Leila, whose name was actually Lisa, obviously had been a heroin addict, though the book tried to make her addiction seem harmless and less urgent. I wondered if Jase was trying to protect her by lightly skimming over the facts. She had tried to provide for her sons, but by the time they were teenagers, she was pretty far gone. Her arms were covered in track marks, and she spent most of her money on drugs. There had been a lot of unsavory characters in and out of Jase’s house—we could only imagine what for.
Reading Jase’s book was like reading the story I would’ve written myself if I ever followed Cara’s advice to start a memoir. The entire experience was strange. It was like my memories had come to life, complete with every sensory detail. Each page transported me back to that ugly place in Ohio where Jase and I had been stuck for our entire childhoods.
Yet the idea of the book still made me angry, not grateful. I kept going back to the opening pages before the text, looking for a dedication, but there was nothing. He was going to drag me all the way through my painful past, steal my story, and not even dedicate the damn book to me.
Later that night, Trevor came over with a pizza. We sat at the breakfast bar and ate in awkward silence as I waited for him to bring up our conversation from the night before. He had been begging me to share a part of my past with him for so long, and finally I had opened up to him. But nothing had really changed between us, and now I felt further away from him than I had before.
“So . . . what did you do today?” I asked through a mouthful of food.
“Just PT, then I grabbed some beers with the other assistant coaches. You?”
“Nothing much. Laundry.”
Trevor laid a greasy slice down on his plate and paused. “Emi, are you still feeling emotional about that thing you told me last night?”
That thing? “I opened up to you about some very traumatic things and you’ve barely acknowledged that. You know I hate revisiting my past, and this book I’m reading isn’t helping. So yeah, I’m feeling pretty shitty.”
“What book?” he asked, totally missing the point.
I felt something snap inside of me, and before I knew it, the words were tumbling from my mouth. “I’m reading a book about me, Trevor. My first love wrote a whole book about our childhood, from my perspective, and it’s a huge hit. And now he’s a bestselling author. And you know what? I’m more than just upset about it; I’m fucking devastated and confused because I don’t want to relive those awful memories, and I certainly don’t want anyone else profiting from them.”
He was looking right at me now, his eyes wide with shock. “What the . . . Where the hell did you get this book? Let me see it.” No apology for his insensitivity. No sympathy for what I was going through. Typical Trevor.
“No way.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mostly about my relationship with another guy.”
“If he was from your childhood, weren’t you guys just kids?”
“I mean, I haven’t seen him in twelve years, but our connection was very . . .” I swallowed nervously. “Intense.”
He crossed his arms and gave me a skeptical look. “I’m not going to be jealous of your juvenile relationship, Emi. I just want to know what he wrote about you.”
Suddenly, I regretted telling him about Jase and the book. “Just let me finish reading it. It’s personal, that’s all.”
“The whole world can read it, but your boyfriend can’t?” He rolled his eyes. “That’s bullshit.”
I didn’t respond, and he didn’t push. He wasn’t wrong exactly, but I didn’t need to justify myself. It was personal. If he wanted a copy, he’d have to buy it himself.
We sat in silence as we finished our dinner, then we moved to the couch so Trevor could watch football while I curled up into a ball and continued reading. He assumed his standard position as he slouched against the cushions, his feet kicked up on the coffee table, his hands clasped together behind his head. It struck me that there was something wrong about his casualness. We had just had a fight, yet his body language suggested that nothing had happened. Like he had moved on.
To the untrained eye, we looked like the picture of intimacy, but there was nothing intimate here. Our relationship was lazy. He should have been rubbing my feet, and I should have been practicing full disclosure, but instead we were as far apart as we could be in every sense of the word. It was easier that way.
From All The Roads Between On the way to the foster home in New Clayton, Paula gave me all the pertinent details of my new life. Mr. and Mrs. Keller were in their sixties and had been foster parents for over thirty years. I would be the oldest of five foster kids in their home, which sounded kind of great to me—I loved the idea of having little kids around to play with. By the time we pulled up to the old, yellow, three-story Victorian, I had stars in my eyes. It looked like a dollhouse.
Paula thought the Kellers would be a great match for me, and I couldn’t agree more. I was so excited to meet my new family.
The door opened, revealing a stout woman with heavy frown lines at the corners of her mouth and gray hair permed and styled into a short crop. Mrs. Keller opened the door and then immediately turned around and yelled, “Sophia, up to your room!” Her thunderous voice made me step backward off the porch step. “Leaving already? You just got here.”