Chapter 28
It’s my birthday. Nineteen long years on this earth. So far today, I’ve shut my phone off when it wouldn’t stop beeping, got Jamie ready for school, and dropped her off. Next, I’m going to confront my mother. She’s still lying on the couch, where she passed out last night, and staring out the window. But instead of puffy, her eyes are blood shot.
Over the past year, my mother has deteriorated into a stranger. Yet somehow between stuffing the washing machine and filling the crockpot I missed the complete transformation. Or maybe in its daily gradualness I became blind to her full change.
I collapse in the chair next to the couch.
Her eyes don’t leave the window, but she says in a gravelly voice, “I don’t need to hear it right now.”
Happy fucking birthday, Riley.
I shoot out of the chair. “You don’t need to hear it?” My fists clench at my sides. “Well, you’re going to hear it.”
“Riley,” she says weakly.
“No, you need to listen. I cook. I clean. I babysit. I do the damn yard work. Why? Because I know how hard this divorce is for you. And because I’m hoping if you have less to do, you’ll have more time to heal. But you’re not healing! You’re getting worse!” My arms flap out in frustration. “I’m not even sure why you have custody. I take care of Jamie most of the time. You just sit on your ass and stare into space. And now you’ve added drinking to the mix.”
She sits up slowly. Her brown eyes filled with hurt stare at me. “You don’t think I should have custody of Jamie?”
I tell myself to shut up, but the words come out anyway. “I’m not sure. I don’t know what to think anymore.” I walk past her hurt expression. Her sobs come at me in the kitchen. Ignoring them, I open the door to the garage. At the moment, she can cry all she wants. I don’t care.
***
I end up at the skate park. Luckily, when Marcus and I skateboarded in August, I was too lazy to take my board up to my room and threw it in my trunk. I’ve spent two hours trying to do nearly every trick I used to do. I sucked at most of them. Since it’s a cold though sunny November school day, I had the ramps and grid rails to myself. No one witnessed my many wipeouts. Not that I really cared. I was going for mindless, but somewhere in between the multitude of face plants, the truth began to sink in.
I should have never left my mother alone last night. Deep down, I knew that, but I wanted to see Romeo. So I went.
Guilt bubbled up in me until it exploded like a geyser and I went to a bench to get my head together.
Now I sit and face reality while absently rolling the skateboard under my feet.
My mother’s afloat in depression. My sister’s losing her childhood. My father’s getting remarried. And I’m the stitching holding the taters of my family together. But instead of putting my family first, I’ve been selfishly busy lately. With Romeo.
Like a growing drum beat guilt pounds in my head. Boom. Boom. Boom. The guilty echo has me whipping my phone out. I stare at it for several long seconds then force myself to text Romeo.
We can’t see each other anymore.
I slide my phone back into my pocket. The booming guilt abates but a different guilt mixed with sorrow pounds through me. I pull my hoodie tighter around me, lower my chin on my lifted knees, and let the tears fall.
My mother’s broken and now I feel like I’m breaking.
The wind blows. Sorrow flows from me. The sun shines. The bottoms of my sleeves become drenched. Dried leaves pelt me. My heart dries up and threatens to stop beating, but the world keeps turning.
Minutes? Hours? Sometime later, I wipe my eyes one last time then lay my head on my knees.
“Hello Riley.”
My eyes fly open to find Romeo standing in front of me. The tight lines of his face are grooved with weariness. Dressed in a long sleeved thermal shirt and dark green beanie, he looks cold. Remembering the rough feel of it against my cheek, I wonder where his wool coat is. Then I wonder how he found me.
Somehow he reads my thoughts. “Marcus guessed you’d be here.” As his eyes take in my red rimmed ones, he gestures to the bench. “Alright if I sit?”
I nod slowly, drowning in the image of him. He sits close enough for me to reach out and touch him. His harsh profile is beautiful in the bright sunlight. An intensity flows through me and threatens to sweep me into his arms. I want to crawl in his pocket and be a part of his everything. I want him to play me music while my heart melts and drips for him. I imagining lying in his bed and breathing in the smell of him until it fills my lungs and becomes part of me. I want to lose myself within him and never get set free.
Suddenly he scares me in an entirely different way than before, as I finally understand my father’s excuse of being in love. The entire world melts away when I’m with Romeo. There’s just him and me and the overwhelming connection between us.
But even though I’ve been acting like him, I’m not my father.
