16. Charleigh
SIXTEEN
CHARLEIGH
February 10, 2015
“I have to go.” I smile against Asher’s mouth, dreading having to break away from him.
“No.” He grips the back of my head, keeping my lips pressed against his. He tastes like mint and smells like his favorite body spray.
I kiss Asher again, allowing him to slide his tongue across mine. We’re standing in the middle of the street, several houses down from mine in the bitter February air, and although it’s nearing midnight, I don’t want to leave.
I press my palm against his chest, his heart thrashing beneath blood, bone, and muscle. I moan, feeling my thighs tense, warming as his hands slides down my back. His fingers gingerly lift the edge of my shirt, and goosebumps prickle across my skin.
“Asher,” I mumble. “I really should go. I don’t want my parents to find out that I snuck out. They might come looking for me.”
He pulls back with a heavy sigh. His golden eyes are half closed, and he’s humming with electricity. “Fine.” He curls the corner of his mouth into a smirk, and it takes all my willpower to keep myself from leaning forward and kissing him again.
If I give in, I won’t be able to stop.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come in and stay with you tonight,” he adds.
“That’s okay.” I look down and drag my finger across the back of his hand, holding his in mine. “I get it.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “My mom went out earlier, and I just want to make sure she comes home safely. I’m surprised she went out since she doesn’t get paid for another week.”
Asher texted me earlier asking if I could meet him outside instead of him sneaking into my room as usual. This is one of the only times his mother has decided to walk down the street from her trailer to one of the small bars in our town. Apparently, she only has thirty dollars in her account to last her the next week until she gets paid.
Keeping up with his promise, Asher still managed to come see me tonight before going back home to make sure his mom makes it back safely to her own bed.
“I wish your mom could see what her drinking is doing to you both,” I squeak out, the pain growing in my chest.
“Same.” He pauses before he adds, “But I don’t want to talk about her. I want to give you this.” He digs inside his coat pocket and pulls out a sheet of paper folded into a heart. Not cut but folded. “An early Valentine’s Day gift.”
“What is it?” I ask, my cheeks hurting from how hard I’m grinning.
“Open it,” he whispers, followed by a cloud of his breath. The tip of his nose is bright red, and his bottom lip quivers with the cold, his stare never breaking from the heart.
With shivering hands, I open it. The edge of the paper is frayed, as if it’s been torn from a spiral notebook, but tears sting the back of my eyes when I find myself staring back at mine.
“They’re yours,” he whispers.
“You drew my eyes?” I ask, sniffing. “When?”
“The first time you looked at me.” He chuckles. “Well, the first time you finally looked at me long enough to memorize them and draw them.”
I can’t stop smiling. He’s talking about the day I hid behind the tree when my mother buried her wedding ring. That’s what he must have written down when I watched him. I press the heart to my chest. “I love you.”
“I love you, Little Flower.”
“I thought I was going to have to wait until tomorrow night for my paper heart.” I grin.
Asher chuckles and gives me another kiss.
“Another round of acceptance letters go out soon,” I tell him, nerves getting the better of me.
“And yours will be one of them,” he reassures me. I don’t dive into the conversation any further both out of anxiety and helplessness. There’s nothing I can do but wait, and I know we both need to get home before our parents find us gone.
After giving Asher another long kiss, we both split off in opposite directions. I walk past a few of my neighbors’ houses before finally making it to my own.
My body feels heavy and tired. When I begin the climb up the trellis outside my bedroom window, I think about my father and what impact my leaving will have on his life—if any. He’s always kept a safe distance from me, never growing too close, keeping me at arm’s length. I was supposed to be the dutiful daughter of the highly regarded pharmaceutical CEO. I was supposed to stay within the boundaries he set since the day I was born. The fact my father agreed to my decision to go to NYU is merely a thin veil over the life I live between the four walls of this house.
My acceptance letter can’t come fast enough .
I climb through the window, hoping I can be as graceful as Asher usually is when he comes to visit me every night. I lift my leg and climb over the windowsill, my feet landing softly on the carpet.
