She winced.
“My family and friends would never give it to him either; they all hate him.” Nori had said she knew someone who knew someone who could make me a voodoo doll. I hadn’t taken her up on it, but I’d thought about it.
Clara’s expression was still troubled, but she nodded seriously, flicking her gaze around the building quickly, like a good business owner. “Good for you. What a jerk—his mom, I mean. Him too. Especially after how long you were together. What was it? Ten years?”
True. Too true. “Fourteen.”
Clara grimaced just as the door opened and an older couple came in. “Hold on. Let me go help them. I’ll be back.”
I nodded, and I was lingering over my hope that his mom was sweating his career when I happened to glance up to find Jackie staring at me strangely.
Very, very strangely.
But just as soon as we made eye contact, she smiled a little too brightly and looked away.
Huh.
I spent the car ride back to my garage apartment thinking more about everything that had gone wrong in my relationship.
Like I hadn’t already done that enough and sworn not to do it again after almost every time. But some part of me couldn’t move on from it. Maybe because I’d willingly been so blind, and it bothered some subconscious part of myself.
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been signs leading up to his declaration that things weren’t working anymore. The highlight of that final conversation had been when he’d looked at me seriously and said, “You deserve better, Roro. I’m just holding you back from what you really need.”
He’d been fucking right that I deserved better. I had just been in some serious denial back then, asking him to stay, to not give up on fourteen years. Telling him I loved him so much. “Don’t do this,” I’d pleaded in a way that would have horrified my mom.
Yet he had.
With time and distance, I now knew exactly what I’d dodged in the long run. I just hoped my ultra-independent mom would forgive me for having stooped so low to keep someone around who obviously didn’t want to be there. But love could make people do some crazy stuff, apparently. And now I had to live the rest of my life with that shame.
Anyway, done again thinking about it, I followed my navigation carefully back to the garage apartment because I still didn’t have every turn memorized and the driveway to the house wasn’t exactly well marked. A couple nights ago, I’d tried to drive back without it and had gone about a quarter of a mile farther than necessary and had to pull into someone’s driveway to turn around. After that final turn off the dirt road, the crunch of gravel under my tires sang me a song I was slowly becoming familiar with. For one brief moment, it felt like a word started to take shape on my tongue, but the sensation disappeared almost instantly. It was fine.
I frowned as the main house came up through the windshield.
Because sitting on the steps was the Amos kid.
Which wouldn’t have been a big deal—it was a nice day out, especially now that the sun wasn’t directly overhead baking everything under its rays—but he was hunched over, arms crossed over his stomach, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know that there was something wrong with him. I’d seen him yesterday on the deck again, playing video games.
I watched him as I parked my car off to the side of the garage apartment, tucked in as close as I could get it to the building so that his dad wouldn’t be inconvenienced.
I got out, nabbing my purse and thinking about how the man, Mr. Rhodes, didn’t want to be reminded that I was staying here….
But when I got to the other side, the boy had his forehead pressed to his knees, curled into a physical ball about as much as someone who wasn’t a contortionist could be.
Was he okay?
I should leave him alone.
I really should. I’d been lucky not to have gotten busted the day he’d shared aloe vera with me or the other times we’d waved at each other. Leaving them alone was the one thing his dad had asked of me, and the last thing I wanted to do was get kicked out ahead of time and—
The kid made a sound that sounded like pure distress.
Shit.
I took two steps away from the door, two steps closer to the main house, and called out, hesitating and ready to hide around the back of the building if the game warden truck started coming down the driveway. “Hi. You okay?”
Nothing was exactly the response I got.
He didn’t look up or move.
I took another two steps and tried again. “Amos?”
“Fine,” the kid choked out, so raggedly I barely understood him. It sounded like there were tears in his voice. Oh no.
I sidled a little closer. “Usually when someone asks me if I’m okay and I say I’m fine, I’m not fine at all,” I said, hoping he understood I didn’t want to be annoying, but... well… he was curled up in a ball and didn’t sound right.
Been there, done that, but hopefully for very different reasons.
He didn’t move. I wasn’t even positive he was breathing.
“You’re kind of scaring me,” I told him honestly, watching him as fear rose inside of me.
He was breathing. Too loudly, I realized when I took another two steps closer.
He grunted, long and low, and it took him over a minute to finally reply in a voice I still barely understood. “I’m good. Waiting for my dad.”
My uncle had said he was “good” when he’d had kidney stones and had tears streaming down his face while he sat on his recliner, ignoring our pleas to go to the doctor.
My cousin had once said he was “good” when he’d jumped out a moving truck—don’t ask—and had whatever bone consisted of his shin sticking out of his leg as he bawled in pain.
What I should do was mind my own business, turn around, and go inside the garage apartment. I knew that. This stay here was already on a rocky road, even if Mr. Rhodes had been decent and helped me with my dead battery—I still hadn’t gotten the corrosion off, now that I remembered. I needed to do it on my next day off.
Unfortunately, I had never in my life been able to ignore someone in need. Someone in pain. Mostly because I’d had people who hadn’t ignored me when I’d felt those ways.
Instead of following my gut, I took yet another two steps to the teenager who had gone behind his dad’s back and given me the opportunity to stay here in the first place. It’d been a crazy, sneaky thing to do… but I admired him for it, especially if he’d done it to buy a guitar. “Did you eat something bad?”
I was pretty sure he tried to shrug, but he tensed up so violently and grunted so loudly, I wasn’t positive.
“Do you want me to get you something?” I asked, eyeing him closely, alarm still bubbling inside of me at the noises he was making. He had another big, black T-shirt on, dark jeans, and worn, white Vans. None of that was alarming though. Just the shade of his skin was.
“Took Pepto,” he gasped before I swear on my life he whimpered and clutched his stomach closer.
Oh, fuck it. I cut the distance and stopped right in front of him. I’d had the stomach flu more than a few times in my life, and that shit was something, but this… this didn’t seem right. He was scaring me now. “Did you vomit?”