Falling in love isn’t a free ticket to shit on everyone else and live in a bubble of love.
“I got your text,” he slowly says.
Obviously. I silently build my wall of resolve and wait for the coming blow out.
He turns to me, his dark eyes contrite. “I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have hit Justin, but I won’t let him talk like that about you.”
I blink, realizing he thinks I broke up with him because of him and Justin fighting. “You shouldn’t have hit Justin, but my text wasn’t because of last night.”
His skin whitens. “Then why?”
“I don’t want to…I can’t…”
His entire body stiffens and his eyes pin me to the bench. “Have you been mind fucking me the last two weeks?”
I break our locked gazes. Leaves blow across the sidewalk. The high-pitched crunching scrape is a low whine compared to the roaring in my chest. “No. The last two weeks have been amazing.”
“Then what the hell is going on?”
“I…my family needs me right now.”
“So it’s okay to throw me under the bus and break up with me in a text?” he asks in a condescending tone.
“No, the text thing was not okay. I just…needed to do it at that moment.”
The wind blows and leaves swirl around us while I feel him staring at me and imagine the starkness of his gaze.
“Why are you doing this to us?” he asks hoarsely.
I let out a sigh and finally look at him. The pain etching his face almost breaks my resolve. Almost. “There isn’t enough of me to go around for there to be an us. Nothing else matters when I’m with you. You’re like a drug to me. I always crave more. I feel alive and euphoric when we’re together. I feel free. I feel like the person I always wanted to be.”
The breeze ruffles the locks of hair escaping his hat as thoughts tumble across his eyes. “Riley, we can take things slower.”
A miserable laugh escapes me. “The last two weeks were me taking it slower. Slow and you don’t work with me.”
His gaze moves past me toward the skate board ramps. His jaw is tight. His long musician fingers press into his thighs. Even the posture of his body screams anger, but when he looks at me again, the sorrow in eyes rips through me.
“I’m so sorry,” I gasp while more tears threaten to escape from the well that I thought had dried. “I feel like I’m leaving you standing in the cafeteria, but it’s not like that. This…this is hurting me too. I don’t want to choose, but I can’t be there for them and with you. I just can’t.” I swallow tightly. “Don’t hate me for this.”
He reaches for my hand. “I could never hate you.”
“Please don’t,” I say, tucking my hands in my lap.
“I can wait,” he says so lowly I almost miss the words.
For a second the promise of his words deadens the cold wind and warms me, but shaking my head, the chill blows through me until I feel empty. “That’s not fair to you or to them. My mother’s mental health can’t be tied to the possibility of us. I already resent her. If I hold on to the hope of us and can’t be with you, I’ll end up despising her.”
He stands, paces in front of the bench, and pauses at a tree. Under his shirt, shoulder blades tighten like daggers. He raises a clenched fist at the tree trunk. Fury hangs in the air and reels into the wind until he drops his hand and unclenches it. His entire body rises with a breath as he turns toward me. “So you’re determined there’s no future for us?”
“I’ve become determined to do the right thing,” I say while my fingers curl together. I want to touch him. I want his arms around me. The desire to give and receive comfort nearly overwhelms me.
Several windblown seconds tick by.
“I don’t think you should quit the band,” he says without looking at me.
Strangely, abandoning Luminescent Juliet and drumming doesn’t seem too momentous compared to what’s between Romeo and me. “I have to. My family needs me too much right now.”
He shakes his head. “What about you, Riley? What about the fact that you love to play?”
“I love my family more,” I say simply.
Dark eyes are hollow as he stares at me in silence. The wind grows colder and dry autumn leaves circle us until he takes a huge step and kneels in front of me. I’m caution at his nearness, pressing myself into the bench back but he leans forward. “I understand how much your family means to you. And I respect you for it. I even get why you need to quit the band. Though it’s killing me, I’ll respect your decision about us, but I need to be honest. So I’m only going to say this once.” His gaze holds mine. “I will wait for you.”
Not wanting to hurt him anymore, I shake my head as he stands. Halfway up he bends, gently grasps my face between his callused palms, and kisses me hard. The kiss is searing and desperate and bittersweet. Then his hands and lips release me. “Happy birthday,” he says in a hoarse whisper before walking away.
Tears fill my eyes and longing drills into my chest as I watch him walk away until he’s just a speck then gone.
I let out a shudder into the wind.
This has to be the worst birthday ever.