I grit my teeth and wince, sliding the window down slowly. It glides quietly, and I sigh with relief, ready to crawl under the sheets of my bed.
When I turn around, I gasp. My hand flies to cover my mouth. The lights in my room are off, but my door is swung wide open, the light from the hallway casting a large glow.
“Dad. You scared me.” I press my palm flat against my chest, catching my breath.
He sits at the edge of my bed, facing the window I just crawled through. My heart plunks into my stomach when I look down and see he’s holding my box of paper hearts in his lap. He doesn’t speak and doesn’t move a single muscle.
I clear my throat. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s in bed, asleep. Where have you been?” His eyes move past me to the window. He’s still clean shaven, his searing blue eyes glistening in the moonlight. A cloud of suspicion rolls through them, turning them a shade darker.
“Um…” I hold my breath and swallow. His face and body are barely covered in the shadow caused by the light in the hallway.
“It’s fine,” he cuts me off. He grips the box, his fingers tightening around the hard edges. “I know you were with him. You don’t need to lie.”
I swallow again, and this time the growing lump in my throat swells. I clasp my hands in front of me, wringing my fingers until I feel my knuckles rolling with the movements. “Dad, I don’t think you understand how much I love Asher.”
“That boy has been trouble for you ever since he stepped into our lives. ”
“How? What did he do to make you hate him this much?”
His jaw ticks as he inhales a deep breath, and his body turns rigid. “His mother has been nothing but a stain on this town, and Asher only enables her. He’s sure to follow in her footsteps. The last people you need to be involved with are Asher and his mother.”
“Dad.” I sigh, exhausted from having to defend Asher to my father. I would never stop defending him despite my father’s reluctance to listen to me. “I’m telling you Asher is nothing like his mother.”
“You have no idea what kind of person his mother is, the messes she creates.”
I knit my eyebrows, confused. What does he mean by the messes she creates? Maybe he’s referring to her addiction to alcohol, but the way his anger is raging like a pot of boiling water, threatening to spill over, I know there’s more to his statement.
“Asher is trash, Charleigh.” He looks up from the box, his eyes focused sharply on me. “I raised you better than this. You won’t go anywhere in life being with a boy like that. He will hold you back, dragging you down to the trailer park with him.”
I bite back the tears welling behind my eyes. “He’s not trash. It’s not his fault his mother is the way she is. Asher’s incredibly smart and ambitious. I really think if you got to know him you would see that.”
I’m begging my father to understand, but I can’t help feeling as if my entire life is about to get sucked out of me.
I keep my mouth shut about Asher moving away from his mother to be with me at NYU. My father is wrong. Asher isn’t dragging me to the trailer park. We’re barreling straight toward the richest city in the country—both of us, together. I consider if sharing that bit of information will make a difference to my father. Probably not. At this point, I don’t think it matters what Asher does. He will always be the poor boy from the trailer park, tainting the Keeler name when, in reality, it’s my father who is bringing shame to our family. The remaining shred of respect I had for him has completely dissolved. There is nothing left between us now.
“What is this?” He lifts the lid of the box, sifting through the small scraps of paper.
My chest twists in pain, watching as my father’s fingers graze every single one of Asher’s words. He moves through them slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. The sickness in my stomach is heavy. My father was digging around my bedroom, searching for any sign that I’m still with Asher. He grabs the flower from my mother’s garden and twists the stem between his fingers. The petal dances in a circle, then bends over. Before, the flower was frozen in time. Now, it looks as if what life it had left has been sucked out by my father’s touch.
He drops the bloom into the box and snaps his head up. “What are these, Charleigh?” He’s yelling now, the veins popping in his swollen neck.
I take a step closer, releasing my hands. My palms sweat and my fingers shake. I’m worried about what he’s going to do with the box.
He stands, noticing me drawing nearer. I stop, not wanting to get any closer to him than necessary.
