True (16 page)

“Exactly,” I told her, giving up. Hey, for all I knew, there was complete truth to it. I was overly fascinated by Tyler’s muscles. I just didn’t want to think in those clinical evolutionary terms. I wanted to be a girl and feel giddy and romantic.

There was no danger of me becoming Aunt Molly after all.

I sat between Jayden and Tyler at the table, Easton on Tyler’s left, nervously playing with his cloth napkin.

“Why are there so many forks?” Jayden asked me.

“One is for salad, one is for your dinner, and one is for your dessert.” I pointed to each one as I spoke.

“Whoa.” He looked stressed out.

“Don’t worry about it, U,” Tyler told him. “Just pick one and stick with it if that’s easier.”

“No, no. I can do it right.” He resolutely took the salad fork and started eating his mixed greens from the bowl Susan had placed on his plate.

The meal went a whole lot smoother than I would have expected. Bob and Nancy were chatty people, and they seemed to enjoy peppering the boys with questions. It gave them more options for conversation, because normally they tried to pry a sentence or two from Aunt Molly then gave up. My father looked triumphant as usual when he carved the turkey, having his big-man moment for the year.

Jayden ate every scrap of food on his plate for two courses, earning appreciative comments from Susan and Nancy. “Would you like more mashed potatoes?” Susan asked him as his finger came out and slid across his plate to clean up the gravy.

I knew Tyler hadn’t seen or he would have reprimanded him, but I figured this was probably the best meal of his life, so why ruin it with rules? We had all licked our fingers at one point or another.

Jayden nodded. “Thanks, Mrs. Susan.”

I wasn’t sure where the title had come from, but Susan seemed to take it as a compliment.

Where Jayden was a bottomless pit, Easton wasn’t eating much of anything. Tyler was spending half his time coaxing him to try a bite or two of everything on his plate. Easton slowly licked and chewed the smallest bits it was possible to stab with a fork. They were really glorified crumbs. What he primarily ate was bread and butter, and when the pies appeared, he definitely did not hold back on those. He ate a slice of pumpkin and apple.

He was stuffing a big piece in his mouth when he spoke for the first time since we’d sat down. “Rory made a pie. It was the best ever.”

Aww. How sweet was that? “Thanks.”

“You baked?” Dad asked me. “Where did you find a place to do that at school?”

“At our house,” Jayden said. “Rory cooks for us.”

“Just a couple of times,” I protested because I didn’t want to take more credit than I deserved.

“She’s a great cook,” Tyler said, giving me a smile. It was the kind of smile that said more than words would. It was a smile that reminded me of all that we had shared with each other, both emotionally and physically.

My heart swelled in the warm dining room, happy that I had found someone who understood me. Who appreciated me.

Though Dad and Susan exchanged a look I didn’t like. They looked nervous, both of them.

Probably worried I was going to get pregnant, despite my chat with Susan. Or that my grades were going to slip or something because I was cooking dinner once every ten days. Which was ludicrous. Nothing was going to affect my schoolwork. If I had to sleep less, I would. Because I had always lived on the Dean’s List and I had no intention of falling off it.

Trying not to let their looks ruin anything for me, I suddenly realized that Tyler’s leg was bouncing up and down wildly. His thumb and fingers were drumming on the table, and he kept reaching for his beer before stopping himself. His face looked pinched.

I suddenly realized he wanted to smoke but knew he couldn’t in the house. Or leave the table until someone else did first. He was fighting his nicotine craving in an effort to be polite and make a good impression on my family.

“Are you finished?” I asked, gesturing to his empty dessert plate, only a few crumbs left on it. Jayden was working his way through a second slice of chocolate silk, so I left him alone.

Tyler nodded, so I picked up both my plate and his and stood up. “Tyler and I are going to go for a walk,” I announced. “I need some fresh air.”

He gave me a grateful look as he stood up.

My father looked at me, surprised, but he just nodded. No one else even seemed to notice.

When we stepped outside after depositing the plates in the dishwasher, my fingers buttoning up my coat, Tyler leaned over and kissed me. “You’re the best, you know that?”

“Nope. I had no idea.” I smiled up at him as we started down the driveway in the crisp night air, carrying an empty soft drink can for him to drop the butt in when he was done smoking. Littering was frowned upon in the burbs.

Lighting his cigarette, he took a deep breath and sighed. “Damn, that feels good. I don’t think I realized how much of an addict I am until I had to sit there for two hours. It was distracting and that pissed me off. Maybe I should think about quitting.”

