I accelerated my Mustang through the streets, careful with the spots I knew cops could be hiding, just waiting for the opportunity to jump on careless drivers. When I was younger, I had been caught once or twice … or ten times. Jason and Luke had been with me most of those times. Then later Ethan joined the gang.
Thinking of them, I remembered Luke’s call yesterday morning.
“She’s here,” Luke told me.
The first thing on my mind was if she was still beautiful, but I pushed her image away. “And?”
Luke tsked. “She kicked me out of her house. Said I should stay away while she’s in town.”
“Sorry, man.” It was the only thing I could say.
Furious with myself, I punched the wheel. I entered West Main Street and slowed down considerably. This place was the cops preferred hangout.
From a distance, I saw someone running on the shoulder of the road, a golden dog alongside her. What an odd thing. I had lived here for twenty-three years and had never seen anyone running along this road in the middle of the morning. The girl looked hot, wearing low-rise pants, a cropped white top, and her long hair in a ponytail. As I drove closer, a band tightened in my chest. I knew that dog and I knew that girl. She looked not only hot, but also incredibly beautiful.
The sun filtered through the trees over her head, and her hair shone. The natural golden highlights glittered among her dark blond mane, the same ones everyone had teased weren’t natural. But I knew they were.
I sucked in air, too warm on my lungs, and, almost without thinking, reduced my speed even more. Swallowing hard, I turned my gaze back to the traffic. That didn’t last three seconds. My eyes went back to her, and I could do nothing to stop staring at her.
Holy shit, she had grown. She had gone from hot girl to gorgeous woman. Something old, something dormant stirred in me.
Oh no, no.
A horn sounded, and I snapped out of it, pulling my car back into my lane. Shit. I had been so into her, I almost drove off the road and onto the sidewalk.
Jessica’s head snapped toward the sound, but Luna tugged on the leash, pulling her to the side and into a subdivision.
I pulled over and watched as she ran away from me. A fight against the will to go after her ensued in me, and I had to say, I was almost losing. She looked too beautiful in that bra top and those tight pants. I could tell my mind she was dead to me, but my body was reacting in a whole different way.
I inhaled deeply and let my head rest on my seat. When I grabbed the steering wheel, I saw my hands shaking. Damn it.
Besides being now super late for work, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get Jessica out of my head. Her presence here, and inside my mind, would mess with everything, with all my progress.
I punched the wheel again, as if the action would calm me down.
So much for staying out of her way.
***
Jessica
Mama’s hand slid into my own, holding tight, as we walked down the corridor. The white walls, the white furniture, the white dressed doctors, it made me dizzy, more than the antiseptic smell that clouded the air.
“Relax, honey.” Mama squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one who held a locked steel box inside her heart with all the rage and frustration and disappointment Papa was part of.
As soon as we entered his room, I knew that box would explode, and I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want to deal with those feelings yet. I didn’t want to deal with those feelings at all.
I closed my eyes for a second and reminded myself why I was here. For Mama. It was because of Mama.
At the door, we stopped briefly.
Mama turned to me. “Ready?”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
She opened the door and I stepped inside. My father was sleeping in the bed in the center of the room, wires and IVs hooked up to his arms and chest. He looked vulnerable and thin. His black hair was almost gone, and his skin was pale.
My eyes filled with tears. I knew cancer patients practically faded away in the terminal stages, but I didn’t expect to see him so weak. Not yet. He had never, ever been weak. Exactly the opposite. He had raised my brother and me with a firm hand and lots of discipline.
Though I knew he loved me growing up, it wasn’t easy.
“Where do you think you’re going dressed like that, young lady?” he asked each time I wore what I had considered normal clothes: fitted jeans or short skirts or V-neck tops. To him, my clothes should be loose and the skirts had to cover my knees.
At some point, it became a game. I dressed the way he wanted me to, until I was out the door. I always had a change of clothes inside my purse or in the tree house or in my locker. I ditched the baggy shirts and dressed like other girls my age.
Another issue was boys. Oh, gosh, if Papa caught a boy staring at me, poor guy. He would hear it for the next century, which was part of the reason Jason’s friends were wary of coming into the same room as me. When we were younger, it was okay. We were innocent kids, just playing around. But once we grew up, once I was a teenager, it all changed. Papa gave them all a hard time.
With Jason, Papa complained about the bikes, the races, the leather jackets, the bandanas, and the parties.
“Don’t you think it’s time you sold that motorcycle and grew up?” he asked Jason almost every day. It didn’t matter if he was only seventeen and still a boy. To Papa, he should already be a responsible man, like he was at his age.
Deep down, I knew Papa meant well. He wanted the best for us, even if his views and values were a little outdated. However, his views and values had gotten us in the situation we were now.
Mama put her hand on my shoulder, making me focus on the helpless man in the bed, the weak man hooked up to machines to keep him alive.
It was sad how the life of someone so energetic could change so suddenly and radically.
“He’s been sleeping more and more,” Mama said.
I opened my mouth to ask her something when a nurse stepped into the room. “Good afternoon.”
“Hi, Debbie,” Mama greeted her. Of course, she probably knew the name of every nurse and doctor and employee in the hospital. “How’s he doing?”
“Sleeping most of the time,” the nurse said, walking to my father’s bed. “He woke up only a couple of times, complained about pain and the food, and slept again.”
Mama chuckled. Even when dying, Papa complained about the food. The only food he ever ate without complaint was Mama’s. In fact, he even complimented her cooking a couple of times, which was a lot coming from him.
“We’ll stay a little, if that’s okay?”
The nurse smiled. “Sure.” She checked his monitors and whatever else and then left.
I looked around the small room, uncomfortable with the situation, uncomfortable with being here, with Papa. I sat on the worn sofa along the wall. “What do you do when you’re here?”
Mama sat beside me. “Just keep him company and pray he’ll wake up and remember me, so we can talk a little.”
“He forgets you?”
She nodded, her tired eyes on me. “Yes. His mind is not the same. It’s a miracle when he remembers anything at all.”
That was so sad. Sad and alarming.
“So, he doesn’t remember me? And, uh, about our past?”
She averted her eyes and sighed. “When he remembers things, that’s the first one on his list.”
Did I really have any hopes he wouldn’t remember any of it? More importantly, did I want him to forget? To him, I was guilty. To me, he was guilty. Even if he wasn’t dying and we had all the time in the world, we would never fix this.
***
“Whose car is that?”
Mama drove the truck into our driveway and parked beside a white Mazda. She spied at the window. “I don’t know.”
I exited the truck and walked around it, just as two people exited the other car. Two girls. My girls.