Love Blind (23 page)

“Why are you doing this? Why did you get these out?” I asked.

“I miss him so much, Kyle. You can't understand. It's like
a piece of me is gone and every morning I wake up and hope it'll be back in place. But it never is. It
never
is. And it takes everything I have to keep going.”

“I know.”

“I'm so tired. I hate that I feel so tired all the time.”

“He was an asshole, Mom. He cheated on you. Disappeared over and over. Bailed on everything that was important to us all the time.”

Sobs wracked her body. She sniffled into my tux shirt. “Why wasn't I enough for him? I didn't care about the cheating. He came back. He always came back.”

Something inside of me snapped. Exhaustion and anger and all the emotions of the night rolled up into a ball of venom in my stomach.

“Yeah. Well, he didn't come back the last time.”

“Why? I needed him. Need him still. Why would he leave us?”

I could
not
listen anymore. “Because I fucking told him not to come back.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What?”

I raked my fingers through my hair. Pulled at it. “I told him to go. I told him never to come back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That last time, when he showed up after being AWOL for four fucking days, I stood at the front door and wouldn't let him in until he promised to pack up his shit and leave for good.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Yes, I did. I told him to go away forever.”

“You were ten,” she cried.

“And he was an asshole. He would have been an asshole when I was thirteen, fifteen, seventeen. It didn't matter. I told him he was ruining you and destroying our family.”

“How could you?”

Accusation and fury lashed out at me. She pushed me away, curled deeper back into the couch. I leaned closer, but she shrank back. Like I was going to go after her. For a second, I realized her flinch was exactly how I must've looked every time some random asshole at school got the notion in his head to beat the crap out of me. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair what she did to me when she yelled. What she did to me when she shut down. Tonight was going to be my night to talk to Hailey. Finally. I shouldn't have had to deal with this.

“Did you know I've never picked a fight with anyone, Mom? You'd know this if you asked about where my black eyes came from instead of making me feel like shit.”

Mom blinked.

“I've come home after being jumped, having the shit kicked out of me, only to have you do it again!”

I'd snapped. And was being a fucking drama queen. But my night had been perfect and in less than five minutes it had gone to hell.

Talk to Mom about Dad
was on my list, but not like this. And
definitely not now with her past all over the room, scribbled on old letters.

“It's not fair for you to come down on me when I get straight fucking As on my report cards! When I'm such a good student they've sent me to the college for half days!”

Mom blinked again and again but said nothing.

“And I come home and let you berate me. Tell me I'm shit, and I'm terrified that if I ever talk back to you, ever try to explain, you'll hole up like you've been doing for a month! It's not fucking fair!”

It wasn't fair that I'd let Mariah go. It wasn't fair that Hailey had such a hold on my heart when I had so much to sort through first. I was worthless to both of them. To everyone, really.

Hailey had deserved better from the beginning, and when Mom broke out into keening sobs, I shut down.

I'd said the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. I'd held on to too many things for too long and they'd all come out in the worst possible way.

Mom jerked as she sobbed into her hands, and I watched. I couldn't even begin to know how to comfort her or even if I should.

I couldn't have Hailey. Couldn't have anything. I didn't deserve it. I'd destroyed my mom's life and ultimately my own. Tears wet my face, and I ran to my room and grabbed all the journals from my drawer. Years of “poor me” and pages of “I
wish I could have Hailey.” I shredded them. Pulling page after page out, ripping piece after piece until nothing was left of my sad, pathetic existence but the undeniable will to disappear altogether.

My arms ached. Mom's sobs had faded. I grabbed my phone from my tux pocket.

Kyle: Can't make it. Sorry.

Hailey might not forgive me for this one, and it was probably better that way. I'd screwed up everything.

I
was pissed because Denny's wasn't a fun place to be at 2 a.m. Okay, so that was only half the reason I was pissed. My hands shook.
Shook.

