Monday, March 21st
Ronan
“How fucking weird is it to drive past this place and know we’ll never have to go in again?” Shane muses from the driver’s seat of his Jeep. He briefly gazes out the passenger window at the large four-story brick building of our high school, or former high school, I guess.
It’s a quarter to six and Shane and I are on our way to pick up Cat and Tori from softball practice to grab some dinner and spend a couple of hours with them. Well, we’re really picking up Tori from practice because, as I learned only when I dropped Cat off at home after our overdue reunion Saturday, Cat quit the team shortly after I left for Montana.
“I just wasn’t in a place to give it my all,” she told me. “It wasn’t fair to the team, so I quit. But before you start thinking this is your fault, you need to know that it’s not. My heart wasn’t in it.”
Shane and I were supposed to pick up Tori at 5:30, then stop by Cat’s. But Shane and I are running late, and when I texted Cat that we’re behind on time, she let me know she would just walk the ten minutes to school, meet up with Tori, and wait for us there with her.
I nod at Shane. “Really fucking weird,” I say. “Feels like I’m playing hooky.”
Shane chuckles. “Yeah, it’s gotta be especially weird for you because you haven’t actually graduated yet.”
I laugh. “Part of me feels like Mrs. Kavanaugh is going to find me, like, at the gym or at Murphy’s one day and drag me back to school,” I say of the principal.
“Fuck, do you remember when we ditched that one day last year in January and Mrs. Kavanaugh just happened to walk into the same damn pizza place we decided to eat at?” Shane laughs.
I nod with a frown. “Oh boy, do I. She gave you and Steve a total pass and made me and Zack go back to school. Such bullshit; just because you guys were seniors. You know she called my house that afternoon? Totally fucking ratted on me.”
Shane’s eyes snap to me, the color draining from his face. “Oh, shit…”
“Yep,” I say simply.
“Did… did you… I mean…” I know he’s trying to ask if I got in trouble with my mom, if she hurt me.
I grin at him mischievously, shaking my head. “Nope. My mom was asleep when her phone went off downstairs. I obviously saw the school’s number pop up, so I answered the phone pretending to be my dad.” The memory makes me laugh out loud. I may not have deserved a lot of the things my mom did to me, but I also wasn’t—and am still not—the personification of innocence.
Shane laughs throatily. “Did it work?”
“Of course it fucking worked.”
“Of course it did. You do sound a lot like your dad.”
“Yeah?” No one has ever told me I resemble my dad in any way. Most everyone comments on how much I look like my mom. Needless to say, it irks me. Steve was the one who inherited my dad’s most dominant features—the dark hair and eyes. I’m lighter than them; my eyes are the exact same shade of green as my mother’s, and when I was really little my hair was the blondest damn blond—just like my mom’s. It’s darkened as I got older, but it’s still not dark enough if you ask me. And I hate it.
“Yeah. Man, your dad picked up some takeout from Murphy’s one night while you were gone and when I heard him talk to Jack, I thought for a second it was you. But it’s not just your voice; you look a lot like him, too. You have the same jawline.”
I smile. The thought that I don’t take after my mother entirely is comforting. And then I chuckle. “Speaking of my dad”—I shake my head— “I accidentally walked in on him and Penny today.”
Shane’s mouth drops open. “Like, walked in walked in?”
I nod. “When I got back from the gym. In my defense, I wasn’t expecting them to be getting it on in the damn kitchen. At eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh shit.” Shane laughs so loudly, I feel it reverberating in my chest. “Did they notice you?”
“No. The second I realized what the fuck I had just witnessed, I walked back out. I suddenly needed to get some groceries really badly,” I say and join in his laughter.
It was such an awkward moment. I obviously knew being back home and having Penny live with us would take some getting used to, but this sure as hell wasn’t something I ever anticipated. I’d never witnessed my dad be super affectionate with my mother. They’d hug, sure, give each other the occasional kiss when Steve and I were around, but it was never anything like my dad acts around Penny, and definitely not… kitchen sex in the middle of the damn day.
“Man, your poor dad,” Shane says, struggling to compose himself. The image in his head of me catching my dad quite literally with his pants down is apparently pretty fucking funny.
“My poor dad?” I ask him incredulously. “I was the one who wanted to jam a screwdriver into my eye sockets after that, whereas my dad is, like, blissfully unaware.”
“Yeah but think about it. He’s probably about as used to you and Stevie being around all the damn time as you are to having your dad home. He has so much less privacy now. He and Penny probably had sex wherever whenever when he lived in Virginia.”
He has a point, I guess. “Man, let’s just hope he gets used to less privacy quickly, because I’m not sure I’m up for walking in on something like that again,” I groan.
“I mean, maybe he doesn’t have to,” Shane says with a slight shrug.
“Why?”
“Well, Stevie’s for sure moving up to Boston soon, right? Now that you’re back.”
“Uh, yeah, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be at Columbia.”
“Yeah, so… you know, I still have that extra room available at my apartment…” He trails off without looking at me.
“Want me to send my dad and Penny to come live with you?” I ask with a shit-eating grin that Shane readily returns.
“That’s exactly what I was getting at,” he says and chuckles. “But seriously, you know my search for a roomie was totally fake, right?” He slows the Jeep across the street from the softball field, looking for a place to park.
I snort a laugh. “You don’t say. Did you really think I wasn’t picking up on what you were putting down?” Of course I knew Shane was hoping I’d eventually be his roomie—he’s dropped enough hints, after all—but even if I had wanted to, moving in with him obviously wasn’t really an option.
“I thought I was being pretty fucking sly about the whole thing,” Shane says.
He continues talking, but his words no longer register. I see movement all the way on the other side of the street and across the perfectly manicured lawn leading to the softball field. It takes me only a fraction of a second to realize what it is I’m looking at.
I spot Vada on the ground and an imposing figure standing right in front of Cat, whose face has drained of all color. I only see the guy from the back, but I instinctively know who it is. My blood runs cold. Fuck, baby, why aren’t you running? RUN!
The rush of adrenaline shuts down all rational thought. My left hand unbuckles my seatbelt while the right is already shoving the passenger door open.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Shane shouts, grabbing at my sweater when I make to step out of his still-moving car.
I yank my arm out of Shane’s hold and only manage to growl a single word: “Adam!” Then I jump out of the Jeep.