry for not trusting you. For not telling you the truth back then and trusting that you’d love me anyway. I should have had more faith in us, because every day, from the start, you’ve been there. You’ve always been kind, and loyal, and found the goodness in me when I didn’t see it myself. You make me want to try harder. You make me a better man. Above all, you make me whole. I love you, and I’m forever grateful to know you. And as long as I live, I’ll never stop trying to deserve you.”
“Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper that she placed in my hand.
“Not to be a dick, but I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“I’ve been saving this,” she said. “Read it.”
Hadley kissed me, a sweet, gentle touch of her lips to mine.
“Break a leg. I know you’ll be brilliant.” Then she darted off.
The letter, addressed to me, was dated on the morning I went into surgery.
Josh,
I hate this. It sucks. And I can’t help but blame you for leaving me all alone. You’ve got it easy. Sure, there’s some guy wiggling a knife around in your head, but at least you get to sleep through it. I can’t seem to close my eyes. Every time I blink, it’s like someone is going to be standing at the door to tell me you aren’t coming back. So I won’t blink.
There was a routine in our house. After dinner, I helped my mom clear the table while my dad caught the evening news. I was allowed to watch one episode of TV, and then dad would draw me a bath. He made sure I brushed my teeth, using a little sand timer to teach me how long to keep at it. Mom brushed and dried my hair before tucking me in with a bedtime story.
There was no dinnertime in the foster house. No routine. If we ate at all, it was something cold left for us on the kitchen counter. That, or we just got hungry enough to go looking for anything we could reach. There was no bath time. The tiles around the tub were rimmed with black mold and everything had a yellow layer of filth.
We slept because it was dark outside. We slept because there was nothing better to do or we just wanted the day to end sooner. My bed was a small, thin mattress on the stained carpet. It smelled like mold and sweat. I closed my eyes, my blanket pulled over my head to block out the headlights of passing cars outside the window and constant noise of dogs barking and sirens wailing.
I itched all over. It started on my arm, then my ankle, and spread until I was clawing at my skin so hard it left bruises and red splotches everywhere.
You cast a shadow through the doorway. A small, skinny shard of black that ran right over me. In only a pair of underwear, you stood shivering with your arms hugging your chest. So I pulled my blanket from around my shoulders and held it out, waiting.
You didn’t talk. Do you remember that? It must have been days before I heard you say a word, and then you only spoke when we were alone and the others were asleep. The first sound I ever heard you make was the saddest, loneliest sob as you finally took the blanket and curled up on the floor next to my bed.
I think I loved you then.
You taught me how to survive in that house. You saved my life, and I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since.
—Punky