Bittersweet Chronicles: Pax (10 page)

“That must have been rough.”

“You get used to it.” She shrugs, passing over the tragedy of her childhood like she always does.

If I’d been raised like she was, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bitter jerk—but not Carly. It’s as if there’s this light inside her that shines on everything around and makes it look bright and warm no matter how gritty and dark it might actually be. I can already feel myself being drawn into orbit around that light, and it’s frightening and exhilarating at the same time.

When we hit the outskirts of town, Carly points at the exit sign. “Oh, can we go by my dorm? I want to check in with my roommate and pick up some more stuff.”

“Sure thing,” I tell her as I turn off and head toward campus. “You’re the boss.” And truer words might never have been spoken.

It’s after six when Carly and I pull up to my condo. Vaughn is already back from Birmingham, his rental car parked out front.

“Yo, Vaughn!” I call as I walk in. “We’re back.”

“Hey,” he grunts from the sofa, where he’s collapsed in front of Sports Center with a beer. “How’d it go?”

“Smooth as silk. I’m in possession of a manila envelope with some sort of flash drive in it, and at nine, I have to go deliver it to Lagazo.”

I keep walking back toward the bedrooms to deposit Carly’s duffel bag in the guest room. Vaughn and I have been taking turns on the sofa. It’s not great, but it works.

“Carls,” Vaughn says as Carly shoves his legs off the sofa and sits down next to him. “My mom wants you to call her. She says she’s getting you a plane ticket for Thanksgiving break and needs to know your class schedule.”

Carly looks surprised. “She wants me to come to Portland for Thanksgiving?”

Vaughn looks at her like she’s insane. “Well, yeah. Where the hell else would you go?”

“I don’t know,” she mutters. “I just figured I’d stay here.”

Vaughn sits up and gets a rare serious look on his face. “Carls. We’re your family. I know we couldn’t be there enough when you were younger. Your dad…” He runs a hand across his jaw. “It was tough. But we’re here for you now, and you’re part of our family. Thanksgiving, Christmas, summers. You’d better plan on spending them in Portland because my mom won’t put up with not seeing you. If you don’t go there, she’ll come here. And trust me—you do not want that.”

I laugh because Vaughn’s mom is a lot like my mom—not many filters—and you’re always better off just giving them their way.

“Okay,” Carly says, and I see the smile she’s trying to hide. “I think I can do that. I’ll call her in a bit.”

“Good,” Vaughn says, returning his attention to Sports Center. “We’re going to get things settled for you, and you’re going to have a great time in college the way you should.”

Carly just nods her head and swallows, her eyes shiny.

“Oh, and speaking of calling—I tried to call you twice, dude. Is your phone dead?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, reaching into my pocket to check it. “No, I had the ringer off. Sorry, man.”

I look at the screen and see that I have four missed calls and a voicemail from my dad. Pretty unusual. Maybe he’s worried about how the money exchange went. I texted to tell him that I’d paid off Lagazo, but we haven’t talked since then.

“Looks like my old man’s been trying to get ahold of me,” I tell Vaughn as I walk to the patio door. “I’d better give him a call.”

“Maybe we can go out and find some seafood after you’re done,” Vaughn says. “Then I’ll head over to the strip club with you.”

“Deal,” I tell him as I slide the door open and step out to the patio.

The ocean breeze is damp, and the waves are dying down as the tide pulls out. I take a deep breath of the salty air and sit down to watch a dog playing fetch with its owner. It’s a big Labrador retriever like the one I grew up with, and I can’t help but smile at how enthusiastic it is while it chases after the stick over and over. It’s sort of like each time it expects that the stick will have turned into a steak, so it keeps chasing it just on the off chance. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what my pursuit of music has become: me chasing after the same damn stick that’ll never turn into a steak no matter how many times I go after it.

I sigh and turn my phone back over in my hand. It always takes me a few minutes to get up the energy to call home. The pressure I feel to give in and go visit is tough. Even when they don’t bring it up, I know they’re thinking about it. I’ve tried Skyping and sending lots of pictures of my place, selfies, and even pics of me with friends, but all of that will never be enough for my mom. She misses me with a fierceness only Tammy Clark could exhibit, and things in her world will never be right until I’m in her arms again, whereas things in my world will never be right until I’ve proven I have enough talent to achieve what my dad did the same
way
he did—on my own.