“Obviously if you can do it, you know it would be a good idea for health reasons.”

He took my free hand and made a noncommittal sound. “Your dad is trying. I can see this is hard for him, but he’s trying.”

“Yeah, he’s not used to me having a boyfriend.”

“I don’t think he would care if I was a polo-shirt-wearing guy from an upper-middle-class family. He thinks you can do better.”

“No,” I protested, even though I suspected it was true. But my father didn’t know what a good person Tyler was. “He just needs to adjust to the idea.”

Tyler stopped in front of our neighbor’s house and stared down at me, cupping my cheek. “You can do better. But I’m too selfish to let you go.”

“I don’t want you to let me go. Ever.”

It was as perfect a day as I could have hoped for, and when Tyler left that night with the boys after watching more football, the backseat filled with leftovers packed by Susan, I sat on the couch with Bob and Nancy and cuddled under a throw blanket, perfectly content.

The feeling lasted almost twenty-four hours, until I got the message that Tyler was in jail.

Chapter Sixteen

“Was it worth it?” Dad asked as Susan and I came in through the garage.

We had decided to brave the Black Friday crowds and go out in pursuit of bargains. Mostly things Susan wanted, with me along for the ride. I pulled off my boots and told him, “It was interesting, that’s for sure. Though I fear for humanity.”

“Oh, I already feared for humanity. I don’t need a bunch of shoving shoppers to tell me that.”

“But I got a breadmaker for twenty bucks,” Susan said, looking smug. “And a whole stack of dollar DVDs.”

“Who uses DVDs anymore?” Dad asked her.

She made a face at him. “This from the man who hasn’t bought new towels in twenty years.”

I went to the coffeemaker, cold from walking seventeen miles across various parking lots. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Nathan.

Why would he be texting me? Worried, I tapped my screen to unlock it. I hoped that he and Kylie hadn’t had some long-distance blowout fight and now he wanted advice.

It was worse.

Can you call me? Tyler in jail, need bail $.

Holy shit. My pulse jumped. What stupid thing had they done? Probably got into a fight at a bar or something. Or maybe he had unpaid parking tickets. Horrified at the image of Tyler going through the booking process, I hit the Call button.

“Hey,” Nathan said, answering immediately and sounding breathless. “Can I borrow a hundred bucks to post his bail? It’s one-fifty and all I have is fifty bucks.”

“Yes.” It would put a dent in my bank account, but I had it and that was all that mattered. “What happened? Where are you?”

“I’m at my apartment. How soon can you get here?”

Crap. I turned to see Dad and Susan watching me. I wasn’t going to ask them for a ride back to Cincinnati tonight. That was not going to go over well. At all. Especially given the reason.

“Couple of hours. What’s the charge?” I asked quietly, trying to decide how much I was going to tell the adults in the room.

“Possession of a controlled substance.”

“Possession?” I blurted out in shock, immediately blowing the plan to be vague in front of Dad. “You mean drugs? Holy crap.”

“They were his mom’s, obviously. I’m not sure what exactly happened because I could only talk to him for about sixty seconds, but he said they were out, and he got approached by a cop in a parking lot. He tried to call Riley, but he’s not picking up. I’ve been trying him for the last half hour and I can’t get ahold of him either. I’m going over to the house.”

“Where’s his mom?”

“Who knows? She didn’t get picked up with Tyler so she took off.”

Now that was bizarre. How had he managed to get arrested and not her, when at any given moment she was high? “Well, this was clearly a mistake. We’ll just have to straighten it out.”

Nathan, who had grown up in the same neighborhood as Tyler, sounded dubious. “I don’t know about that. Possession is possession, Rory. You can’t really get out of it.”

“Won’t they run a drug test and see he doesn’t use any?” It seemed to me there had to be a way to prove that the drugs weren’t his.

“I don’t know. Look, just get here as soon as you can. Text me.”

“Okay, sure. Bye.” I took a deep breath and looked at my dad and Susan. I didn’t really have a choice. I was going to have to ask for a ride. “Can I have a ride back to school tonight?”

“What? Why? And why were you talking about drugs?” The vein in my dad’s temple was pulsing.

“You know how I told you Tyler’s mom is a mess? Well, she had a back injury ten years ago and she got hooked on pain pills. It’s gotten worse, and while I’m not sure what exactly happened because Nathan didn’t know, it sounds like she was with Tyler and the cops pulled them over, and I guess there were drugs in the car. So he was arrested even though he has never used any of that stuff, and I have to get down there and bail him out.”

