Kendall #3
Nerves were thrashing in my stomach like a pit of snakes, but I painstakingly recounted the message for him.
Saying the words out loud made it worse.
It made them more real. I resented my mom for my childhood, and how she’d let my dad be so horrible to me.
But if I ignored his message and didn’t go and see her…
If something happened, would I regret it for the rest of my life?
“Ah, shit,” he responded, his dark eyebrows drawn together in concern for me. “I’m sorry, Sparkles. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I… I don’t know what to do. My mind’s going a thousand miles a minute right now.”
“Here, switch me,” he suggested, reaching out and taking my keys from my hand.
When he opened the passenger door and stepped out, I realized he wanted to drive.
Feeling weirdly numb, I made my way around the car and slid into the passenger seat so he could.
“We were in the hospital for a while. Do you want to grab some food or something? It might help you think.”
“That would be great,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if I could force down any food that would actually stay in my nervous stomach. “Um, whatever’s around here. I’m not picky.” I wasn’t even in the state of mind to decide something that insignificant at the moment.
Before he pulled out of the parking lot, Rhys fiddled with some buttons on the console screen of my car, and turned on one of my favorite playlists. He scrolled with his finger a bit, until he found a particular song I really loved, from one of my favorite musicals.
“Ah, you seem to really like this one, so…” He trailed off a bit, clearing his throat. “I mean, it’s a nice song. You know, defying gravity or whatever. Maybe it’ll help.”
“A nice song?” I questioned, amused. “This part doesn’t get you all choked up?”
“Well, I never saw it, so…” He gave me a brief side glance as he pulled out onto the main road.
“You’ve never seen Wicked? Wait, you mean you never saw, like, the Broadway play, or you haven’t watched the movie?”
“Neither.”
My mouth fell open a bit, my eyes popping wide. “Rhys! You’ve never seen Wicked!? How is that possible?”
“Ah, I’m not really into… singing, I guess. And I don’t really get what it’s about, anyway.”
“Oh my god. That is blasphemy. You’re watching this movie with me even if I have to duct tape you to the chair.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “We can watch it, okay? You don’t have to restrain me. I mean… you know, unless you want to.”
I smirked, understanding exactly where his mind had gone. “If I tie you up, we probably won’t be watching any movies.”
“Fine with me.”
Well, he’d sufficiently distracted me. At least enough that I wasn’t stuck in the agitated beehive of my own brain.
We ended up driving through a burger place to grab food, parking in their tiny lot to eat it.
“What do you think I should do?” I finally asked him, taking a slurp of the giant Coke I’d gotten. Calories and cholesterol were the absolute last thing on my mind at the moment.
He hesitated, giving me an uneasy look as he shoved another salty fry in his mouth. “Uh… I don’t really know. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but… Do you think you’ll keep feeling bad if you don’t? Like, is it going to stay on your mind?”
I considered it, letting out a heavy exhale. “Probably. I don’t really want to see her, but if I don’t and she… You know, if something really bad happens, then I’ll feel awful.”
“Maybe you could just go and get it over with,” he suggested. “U-unless that would make it worse!” He clarified quickly. “I just don’t want you to feel bad, Sparkles. I hate seeing you look so worried.”
“Yeah,” I finally agreed, after a stretch of silence where I’d been contemplating my options. “Maybe getting it over with is best. Just so I can know how bad it is, I guess. But I…” I paused, pulling one knee up to my chest so I could rest my forehead on it. “I’m kind of scared.”
“Scared of seeing your mom?” He asked.
“Scared of seeing my dad. I don’t know what he’ll do to me when I show up. He’s probably still pissed about that picnic thing.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to let you go by yourself,” he said, sounding incredulous at the very idea. I blinked, surprised by his tone, raising my face to look up at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Kendall, he tried to hit you in front of everyone. I don’t even want to think about what he might do if you were by yourself.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, feeling a bit like a gaping fish. “You wouldn’t mind coming with me to see her?”
“Mind?” He repeated, before shaking his head slightly. “No, what I said is you’re not going anywhere near him without me or my dad with you.”
The protective note in his voice had my heart turning a slow loop in my chest, like a barrel roll on a roller coaster track.
No one had ever sounded like that for me.
Like they’d fight someone for me. Like my safety and wellbeing were so important they couldn’t imagine putting me in harm’s way.
Like I was something precious and delicate they couldn’t imagine being damaged.
I’m in love with you.
It’s what I wanted to say, but it wasn’t the right time. And I wouldn’t want him to think I’d just say it out of gratitude that he’d help me with this terrible situation I’d found myself in. Still, I’d never felt it more than I did at that moment.
“You don’t think he’ll try anything if you’re with me?” I asked, and he let out a surprised little huff of breath. My dad wasn’t a small guy, but he was nowhere near Rhys’ height or musculature.
“He’s not going to lay a finger on you. I can promise you that.”
The idea that he’d be with me changed things. A lot. I was terrified of my dad. I always had been. I knew he would probably still yell at me or snap at me, but… he couldn’t actually hurt me with Rhys around, could he?
I took in a deep breath, wondering what it would be like to face him with a protector at my side. I’d always felt transparent in front of him, like he could just look at me and see inside my head and know all of my thoughts. He’d known what I was before I even had, that I’d liked boys.
Would he be able to look at me and know that I was in love with Rhys? Maybe he wasn’t as all-knowing as he’d seemed in my childhood, since he still seemed to be clinging to the idea that Benji and I had been secretly messing around behind everyone’s back, which had absolutely never been the case.
“Okay,” I finally said. “Do you think maybe we could go today? Now? I just really want to get it over with.”
“Yeah. Of course. Whatever you need.”
“Do you want me to put their address in for you?” I asked, gesturing to the maps app on my car’s screen.
He snorted, giving me an odd look. “I know where your parents live. I picked you up and dropped you off there plenty of times.”
“I didn’t know if you remembered. It’s been a long time.”
It was like a shadow passed over him, his fingers tightening on my steering wheel for a moment. “I should have never left. I was such a fucking idiot.”
“You were never an idiot,” I denied. “You left for your dream. And it didn’t exactly work out, but now you can have a different dream.”
“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “I… I don’t want to leave again. I think I belong here.” He stopped, then let out a shocked laugh tumble out of his mouth. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“It’s a good thing,” I said, unreasonably happy to hear him finally speak it out loud. “And I think you’re right. You’re exactly where you belong.”
With me.