“I picked the flower in Mom’s garden.” My voice wobbles, a tear already spilling over my lashes and onto my cheek.
“I don’t give a fuck about any stupid flower.” He grits his teeth. “I was asking about the shreds of paper.”
“Those aren’t shreds of paper, Dad. They’re notes from Asher.”
He stands from my bed, still holding the box. He looks down, hiding his face from me, but I know exactly the thoughts going on inside his head. His body is rigid, and if I were to use a color to describe him, it would be red. A deep, dark, frightening red.
I’m still holding my breath, unsure what he’s going to do with the box. My chest twists with pain again, fearing he’s going to toss them in the trash.
At one time, I adored my father. I looked up to him, thinking he was the most intelligent man in the world… but all of that turned to dust when I found out about my father’s infidelity. Most days, it’s hard to even look at him. He has become a man I no longer admire. He became the exact opposite of the person I want to become.
When he looks up from the box, his eyes cloud over like a storm hitting the shore. I know my father will never feel any different about me than he already does. To him, reputation is more important than family. It always will be. Even if his is turning to absolute shit.
Another tear spills down my cheek as my father quickly lifts the box and turns it over. Every piece of paper falls to the floor, scattering across the carpet. Some dart straight to the floor. Others drift in the air like feathers before softly landing on the carpet. He waves his arm in front of him, ensuring every last one is emptied out of the box.
I’m still crying when my father tosses the empty box onto my bed. The dried, damaged flower I picked from the garden is now buried beneath the hundreds of hearts from Asher.
My mouth falls open, and a shuddering sob rattles my chest, breaking it into pieces. I’m unable to look away from the mess my father has created.
“You’ll stop seeing that worthless boy, or you will no longer be a part of this family, and you can say goodbye to your tuition.”
I’m finally able to break my gaze away to stare my father in the eye. My vision is blurred by my tears as he slowly turns around and leaves my room. I fall to my knees, crawling across the carpet in a sobbing mess. I gasp for air, releasing it from my lungs, then breathe in again. Once I’ve reached the pile of hearts, I start shoveling them across the floor with my hands. They’re shaky and unsteady, the reality of my father’s words hitting me. If I don’t leave Asher, I will be left with nothing. But if I choose to leave Asher, I will still be left with nothing.
There is no winning when it comes to my father. In some ways, I think he knows what choice he is giving me. I know he is carving me and molding me to become the person he expects me to be—a hollow human being with no heart. Just like him.
I manage to grab the box off my bed and scoop the hearts back into it. Tears splash onto a few of them, spreading the ink. Asher’s handwriting that makes up each letter of his messages blends, causing some of the words to become small, black ink blots on lined paper.
I swipe my fingers across my cheeks, hoping to not ruin any more of them than I already have. I finally find the flower beneath the pieces of paper and drop it back into the box on top of the hearts, the same as it was before my dad dumped them all out.
After placing the lid back on the box, I climb under the sheets of my bed, hoping they’ll bring me the comfort I need in this moment. Warmth blankets my skin, and I pull the box closer to my chest, wrapping my arms around it.
It’s stupid really, to be clinging to a box. The edges press into my arms, the pain a reminder of what’s inside it. Asher feels trapped in that trailer with his drunk mother; I feel trapped in this house with my disillusioned parents. Secrets and whispers are woven into every surface of this house, holding their breath, waiting for the perfect moment to finally scream.
Just as I did when I was walking home from saying good night to Asher, I think of my mother and how she’s managed to stay married to my father for twenty years. Every plan has been of his design, my mother a silent partner to his demands. If my father wants me to follow in his footsteps, I know I will end up like my mother—empty and alone, a hollow version of the woman she was before she met him. I don’t want to end up like my her, and I sure as hell don’t want to end up like my father.
As the tears begin to dry, and sleep overtakes me, I realize he gave me an ultimatum: leave Asher and go to NYU, or decide to stay with him and risk losing everything I’ve worked for.
The decision isn’t a difficult one to make. Within seconds, I close my eyes, and my world fades to black.