I press “call back” on the phone screen and wait for someone to answer.

My dad picks up immediately. “Pax?”

“Yeah. Hey, Dad. I saw that you called. What’s going on?”
      “You didn’t listen to my message?”

“No, sorry. Are you busy? I can call back.”

“Son, there’s been an accident,” he says, his voice heavy.

“What? Are you okay? What happened?” My heart races and my mind is aflood with the horrible possibilities.
Please don’t let it be Mom and Lyric. Please
.

“Your mom and Lyric were driving home from the beach house. They stayed there for a couple of days to close it up for the season. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but your mom says the brakes went out. They were on the coast highway and there wasn’t anywhere she could pull off safely. She ended up just turning into a parking lot at a beach and letting the car plow into a big lamppost. She didn’t want to hurt someone else and she didn’t know how else to get the car to stop. She’s conscious but with a broken arm and some bruises.”

My heart falls into my stomach, and I sit, speechless, staring at the now empty beach, unable to move. Deep inside me, something rips loose and works its way up into my throat, where it feels like I might choke on it.

“Lyric?” I whisper.

“Pax,” he says, his voice drenched in regret and sorrow, “Lyric hit her head. She hasn’t woken up yet.”

Part III

It’s almost two a.m. and I’m on the highway halfway to Birmingham when the call comes. I pull over onto the shoulder, my heart throbbing in time to the windshield wipers as they sluice rain off the glass.

I grip the phone tightly then place it to my ear. “Hello?” I say.

The voices that carry over the miles rip through me and I am relieved yet crushingly disappointed at the same moment. The prayers answered. The hopes dashed.

My little sister is alive. She is conscious. She is going to be fine. I speak to both her and my mother, and then his voice comes back on the line.

He says only four words to me: “Are you still coming?”

I pause, knowing what my answer will be even though I hate it in my very core. “I’ll call you back,” I tell him.

“Okay,” he answers, his voice so thick that he sounds like he’s talking through water. And I know how he must feel right now, because I am choking too. Drowning. In regret, in guilt, in the contradictions tearing my heart to pieces.

“Goodnight, Dad,” I whisper, and then he’s gone, and I’m alone, in the dark, on the side of a road in the rain.

I lean my head against the cold glass of the window, and I do the one thing I haven’t in two long years.

I cry.

**

It’s two forty when I slip back inside the condo. I’m exhausted—the mental stress of the last several hours has stripped me bare, and now, I only want to climb under a blanket and try to forget it all.

“Pax?” It’s a whisper as I walk to the living room

“What are you doing up?” I ask as I turn the corner and see her silhouetted in the moonlight that pours in through the sliding glass doors.

Outside, I can hear the faint push and pull of the ocean coasting onto the shore and then reversing. It does this ceaselessly, year after year, through births and deaths, wars and peace. It’s all the ocean knows to do, and sometimes, I think I’ve become just like it—trapped in this never-ending cycle of self-denial that gets me nowhere and serves no purpose.

Carly stands from the sofa and walks to where I am. Her hair is loose around the bare skin of her shoulders.

I touch the thin strap of her camisole and quietly ask, “Are you cold?”

“No.” She smiles up at me. “Come sit.”

She pulls me to the sofa, and I sit next to her. She wraps one hand around my biceps and lays her head on my shoulder. As she talks, she gently strokes the skin on the back of my hand, which is resting on my thigh.

“I’m guessing, since you’re back, that Lyric is okay?”

“Yeah,” I answer, exhaustion leaking out of my voice. “She’s going to be fine.”

“I’m so glad,” she tells me, and I can feel how much she means it. “But are
you
okay?”

“I will be,” I tell her.

“It sucks, doesn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“Loving people. Because no matter how much you try, you can’t keep them safe. There are so many things out there in the world just waiting to get the people you love. Bad things, accidental things, things they do to themselves. And every time you love someone, you have to live with knowing that. Knowing that one of those things might come along and take your heart right out of your chest.”