Did Kyle realize how hard it had been to pick him out of a sea of guys in black tuxes? I mean, there was no way for me not to walk directly toward him 'cause I'd have lost him in the crowd. And then we'd danced, and everything between us had finally fallen into place. His hands were nothing like a friend's hands on me.

I knew we weren't exactly there yet. I had more to work on. Things to make up to him, make me better, more deserving, but I did deserve better than this.

At least two times for sure since Solstice, Kyle had had the words right on the tip of his tongue.
I'm interested in you,
Hailey
. But he'd never let them out. Like there'd been two really good opportunities for him to kiss me, and he hadn't taken them. I understood the almost-kiss on the prom boat, because only a jackhole kisses a girl who isn't his date.

So I guess I had to give him props for that.

But he apparently didn't mind being a jackhole to me, leaving me alone at fucking Denny's.

The minutes slid by, each one scraping into me until too many hours of minutes had gone by for me to sit in the vinyl booth, which was making my ass itch from the heat. And then the text came.

Kyle: Can't make it. Sorry.

Kyle fucking bailed on me. Friend–turned–Maybe-More-Than-Friend Kyle left me at Denny's to deal with the after-bar-closing crowd, feeling like an idiot. I stomped too loud on my way to the door and started home by myself because apparently even nice guys are assholes.

I hated him even more for making me think that maybe, maybe a good guy would put up with my shit, and my eyes, and he . . . blew it.

The dark made it harder to see, and I knew I'd have to visit my eye doctor again. For him to tell me more about pressure and the finer points of my eyesight I'd tried to ignore since I was a kid. Fucking Kyle. It was fucking dark. And then I stopped at a stop sign because I had three more blocks to get home, and I knew the streetlight was out at one, and I did the
unthinkable and called the moms to rescue me.

I was equal amounts pissed and heart-stomped-on. And I had no idea where Kyle and I stood. Again. So I went and found him at school the Monday after prom. Where I knew he'd be. In front of the radio station soundboard.

Leaning against the doorjamb to the studio, I folded my arms. “So.”

His head snapped in my direction, his eyes sunken and shadowed with darkness. “I know I fucked up. I'm sorry.”

What did I do with that?

He pressed a thumb drive together and inserted another one into the computer, furiously tapping the keys and sliding levers on the board.

Every part of the guy who'd held me at prom had morphed into . . . into whatever he was in this moment. A better friend would have sat next to him and begged for insight. Put their arms around him. But I'd been hurt by Kyle. Twice now. I'd pulled him under my wing and tried to help him be better.

God. Who the hell was I to make anyone better? I'd have made out with him on the dance floor, not even thinking about the girlfriend on the sidelines. I'd pushed and nagged at him like his mom had. It was stupid that I was even there.

“Okay, then.” And I stepped back.

Kyle stood and started toward me, defeat lining his features. Whatever moment had tugged us together on that boat had passed. “Sorry,” he whispered, but it was a thin “sorry.”
The word that he knew he should say with none of the feeling to go with it.

He made me feel too much. Care too much. Want too much.

“You know where to find me,” I said before I walked out.

◊ ◊ ◊

After our nonconfrontation, I made sure I didn't see Kyle. It wasn't all that hard with only a few weeks left in school and him half on the college campus already. Mariah gave me a dirty look when I saw her in the hall, so I guessed they'd broken up, but I didn't know for sure, and wasn't going to check.

I didn't totally ignore the fact that Kyle graduated. I sent him an email, because as much as I wanted to walk away from him, I couldn't. And maybe I was going to sound pushy and forceful and exactly how I'd promised myself I wouldn't act around Kyle, but after he bailed on me, I didn't much care.

Kyle—it's bullshit that your voice isn't on the radio. Put it on the damn list and do it next year. No one there knows you. Don't be a mumbling asshole.

