Ever After Drake (11 page)

Good, I’ve got their attention on this
early morning.

I don’t see Drake during our third
period break hour and Mr. Scott informs me at lunch that Drake
suddenly called in a substitute and left right as first period
started.

I text him a few times, asking if he’s
okay. He doesn’t respond.

It takes me clear until I’m headed
home after school to remember the woman who came looking for him
this morning.

What did she want and who was she? And
what could she have said that made him leave so quickly? He
obviously wasn’t sick, and it didn’t seem like some kind of family
emergency since Lake stayed all during first period.

There’s a sinking feeling in the pit
of my stomach that grows heavier and heavier as I get home. But
determined not to jump to any irrational fears before he can come
and explain himself during our date, I go up to my apartment and
start making our dinner.

What I am preparing is complicated and
time consuming which is good for keeping my mind from thinking up
dramatic scenarios. I chop the vegetables, cut the chicken, start
the noodles soaking, fry the ingredients together. I put dessert in
the oven.

And watch the clock tick closer and
closer to six-thirty. I turn the heat down on the stove and let the
food simmer, dump the noodles in the pan. I sit at the bar and
stare at the clock as it ticks down the final two minutes until
Drake is supposed to arrive.

Six-thirty comes. Than
six-thirty-five. Six-fifty.

And just as I am about to put the food
into containers to move to the fridge, there is a knock at the
door.

I don’t know what is coming, but I
feel full of lead and ice as I get up and walk to the door. I pause
for just a moment with my hand on the knob and stare at
it.

How do I know that
something is about to happen? Is it premonition or something
instinctual? Maybe it’s just that extra female sense, the one that
just
knows
.

Finally, I turn the knob and pull the
door open.

Drake stands in the hall, his eyes on
the floor.

His hair is a mess. It stands on end
like he’s been pulling at it. The top three buttons on his shirt
are undone and one sleeve is rolled up to his elbow, the other
hangs open around his wrist.

And his face is pasty
white.

“
Drake?” I
breathe.

Finally, he looks up at me and there
is nothing but sadness and dread in his eyes.

“
What’s happened?” I
ask.

Suddenly his eyes redden and well. I
reach out for his arm and gently pull him inside. I close the door
and lead him to the couch. He sinks down into it with a limp
flop.

I sit on the coffee table, my hands
pressed firmly together between my knees. There’s a rock in my
throat that threatens to suffocate me. And I don’t even know why
it’s there.

“
She kept…” Drake’s voice
cuts out before it even really begins, strangled and hoarse. “She
kept saying she really needed to talk to me. And I kept brushing
her off.” He shakes his head twice. “She…she really did need to
talk to me.”

My body slows and frost starts growing
in my chest. “That woman who came looking for you this morning was
Diana, wasn’t it?”

Drake still doesn’t look at me. He
stares vacantly ahead and nods.

“
We, uh…” he struggles to
speak. “We broke up the second week of August. But…” Three tears
leak out onto his cheek. He presses a fist to his lips and shakes
his head. “Kaylee, I don’t want to tell you this but we…we had sex
a week before that. We used a condom, but…”

More tears leak down his cheeks,
working their way past his closed eyes.

I stop breathing and time seems to
stop.

I’m not good at math, but even I can
put this together.

The beginning of August was roughly
ten weeks ago. She’d been trying to talk to Drake for two or three
weeks now.

“
Diana’s pregnant,” I
whisper. I bite my lower lip, as if I wish I could take back the
words I’ve just spoken and make them untrue. “You’re the
father.”

Drake collapses back into the couch
and his eyes open to stare at the ceiling. He shakes his head. He’s
stark white and looks ready to vomit.

“
Yeah,” he barely gets
out.

Silence is painful. It’s heavy and
suffocating and when no one is saying anything it can let your
imagination torture you.

But silence is what takes the place in
absence of words.

I’m not sure how long we sit there,
saying absolutely nothing. Time ceases to have any
meaning.

But the future, the one we had talked
about so recently, it becomes expertly clear.

Drake is a good man.
He
will
make a
wonderful father. And he will do the right thing. He’ll be a part
of his baby’s life.

And I have no right being a
complication to that.

I hear Drake shift and
look down to see him sitting forward. His forearms rest on his
knees. His eyes are red and puffy. His skin is white with red
splotches. He looks like a wreck. But he still looks like my Drake.
My Drake that I wanted to be my future husband and future father
to
our
future
children.

“
I could kill myself,
Kaylee,” he says, but his voice is little more than a hoarse
whisper. “I promised you things I had
every
intention of keeping. Things I
want so bad I can’t even breathe right now. But…”

“
But you’ve got to make
this right,” I finish for him when he can no longer say the
words.

He swallows hard and his eyes drop to
the floor.

“
I never knew my father,”
I say. It hurts to speak, my throat is so tight. My voice doesn’t
sound like my own. “I literally don’t know his name. And being a
kid without a father is no way to grow up. It isn’t fair. So Drake,
you’ve got to forget about any feelings you may have for me. This
is more important.”

I meet Drake’s eyes again. They well
heavy and not two seconds later, they run down his cheeks again. He
shakes his head and a gut-wrenching sob escapes him. He collapses
forward, his head resting on my chest and his arms wrapping around
my middle.

He may as well have just stabbed a
knife through my heart. It’s been hard enough, keeping it together
these past few moments when all I want to do is cease to exist. But
his touch is the seal of obliteration.

