“Hey, wait.” I grabbed his arm. It was warm and muscular and the touch was electric. When he looked at me, my breath went away. I had never had such an instant attraction to someone and it scared me a little. “I didn’t mean anything. I think you’d make a great rock star. Hell, you already sort of look like one. I like rock stars. Remember?”
He relented a little, giving me half a smile, but not enough to bring out that dimple in his cheek.
“Do you have a car?” I inquired.
He shook his dark head. “I sold it last year to pay for a new guitar.”
“Do you want a ride to the academy?” I offered. I had to pick up Aimee, of course, but she was just down the road. I tried to imagine her reaction when I showed up with Dale Diamond in the car.
I patted the dashboard of my Dodge Dart affectionately. “I know my baby here is old and temperamental, but she’s transportation. I worked all summer at a Dairy Queen to buy her. Four hundred bucks.”
“You got taken.”
I laughed and he rewarded me with a real dimple-making smile.
“So, do you want a ride on Monday?”
“Yeah. That would be great.” He looked down at my hand, still touching his arm. “Hey… can I still call you tonight?”
“If you want to.” I suddenly wanted him to, very much.
“I want to.” He got out of the car.
I didn’t believe in fate. Strange coincidences happened all the time, but it was all just random, nothing we could control. That’s what I told myself as I watched Dale go into the building.
But I didn’t quite believe it anymore.
I heard it before I even got out of the car, and everything inside of me went silent. I sat there for a moment, hating to go inside. Hating him.
I gathered my purse and notebook and opened the car door. I was glad Dale lived somewhere up on the third floor and had already gone in. I didn’t want him to hear this. I didn’t want to hear this. Dried leaves crunched under my feet as I walked toward the apartment building door. There was one lone tree at the side of the building. It looked as lost and forlorn as I felt.
Inside the building it was a little warmer. Just down that short flight of steps and beyond that plain white door, a monster waited. The yelling got louder. I hated coming here every day, to this dingy building, with its rust-colored carpet and peeling walls. I remembered a time when there was a house to come home to, before the stepbeast had lost his longest-running job. Then there was a succession of lost jobs—and this place.
To descend the stairs and go inside would just put me in the middle—again. It was a place I’d been in all my life. I should be used to it. What was it like for Tyler Vincent’s only daughter, Chloe, to come home every day? She was in her last year of high school—just a year behind me, although I was still stuck in school too.
I spun the fantasy out in my head—
She would come home from school, driving her brand-new Mustang, red with black interior, grab herself a snack from the kitchen, talk to her mom for a minute, and then head to her room. On her way, she would peek in and say “hi” to her dad—if his sign, “Do Not Disturb, Madman At Work” wasn’t out, that was. He would be in his studio, writing, strumming his guitar. She would talk with him for a minute, munching on her apple, about her day, about his song, about life in general, give him a peck on the cheek and say, “Oh, Dad!” when he mentioned how old she was beginning to look and how he was going to have to invest in a shotgun and a porch swing soon.
I sat down on the stairs, unable to think anymore through the bitterness or see through my tears. His voice reverberated in my head.
“You can’t do anything! Jesus Christ! Are you that stupid? I can’t hear you!”
My hands pressed against my ears and I hung my head between my knees, feeling weak. You’d think I could get used to it, but it always made my stomach churn and my ears ring.
“What? What did you say? What did you just say to me? Fuck you, bitch! Get your ass over here!” He went on, and he would continue, berating her, making himself feel superior.
I heard my mother’s voice—a little voice, a mouse voice, a scared little-girl voice.
“Honey, you never asked me to do that. I would have, if you’d told me, but you never did.”
No Mom, I thought, shaking my head. Don’t be a hero. Don’t be brave. You won’t get away with it.
“Don’t tell me what I told you! Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, but I—”
CRACK