I figured if I didn’t stop for breath, I could get my whole explanation out before he freaked out. It didn’t seem to matter.

“Your boyfriend was arrested for drug possession?” he roared. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. It’s not his fault. He’s totally clean. You saw him. He and his older brother are keeping that house together despite his mom.”

“So you’ve been cooking dinner and hanging out in a house where there is a drug addict? Where there are drugs?” His voice was getting louder.

“She’s never there when I am. And it’s not like there are meth pipes lying around. It’s pills. They’re in her pockets or whatever.”

“Oh my God.” My dad ran his hands through his hair and pushed up his glasses. “I can’t believe you are being so blasé about this. Do you know the risk you’re putting yourself in? I can’t believe this. I’m sick to my stomach.”

He did look ill. But I felt sick myself. Tyler was in jail. Did he not get the significance of that? “Can we talk about this on the drive? I don’t want Tyler there longer than he has to be.”

Dad shook his head, scoffing in disbelief. “Do you honestly expect me to drive you an hour back down there on your holiday weekend home so you can bail out your druggie boyfriend?”

“Don’t be insulting!” I protested. “I just explained the situation to you. It is not Tyler’s fault that his mother has problems. He’s doing the best he can to take care of his brothers.”

“Look, I liked Tyler when we met him yesterday. He seems like a nice kid, and yes, it is admirable that he wants to take care of his brothers. But have you thought about any of this, Rory? What kind of future does he have? Jayden has Down’s and he’s probably going to need to live with Tyler forever. Easton clearly has a different father, and while he seems sweet enough, he could probably benefit from some therapy. All of that is burden enough, none of which I want you taking on, but now you’re telling me that his mother is a complete drug addict? There is no way I want you involved in any of this. Let someone else bail him out.”

“His friend Nathan doesn’t have enough money,” I said through gritted teeth. “His brother isn’t picking up. He’s probably at work. I can’t just leave him there!”

“I’ll drive you,” Susan said.

My father whipped his head around to face her. “No, you won’t! Rory is
my
daughter.”

“Who happens to be twenty years old and wants to do the right thing and help a friend. There is plenty of time to offer your opinion about her safety later.”

“Susan,” Dad said, his voice tight and tense.

Uh-oh. Now they were going to argue over me. Just what I didn’t need.

“Don’t fight, seriously you guys, I don’t want that,” I pleaded. “Can I just borrow the car and go down there? I’ll bring it back tomorrow, I swear.”

My dad clearly grappled with this, but finally he said, “No, I’ll drive you. I don’t want you driving when you’re upset.”

“Thanks, Daddy.” I went to get my purse and coat.

“Rory?”

“Yeah?” I turned to see him still standing in the kitchen, the skin of his forehead creasing with worry. “Have you thought about the fact that if you were with them, you could be in jail right now, too? It could ruin your life.”

I shivered. I hadn’t thought about that, no. But then again, I hadn’t spent any time around Tyler’s mother. Though I had been with him when he was carrying drugs.

“This isn’t like getting caught with a beer at a college party. Drug possession is serious.”

That’s what Nathan had said. I guess I knew it, but I didn’t want to consider it at the moment. So I just nodded.

***

It was a tense ride back to Cincinnati. We would drive in silence for ten, fifteen minutes, then my dad would suddenly start lecturing.

“Where does she get her drugs?” he asked at one point. “Are there drug dealers popping in and out of that house?”

“No.” Not that I was aware of. “I think she has a friend who gets them for her.”

“Where does she get the money? Is she stealing or prostituting?”

“She spends most of her disability check on the pills.” I actually suspected that the house was in the process of being foreclosed on, because I had seen some papers left on the kitchen table last time I was there, though Tyler hadn’t said anything about it.

He snorted in derision. “Of course she does.”

“I thought you also said we shouldn’t be judgmental of other people’s problems.” Not that I intended to defend her, not really. I hated what she had done to her children because of her addiction.

“Sure. Except that she has jeopardized her sons and now she has potentially jeopardized my daughter. My sympathy for her is dried out. There is a little something called rehab if you want to get help.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t even want to argue with that. These were all thoughts I had had myself about Tyler’s mother. While it was easy to understand how her addiction could have gotten out of control, it wasn’t so easy to understand how she treated her children. Whether or not she was ever physically violent with Jayden and Easton.

The silence lasted again almost twenty minutes, until it was punctured with, “You know no EMT department is going to hire a guy with a prescription-drug conviction. They’ll be afraid he’ll steal half the drugs off the ambulance.”

