Suspicions settle in, and I know just as well as my mother does why he’ll be gone again. Over the weekend, when almost no one is in the office.
No one says anything about anything, though. We’ve splintered off since Henry’s death, cultivating our own lives that consist of as many distractions as possible.
This house is just where we collect our mail.
“Travel safe,” I tell him, his guilty eyes looking at me like he needs to say something.
But I’m gone before he has a chance.
• • •
A long time ago, I realized that it isn’t my responsibility to fix my parents. My father can face the fact, at any time, that Henry would hate knowing how quiet the house is now. No smiles or food fights or watching Mom cry at the same part during White Christmas during our re-watch every single holiday season.
He can face the fact that, while one child is gone, he still has another. That I could be out doing who-knows-what while he’s off in Miami or Austin or Chicago. I could be getting into drugs. Getting pregnant. Getting arrested.
Does he care? If he did, he’d be here.
I used to think it hurts him too much to be in the house, but we could’ve moved. Maybe it hurt him to be around my mother. In that case, he could’ve taken me with him sometimes.
But he just leaves, and it didn’t take long to get the message. Neither of them want this family anymore.
And honestly, I can’t blame them sometimes. What’s the point? You work for years—educating yourself, building, planning, working, loving—and leukemia sweeps through and ravages your ten-year-old son to death.
What’s the point of any of this?
I enter the church, lockers slamming shut in the school hallway behind me. I stop, scanning the room.
She sits right off the aisle, about halfway down the pew, and something swims in my stomach, a small smile spreading my lips.
The truth is…there’s no point to any of this. If being a lifelong Catholic school girl has taught me anything, the idea of heaven is as much of an abhorrence as the idea of hell. Who the fuck wants to be in church forever?
My mother has her shopping and her all-too-important schedule, and my father has another woman, both of them running as fast as they can from themselves, because they now realize there’s no point in denying the sins that keep you feeling alive.
I stalk down the nearly empty row, drop my bag, and look at her. She turns her head, sees me and rises, grabbing her backpack, but I slide into the seat, grab her wrist, and yank her ass back down.
“Sit,” I growl through my teeth, feeling heat rise up my neck as she crashes back into the wooden pew, her jaw flexing.
There’s no point in denying myself any of this. I’m a bitch, but only to her, and only because it feels so good. Fuck it.
“Do something for me?” I ask her, keeping my voice low as students fill the rows around us, and the altar servers light the candles. “Move your ass a little faster than my grandmother down the field this Friday, or is that too much trouble?”
Liv doesn’t look at me, just stares ahead as she lets out a quiet little laugh. “I haul ass down that field.” Relaxing back into her seat, she hangs her elbows over the back of the pew, and her shirt creeps up a little. I spot the switchblade she keeps hooked over the waist of her skirt, but hidden on the inside, that only I seem to know about. So far anyway. She goes on, “I’ll never understand how a princess who can’t pass a ball for shit and brags to anyone who will listen about being a Swiftie,” and she does air quotes, “‘even before she went pop’ is our team captain. Oh, wait. Yes, I do understand. Daddy is useful. When he’s there.”
My father didn’t get me that position. She can think what she likes.
But I grin and turn toward the front of the church, my arm brushing hers.
“Swiftie?” I say. “Aw, you stalk my Twitter.”
That was like four years ago when I said that.
But she just mumbles, “I couldn’t care less about your Twitter and your twenty-eight followers.”
“At least I don’t lose a dozen every day,” I retort.
Yeah, maybe I stalk her Twitter, too. And I don’t have twenty-eight followers. I don’t have as many as her, but it’s more than twenty-eight.
“The world just doesn’t like tattooed feminazis with hairy armpits,” I tell her, my gaze catching the dimple on her cheek as she smirks, “who pass judgments like all the other constipated Captain Americas on social media who act like they really know anything when they’re just angry their life sucks donkey nuts.”
The dimple grows deeper, her matte red lips pursing to keep her amusement at bay. My heart thumps, and for a moment, I can’t look away. Sometimes I get lost, looking at her. The shape of her nose that I’m kind of jealous of. How soft the lobe of her ear looks. The way she chews the corner of her mouth sometimes.
“Is everything okay?” someone says, snapping me out of it.
I turn my head, seeing Megan Martelle standing over us, holding a stack of collection baskets. Her blue eyes flit between Liv and me, knowing very well that this isn’t a friendly conversation, but lucky for her, this isn’t any of her damn business.
“Fine, thanks,” I reply, my tone a big enough hint she’d have to be blind to miss.
But she looks to Liv instead. “Liv?”
Excuse me? It’s not the name. It’s how she says it. Like they know each other.
Liv must give her some gesture or something, because Martelle gives me one last look and then slowly leaves, continuing down the aisle toward the back of the church without another word.
What the hell is she thinking? Does she want to become my next hobby or something?
I reach down and pull my backpack closer before turning my eyes back to Liv to see if she’s watching her leave.
But she’s staring at me instead, amusement in her eyes.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” I demand.
She never loses her cool, and it pisses me off.
But she just replies, “You have a tattoo.”
Her gaze drifts to my hand, and I squeeze my fingers together, covering it. All over again, I feel the needle carve into the inside of my middle finger on my left hand.
Fair enough. I’d mocked tattooed feminazis, an umbrella term I tossed her under, when, in fact, she doesn’t actually have any tattoos. Not even the one of her family’s little Sanoa Bay gang—the snake and hourglass that she wears on a bracelet around her wrist. Her brothers all seem to have it inked on them somewhere.
Her eyes hold mine, maybe waiting for a response or daring me for one, but the light coming in from the stained-glass windows catches the coppery glint of the strands in her dark hair, a lock hanging over her eye as the rest spills around her shoulders. A dozen or so little braids decorate her hair, none of the ends secured with rubber bands. She looks like a warrior girl in one of those futuristic dystopian movies.
And all of a sudden, nothing is hot anymore. It’s just incredibly warm.
I squeeze my fingers tighter, the lines inked on the inside of my finger making the four quarters of an inch on a ruler, very few ever notice the lines, and those who do probably just assume I’ve leaked pen on myself.
Within that inch we are free. One inch.