But his daughter needs me.
I almost groan.
The messiness of this will never stop making my head spin.
“I’m happy we spoke,” I tell him. “Maybe we can do it again, eh?”
He glances over, nodding. “Maybe, Aaron. Yeah.”
I return his nod and then step from the car, watching as his old rusty car rumbles its way down the street.
Then I turn, a tight sensation of guilt in my gut, to go and find his daughter.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Billie
“Spare any change?” the homeless man asks, staring up from a pile of blankets on the ground.
I look at him, shaking my head. But I hardly see him.
I hardly saw the street while walking down here, or the trees, or the grass, or anything but my dad’s car across the street. Or the way Aaron stared down at me when I was pathetically hiding in the footwell.
“I’m sorry. Really. But I haven’t got any cash on me.”
I keep walking, but then I hear the man stand up behind me. “I guess the pop star is too good for me now.”
The voice slams into me, accompanied by innumerable hate-filled memories from high school.
I spin and study him more closely. He’s tall like I remember, but his neat jock’s hair has grown long and scraggly around his chin. His eyes are red pits. His body fills out his ragged shirt and his dirty jeans, still with that football-player build.
“Clay?”
“In the flesh.” He grins, swaggering forward, bringing the stench of sweat and liquor with him. “What are the chances of this? I didn’t know you lived around these parts. I guess Miss Pop Star really made it.”
My cheeks warm, and I take a step back. I wish he still didn’t do this to me. I’m almost twenty. High school was nearly two years ago. But as he stares at me, it’s like I’m the one in the dirty clothes, living on the street. He makes me feel so small.
“I don’t have any change,” I snap. “Goodbye.”
“Now hang on a second.”
He rushes around me, blocking my path.
The park is empty except for us and a lady walking her dog on the very far side, and it doesn’t look like she’s going to help me.
“Aren’t you going to ask how the coolest, most handsome, most talented guy in high school ended up here?”
I am curious, but that would mean talking to him longer than I want to.
Which means talking to him longer than a couple of seconds.
“Can you please get out of my way?”
“Injured my goddamn leg, didn’t I?” he snaps, and I realize he might be drunk. His words slur towards the end. “Pulled a ligament, so there went college. There went any chance of a scholarship. You know what my old man did when he found out I wasn’t going to be a football star? He kicked me out, no lie.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and there’s some genuine truth in it.
This man bullied me, humiliated me, but it’s not as though I want to throw a party now that he’s fallen into such a state.
But he ruins any empathy I might’ve had when he steps forward, raising his hand as if he’s going to touch me.
I shrink away.
“What?” He laughs harshly. “I seem to remember an eager little – or shall we say not-so-little – girl drooling over the thought of being with me. I’ll be the first to admit I probably haven’t got a lot to offer a woman these days, but you? You’ll take what you can get.”
“Clay, I’m sorry you’ve ended up this way. I’m sorry you got injured. But that doesn’t give you the right to touch me, to make me feel like dirt.”
“Ooh, look at you.” He laughs grimly. “I swear, I was thinking of becoming religious the other day. One of the fellas down at the food bank was telling me about the good word of the Lord. I told him nah, I’m not into that shit… but now, damn, it seems I’ve been sent a gift.”
He darts toward me, his hand going for my arm. I move back again.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
We both turn as Aaron jogs across the park. He stops just short of us, staring down at Clay. “Step away from her. Now.”
Clay backs up, his face draining of color. “This isn’t what it looks like, bro. We’re friends. We knew each other in high school.”
Aaron glances at me, a question in his eyes.
“It’s Clay.”
“Clay as in… that Clay?”
“Hey, I’m famous.”
Clay’s laughter is cut short when Aaron grabs the front of his shirt. Aaron spins him around, lifting him up so Clay’s shoes scrape along the ground.
Clay kicks his legs. Despite being almost as tall as Aaron, he looks like a little kid in my man’s hands.
“If I couldn’t smell the booze on your breath I’d be beating seven shades of shit out of you right now. Billie told me what you did, how you bullied her. And then you see her years later… and what? You think you can still make her feel worthless?”