I looked over at him in the dark, horrified. That had never even occurred to me, but it certainly sounded like a very real possibility. “Oh my God.” My lip started to tremble. I started to cry. “Everything he’s worked so hard for . . .”

Dad seemed to realize his speculation had gone too far. He suddenly hastened to reassure me. “That’s if he’s convicted, that is.”

We pulled into the circle in front of my dorm. “Can you get your bag yourself, or do you need help?” he asked, the air between us awkward.

“I can get it. It’s just a backpack.” I had been planning to spend the weekend in pj’s or the same pair of jeans. I had packed light, not expecting to come back on Friday. My room was going to be lonely, the dorm eerily quiet with everyone gone for the holiday.

“Let me know what’s going on.”

“I will. Thanks, Dad. For everything.”

Then because I was me, and he was him, we didn’t say anything else. That was as emotive as we seemed to be capable of, and as I got out of the car, I was already texting Nathan to let him know I was back. When I glanced back to wave, I saw Dad was on his phone, too, probably calling Susan to do damage repair.

Nathan said he would be there in ten minutes to pick me up, so I went into my room and unpacked my bag, wishing I had a way to contact Tyler’s brothers myself. I was worried about them.

Mostly, though, I was worried about Tyler. My main knowledge of prison was gathered from TV and movies, but I didn’t think they were unrealistic in portraying them as depressing and violent. I didn’t want to picture Tyler there, some hulking guy with an attitude shoving him just for the hell of it. Or worse.

After a few minutes of pacing, I went back downstairs to wait in the lobby. When I saw Nathan pull up in Tyler’s car, somehow that only made me feel worse. “We need to go to the money machine,” I told him when I got in. “I didn’t want to ask my dad to stop.”

“What did you tell your dad?” he asked, looking as worried as I felt. His hair wasn’t combed, and he was wearing his sweatshirt backward, the tag sticking out under his chin. He looked like he’d been ripped right out of sleep.

“I told him the truth, as much as I know it. He freaked out, of course, but he’ll get over it.” I hoped. “I’m just glad you answered the phone when Tyler called.” Now that I thought of it, I wondered why he hadn’t called me. Probably because he’d known I was an hour away without a car.

“I was actually sleeping.”

That confirmed my suspicions.

“But for some reason I answered it. Not even sure why I did, but it was a good thing.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yeah. I’ve bailed a person or two out in my time.”

“Do you know what the possible sentence is for something like this if he gets convicted?” I asked. I couldn’t fathom that he would get prison time, but what did I know about it?

“It’s a first-time offense,” he said, pulling in to the bank. “So that’s good.”

That wasn’t exactly answering the question, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it. He took my card and inserted it into the machine, and I gave him my pin. Twenty minutes later we were walking into the lobby of the police station. I stayed close to Nathan, uncomfortable with the sounds and smell and appearance of the place. It was stark and dingy, with apathetic guards and rude desk clerks. Everyone looked miserable, and it smelled like body odor.

I let him handle all the talking and the paperwork and the payment process. Then we waited on a wooden bench for forty-five minutes while Nathan tried to entertain me with jokes from his favorite comedians. I smiled and tried to give him appreciation for his efforts, but the truth was, I felt like throwing up. This was even more alien to me than the suburbs had been to Tyler’s brothers. There was random yelling and psychotic muttering, and the heat didn’t seem to be on. I was huddled in my coat, hands jammed in my pockets, wishing I was anywhere but there. Of course, I knew that meant it had to be ten thousand times worse for Tyler, stuck on the other side.

But finally he was let out through an electronic door and he started toward us.

“Rory!” Immediately he glared at Nathan. “What the fuck is she doing here?”

“I only had fifty bucks, man,” Nathan protested. “She paid the rest of the bail.”

“You didn’t have to bring her here though, you idiot.”

“You’re welcome,” Nathan retorted, clearly irritated.

“Why am I not allowed to be here?” I asked, standing up. “And hello to you, too, by the way.”

“Because you don’t need to be in this shithole.” He took my hand and pulled me close to him, glancing around like he thought someone was going to snatch me and toss me in a cell.

When he hit the front door to open it, he was aggressive and angry, the door bouncing off the wall loudly enough that I glanced back, fearful that someone might yell at him or drag him back to jail. Nathan was walking quickly ahead of us, and we all seemed to have the same desire to get the hell out of there. Tyler was practically dragging me, and I stumbled to keep up.