“What are you talking about?” He sounds completely dumbfounded. Shocked.
I ignore his question. “It’s bullshit, Diego. All of it. You. Me. Us. I don’t need you anymore. I never really did.” I poke him one more time in the chest, just for good measure, before I turn on my heel and go to my car.
He doesn’t say another word. I climb into my old lime green VW bug and start the engine, my gaze going to him automatically. Like I can’t help myself.
Diego stands where I left him, his eyes on me, his expression sad, his hand on his chest where I poked him.
I hope it hurts.
Though it won’t even come close to the pain he’s caused me.
Two
Diego
I enter my house to the sound of arguing.
Nothing new there. This time it’s Mom and my older brother, Mateo. They’re screaming in rapid fire Spanish, my mother calling him every name in the book and Mateo constantly telling her she’s disparatado.
Meaning she’s lost her damn mind.
That’s her trigger. You can call her names, you can give her a list of all the shitty things she does, but don’t call her crazy. She loses it every single time, proving to us all yet again that she is, indeed, crazy.
She’s just very—passionate. About a lot of things.
I enter the kitchen and go straight for the fridge, walking in between my yelling mother and brother as if they don’t exist. They treat me the same way, keeping up their argument, not blinking an eye as I pass by them yet again with a Gatorade and a bag of chips in my hands, heading for my bedroom.
It’s like I’m a ghost in my own house.
“Dinner is soon,” Mom says to me, acknowledging my existence while she glares at Mateo. “Don’t fill yourself with junk food.”
I ignore her as I exit the kitchen, and they start yelling at each other all over again.
Once I’m inside, I shut and lock the door, then set my predinner snack on my desk. Grabbing my earbuds from my backpack, I push each one into my ears and then pick up my cracked phone, thumbing through my best friend’s Jake’s playlists on Spotify until I find the one I want to listen to. It’s called:
Fucked Up Workout.
I hit shuffle and the angry clash of guitars fills my ears. Slipping my phone into my sweatpants’ pocket, I bring my snack along with me and collapse on top of my bed, propped against the pillows. I twist off the Gatorade lid and take a long drink, wishing it was laced with alcohol. I munch on the stale potato chips and look at the expiration date on the bag to see it’s two weeks past.
I eat them anyway.
Filling up the hole growing inside of me with junk food doesn’t help. I am hollow. Weightless. Fucking lost. Seeing Jocelyn earlier, talking to her, brought all those overwhelming emotions to the surface, making me say stupid things.
Like I’m still in love with her.
Not that it isn’t true, but fuck. Why admit it when she’s still so angry with me? And she has every right to be mad. I’ve messed everything up to the point of it—us—being utterly destroyed. I have no one to blame for our demise except me. I’m the one who ruined it all.
Frustration filling me, I turn up the music as loud as it can go, drowning out the yelling still coming from the kitchen. Drowning out my thoughts. I don’t want to think about Jocelyn and a baby and what that’ll mean for me. She’s pushed me out of her life so far, maybe I should be relieved. It means she doesn’t want me in our baby’s life.
She doesn’t want me in her life.
Anger makes my chest tight and I curl my hand into a fist, punching the mattress. It gives me no satisfaction. I’d rather hit a wall. Last time I did that, though, Mom lost her fucking mind and made me patch the hole up, standing over me and yelling at me the entire time.
The song ends and just before the next one begins, I hear incessant pounding on my door. I rip one of my ear buds out. “Who is it?”
“Me, fuckhead,” Mateo says from the other side of the door.
I jump off my bed and go to the door, unlocking it just as Mateo pushes his way inside. “What do you want?” I practically snarl at him.
My brother and I? We don’t really get along. He’s three years older than me and when we were little, he always picked on me. Beat me up. Made fun of me in front of his friends. All I wanted was for him to like me.
All he wanted was for me to disappear.
“You got any cash?” Mateo has a hard time keeping a job. He didn’t go to college after he graduated high school. He didn’t apply anywhere, not even community college. He told Mom college wasn’t for him. He was sick of school and claimed to anyone who was listening that he was going to find a full-time job somewhere and become successful. Maybe even open his own business someday.
Yeah. That hasn’t happened. Knowing Mateo and his lack of motivation, it probably never will.
“No, I don’t.” The lie falls from my lips easily. I work full-time at a resort on the lake in the summer and save up all my money. Funny thing is, Mateo is the one who helped me get the job the summer after my sophomore year. He was already working there and convinced the dock manager to hire me. A month after that, he got fired for getting caught smoking a joint on the job.
I’ve worked on the dock the past three summers. They love me. And I may smoke joints on occasion, but never on the clock.
I’m not a complete dumbass.
“Liar,” Mateo says as he glances around my room, looking for a spot where I might hide my money, I guess. “Come on. Twenty bucks for your big bro? I’ll pay you back.”
You know how many times I’ve heard that before? Too many to count. I’d be rich as hell if he finally paid back all the money he’s “borrowed” from me over the years.
“Sorry, bro. No can do.” I send him a measured look and he glares back, his face still red from the argument with our mother.
“You’re just like her, you know. Acting like you’re perfect and better than me, when we all know how fucked up you really are, deep inside.” Mateo takes a step closer to me, but I don’t back away. “Does she know your little secret yet?”
My stomach twists. Does my brother know my little secret?
“I’m guessing you haven’t told her,” Mateo continues.
I remain silent.
“About Jocelyn? How she’s pregnant? With your baby?” Mateo laughs, the asshole. How the hell did he find out? He still hangs out with high schoolers despite the fact that he’s almost twenty-one, so I assume someone must’ve told him. “The poor girl.”
My lips grow tighter, but otherwise, I don’t react. Don’t speak. Saying something is admitting it.
Remaining quiet is probably admitting it too.
“Though I guess we can’t call her a poor girl. Your ex is rich, with her fancy house on the mountain and her bigshot lawyer daddy.” Mateo shakes his head. “I’m guessing they’ll hit you with a custody agreement and you’ll have to pay child support, which means your days of playing ball with your friends are gone. There goes your chance to get out of here. You’re stuck. Just like me.”
His words are worse than any blows he could’ve delivered. He knows my goals. My dreams. How badly I want out of this town. How much I want to go to college. My grades are decent. I scored well on the SAT, which was a shock. And I’m an excellent football player. I’ve talked to coaches from a few colleges, and Coach Callahan has encouraged me to chase after a scholarship, which I’ve been trying to do. I’ve turned in my applications already, and my fingers are crossed I get in somewhere. Even Fresno State would be good, though it’s not far.