Hailey

I
had a summer job. Unbelievably, I'd gotten a job at the library. Last year's volunteering paid off, and
they
called
me
. I didn't even have to apply anywhere else. And with my mom the worst I'd ever seen her, overmedicating and spending so much time on the couch when she wasn't at work, I needed to be out of the house in the worst way. The library was the one thing in the whole shit summer that wasn't terrible.

Okay, one of two things that weren't terrible.

“Kyle, my friend, we need to practice the stick shift,” Pavel said as I was clocking out of the library one afternoon. “You only did it a few times.”

“Thought you could only stand listening to me strip your clutch for so long.” I followed him out to his family VW van in the parking lot.

“No. No. Zig Ziglar says, ‘You can have anything you want in life if you will help enough other people get what they want.' I think I'm not having success finding a lover because I haven't helped you enough. So hop in.”

I slid into the passenger's seat and fastened my seat belt. Probably I wasn't great at driving stick because Pavel drove as if no one else was on the road. He punched it out of the lot and I winced at the squeaking brakes behind us.

“Your hair's different,” I said. Trendy. Cut short on the sides and left long on top. Both Pavel and not, at the same time.

He touched the sides quickly. “All for the ladies. I need to make a new profile picture. For that I needed the kind of hair to make the ladies swoon.”

Of course this would be something he'd read somewhere.

“I don't think your success with the ladies should be contingent on me mastering stick-shift driving. Or your hair, for that matter.”

He smacked me on the shoulder. “But it is. I have found an app.
Cosmopolitan
told me about it. It's called Tinder. All the ladies look for their lovers on this. But so far, they have not wanted to meet. I think maybe it's because I haven't proven myself a good friend to you. So this, and a new avatar, and I'll be in. I know it.”

Jesus.
Pavel
was
a good friend. He was a fucking great friend. I was the shitty one in this relationship. I opened my mouth, but he waved his hand. “No. No. No. None of that.
We're practicing driving, and you'll tell me what happened to Hailey. She's not around anymore. You two are possibly star-crossed lovers?”

“No. Not lovers at all. We could have been. But she met my mom, and that didn't go well.”

Pavel frowned and shifted from second to fifth. The van lurched. “So she has broken your heart because of your mom?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “No. Not exactly. We worked that out, but then there was prom with Mariah and her. And I was a dick to both of them, really.”

Pavel's eyes widened. “Brother. You took two ladies to prom? That's a varsity move in
Cosmopolitan
. I'm proud of you, though maybe you leveled up a bit early?”

I laughed. Nothing seemed like a disaster around Pavel. The van could be on fire and he'd keep going and making the best of it. “Yeah. Probably. I mean, I might have pulled it off. Might have been able to come clean about everything with Hailey, but then I got in a fight with my mom. A really bad one. And I realized . . .”

Downshift back to second. Jesus, I wasn't the only one hard on his clutch. “You realized . . . ?”

“I'm not good enough for her yet. I have the list to finish. And I want to be worthy of her.”

Pavel nodded. “Well, brother, that is admirable, but we are men.
Cosmopolitan
says that men are mostly dumb and it is the
lady's job to help us. I don't think you need to be perfect for Hailey.”

“You're wrong. I do. Because otherwise she won't keep me. She may start out with me and maybe even kiss me, but then when she realizes I'm such a fucking mess, she'll throw me out the door, and I don't think I could take it. Like then maybe the last piece of me will break off.”

“So much poetry. You could be Russian. But this is crap. Because you're doing nothing now, and you have no one anyway. It would be better for you to say something. Apologize for trying to level up with two girls.” He waved vaguely, and the van veered right.

“Maybe. I mean, I did apologize.”

“Then what?” He turned too late into the cemetery parking lot, and the van choked and died. At least we weren't moving anymore.

“Then nothing. She told me I knew where to find her and walked out.”

He shook his head. “You get in your own way, my friend. All the time. She wants you to find her. So we'll find her. Maybe double-date once I have my Tinder lover?”