I look down at her and run the backs of my fingers along her silken cheek. “My heart tore tonight,” I say, closing my eyes for a brief moment.

She nods, and her swallow is audible. When she speaks again, her voice is even rougher than normal. “When they found my dad, it hurt so much that I thought something in there really had broken.” She laughs almost silently and shakes her head. “I even went to the doctor and asked him to do some kind of scan. I just knew that, if they could see inside my chest, they could tell me what was shredded.”

“What did he say? The doctor, I mean?”

“He said that I should think about taking antidepressants and get some counseling.”

“Did you?” I ask even though I know what her answer will be.

“No. I just got up the next morning and went to work, then drove over to the college and signed up for classes. Then I went back to the apartment we’d been living in, and I took all of his things and I carried them out to the dumpster and tossed them.”

“And you’ve been running ever since,” I finish for her.

She looks up at me, and I see just how sad this girl truly is. It’s in her eyes, the way her lips press together, and the piece of hair that falls across her cheek.

I tuck it behind her ear. “I’ve spent two years running, Carly. I know what you’re going through. I know what it feels like to leave your heart someplace like that dumpster and try to run from it.”

“Where’s your heart?” she asks, tilting her head down so I can’t see her eyes.

I place one finger under her chin and lift it back up so she has to see me and I have to see her. “Portland,” I answer. “My heart is in Portland.”

“Is she beautiful?” She licks those gorgeous lips and I feel the tension spill out of my body, something like normal moving in for the first time in hours—maybe days.

“Who?” I ask, confused.

“Your girlfriend—in Portland.”

I can’t help but laugh. “No, no. There’s no girlfriend. Did you think I’ve been cheating on my girlfriend?”

She drops her head a bit.

“No girlfriend, Carly. There’s my family. My parents, my sister, all the people I’ve grown up around.”

“And they’re your heart?” she asks, leaning into me more now.

“They’re my heart,” I whisper, dipping my head to capture her lips in the briefest, most delicate kiss, all the while thinking that there’s a little piece of my heart sitting right in front of me too.

“Lucky them.”

“No,” I tell her before I kiss her again. “Lucky me.”

Our kiss heats quickly and I pull away, struggling with the combination of too many emotions and too much stimulation. “I want you.” My voice is gruff and needy. “But now’s not the time or the place.”

“Ssshh,” she shushes me. “You’ve been through a lot today. Let me make it better like you did for me yesterday.”

She presses me back against the sofa and kneels on the floor in front of me. I run my fingers through her hair. “You don’t need to do that. Just come sit with me for a few minutes then you can go to bed.”

Her dark eyes glow in the moonlight from the windows. “I want to take care of you Pax. Let me.”

She slowly and deliberately unbuttons my pants and lowers the zipper. I lean my head back, close my eyes and try to gather up the energy to fight her on this, but I’m so tired, and everything she does feels so right. When she has me bare to her touch she strokes up and down my shaft, her small hand wrapped around me with the perfect amount of pressure.

“God, Carly.” I run her hair through my fingers over and over.

She lowers her head and takes the tip of my cock into her mouth, her tongue circling it. My balls draw up and I have to hold her head for a moment so she won’t move. She pauses, but then is back at it, taking as much of me into her mouth as she can and fisting the base. She sets a rhythm that picks up pace as I get harder and harder. Before long my hips are thrusting in time with her mouth and I feel my balls harden almost painfully.

“Baby, I’m gonna’…” I pull on her hair and she plunges me into her mouth so deep I think I might never come out. Then I’m pulsing into her throat, over and over, her hot wet mouth sucking every bit of it from me before she sits back on her heels and gently kisses the tip of my cock before tucking it back in my pants.

I reach down and lift her onto my lap, kissing her on the mouth first, then the neck and cheek. “You didn’t need to do that,” I tell her as I run my palm over her breast, feeling her hard nipples.

“I wanted to. Didn’t you like it?”
      “Seriously?” I look at her, one eyebrow raised. She smiles.

“Then don’t complain,” she reprimands.

I put my hands up palms out. “No complaints here, not a single one. Ever.”