No sounds come from me, unlike Drake,
who sobs loud and hard. I cry silently. I cling hard to Drake, our
frames shaking.

It’s killing me to be near him like
this right now, but I know I’m going to truly die inside the second
I have to let him go.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

I call in a sub for the next two
days.

I stare at the ceiling. I lie in my
bed. I don’t shower or dress. I don’t eat. I don’t breathe or think
or live.

Life isn’t a fairy tale and I’m not a
princess. This isn’t some Hollywood romance where we get a happily
ever after and dreamily float off into the sunset.

What a stupid girl I was.

Thursday night someone knocks and I do
not have the energy or spark to get up and answer it.

“
Kaylee?”

Mom.

“
Kaylee, are you in
there?” She knocks again. She’s quiet for a minute. And then I hear
a hand on the door knob and it squeaks as she turns the handle and
comes inside.

If I was going to let myself drown in
misery, I should have at least locked the door. That way no one
could have walked in and interrupted.

“
Oh, honey,” she says
dramatically. I hear her drop her purse and rush across the
apartment. She kneels beside me on the bed and brushes the hair off
my forehead.

I should be embarrassed and I know I
look bad. A pair of underwear and an oversized sweater are all I’m
wearing. I haven’t touched my hair or face since the bomb of
life-ending destruction was dropped on me.

“
What happened?” she says
quietly.

If I weren’t so emotionally drained
and numb, I’d hear the actual, genuine concern in her voice. I
might have looked up into her eyes and seen the fear
there.

Instead, all I can do is lie there and
continue staring up at the ceiling.

“
Kaylee, what is going
on?” Mom asks again. “Dick said he hasn’t been able to get ahold of
you in a few days, the school says you’ve called in sick. Honey,
what’s the matter?”

“
Drake’s gone,” I say. My
voice sounds weird. Unused. Broken.

“
You two broke
up?”

It takes me a long moment to process
what she’s saying. I blink slowly and look back up at the ceiling.
“More like we exploded.”

Mom doesn’t say anything for a really
long time. She brushes the hair back from my face again. She’s
quiet on the outside, but I can feel the storm of questions and
inability to provide any comfort swirling inside of her.

“
I’m going to be okay,” I
say. My voice is hollow. “I know you have to leave for your trip
today. You can go.”

Her brushing of my hair quickens for a
minute or so. She has no idea how to handle me.

And I’m grateful for that for a while.
For just the smallest of moments, I can focus on feeling angry at
her instead of trying to tell myself not to feel
anything.

“
Call me if you need
anything,” she says quietly. She leans over and presses a kiss to
my forehead and then climbs out of my bed. I hear her retrieve her
purse and cross the room. She pauses in the doorway. And after a
minute or so, I hear the door close.

I flop an arm over my eyes just as the
tears start rolling again.

In the morning, I hurt. I hurt from
not moving for the past sixty plus hours. My stomach hurts from
lack of food. My head hurts from lack of water.

And my heart hurts for obvious
reasons.

First I roll to the side of the bed.
My head spins violently for a minute when I first sit up. My legs
shake slightly when I force them to stand. I stumble my way across
the apartment to the kitchen. I fill a glass and slowly sip at it
until it’s gone. I grab a banana from the counter and choke it
down.

Second I stumble back toward the
bathroom. I turn the shower on, hot as it will go. I strip down,
only now realizing how terrible I smell. I take my time in the
shower. For the first fifteen minutes, I simply stand with my body
and head under the water, letting it run over me. But finally, I
wash my hair, wash my body, and climb out.

Third I force some clothes on my body.
Simple black dress pants, a turquoise button up shirt. I brush my
hair straight back, fix it into a bun, and secure everything with a
thin, black elastic headband.

I don’t have the energy for
makeup.

I stare at myself in the mirror for a
long while. I look tired, empty. I look like a ghost.

With only twenty minutes until first
period starts, I grab my things and go down to the car. It
faithfully carries me to the school parking lot.

I sit in my car for a while. Everyone
mills about so normal. They smile and laugh and tease one another.
They carry on like nothing has happened. Like no one’s world has
just come crashing down on them.

It doesn’t seem fair that they’re
allowed to continue feeling so normal, when my world has been spun
on its head and then smacked with a baseball bat.

Finally, I walk into my classroom just
as the warning bell sounds. I start writing the lesson material on
the board as students start trickling in.

I make the mistake of glancing toward
the door, just as Lake walks in.

His expression is serious, something
it isn’t very often. He has genuine hurt and concern in his eyes.
He takes a few steps toward me and tries to smile. It’s lopsided.
And looks exactly like Drake’s.

I try to smile back, but instead,
tears bite at the back of my eyes. I look back at the board, unable
to look at Lake any longer.

“
So, Miss Ray,” a student
in the seats says. “I heard you and Mr. McCain are hooking
up.”

And the next second I hear flesh
meeting flesh.

I whip around to see another male
student, Chris Tate, half on the floor, half hanging off the side
of his desk, cradling his jaw. Lake scrambles after him, gathering
the front of his shirt in his fist.

“
You shut up about that!”
Lake bellows, raising his fist again.

“
Lake!” I bellow, darting
across the room and grabbing the back of his shirt. “Stop it!
Stop.”

He doesn’t swing, but he’s still got
blood in his eyes as he stares down at Chris.

“
It’s fine,” I say, my
voice shaking just slightly. “Let him go.”