Speechless, I stared at her. She sounded so boring and moral and…right. I sidestepped, allowing her the space to slip past me.

Gingerly, she soldiered toward her rental car, glancing back every now and again to check I was still here. As I rounded her vehicle to the passenger seat, I caught a glimpse of a freshly glued phone case quote, Do you follow Jesus this closely? and shook my head.

“Sorry,” I said again when I buckled up. “About my dad. Not about being born.”

“Zip it, Knight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Three things happened simultaneously after my soap opera encounter with Dixie: One, I stopped answering her calls again. I still sent her text messages informing her I was okay, even though I was not, but I just couldn’t face her.

Then she’d been an annoying little background noise. Now she was a reminder of my dark, debauched existence.

Two, school started. After what had happened in the treehouse, Poppy finally—finally—got the hint. She steered clear of my ass like I was radioactive. Which, to her, arguably, I was. Of course, that created a whole other set of problems. I passed her locker that first morning, noticing it was spray-painted in hot pink: DUMPED BY KJC. Someone had plastered a photoshopped Instagram picture of her with a dumpster fire in the background. I ripped it off before she could see it, but rumor was she still spent the vast majority of the day locked in the bathroom, presumably not taking five hundred shits.

Three, Mom was discharged from the hospital.

I headed home straight after school. I discarded my backpack at the door, scrubbed my hands clean (germs and Mom weren’t tight), and padded upstairs toward her room. Usually Hunter and I hit the gym straight after off-season. Not today. I wanted to see for myself that Mom was okay. Maybe it’d inspire me to go the entire day without drinking a bottle of who-knows-what.

Okay, who was I kidding? The entire morning.

Fine, an hour. Whatever.

I pushed Mom’s door open, stepping into her bedroom, and stopping on the threshold.

Dear God,

I’m a decent guy. I always buy the toffee-tastic cookies from Girl Scouts, knowing no one else in their right mind would buy the sandy motherfuckers. I explained masturbation to Lev so my dad wouldn’t have to. And I didn’t kill Vaughn, even though he touched Luna. Why do you hate me? What gives?

Not-so-faithfully,

KJC

“The fuck?” my dad grumbled, snapping his head in my direction. He was butt naked, and I do mean it literally—his ass staring back at my face—in bed, with Mom underneath him, his face strategically…there. I shook my head.

“Get out!” Dad grabbed something from the bed and hurled it toward me.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Please, God, if you still have any remorse toward me, let that shit not be a dildo or a vibrator.

I heard something rubbery and hard falling to the floor.

Really, God? For real?

“Dean!” Mom chastised.

I slammed the door so hard its wooden frame cracked at the edges, and I dashed down the hall to my room. My lunch was shooting up my throat, and I was glad it was one of the rare times I didn’t have a hangover or was simply plain drunk.

Fuuuuuuck.

I needed to tell someone. Who? Vaughn and Hunter would taunt me into my grave and beyond. All my other friends had the mental maturity of a La Croix can. I texted Luna on a whim, conveniently ignoring the fact she hadn’t answered my last trillion messages. I didn’t know what had made her flip, but I’d been working extra hard on being a douche before sticking my mammoth fingers into her, then pretending nothing happened, so she had a variety of reasons to choose from.

Knight: I just saw something.

Knight: You cannot ignore this.

Knight: I caught my dad going down on my mom.

Knight: I can’t unsee it, Moonshine. It’s burned into my retinas. Forever.

Knight: Answer me for fuck’s sake. Seriously? It was just a bit of fooling around. Nothing has changed. You’re still my best friend.

And my only lover.

And the reason I woke up every day instead of giving up.

I had to keep her in my life, even at the price of making said life unbearable.

She could still have FUCKING JOSH.

Fuck him. Love him. Build a shrine to him.

And I’d still be here.

Waiting. Pining. Watching the time stretch between us, like an endless ocean.

I tossed my phone onto my bed, letting it drown in heaps of black satin, then plopped down next to it. I rubbed my eyes like I could wipe off the memory of my dad doing what he’d done to Mom.

Uncle Vicious had once jokingly said life was not an easy phase in one’s existence. I now understood what he meant. Life felt like a chain of calamities strung together. What helped me go through it was reminding myself of famous people who went through bad shit and were still alive. It was kind of creepy, but it helped. Like, Joaquin Phoenix had watched his brother die, and had to call 911. Keanu Reeves had lost his stillborn baby and the love of his life eighteen months apart. Oprah Winfrey had been a fourteen-year-old runaway after being sexually abused. Charlize Theron watched her mother shoot her father to death in self-defense.

These people still lived. Laughed. Breathed. Got married. Had babies. Moved on.

Statistically, I could, too.