Page 89 of Avenged

It had surprised Dad as much as me the first time it had happened. He’d stared at his hand and then grabbed the rest of his bottle and stormed off to his bedroom. I’d sat in the kitchen and cried. Cried for Mom, and Dad, and me, and Violet. Violet, who would never really get to know the mom we’d had. The woman who’d taken everything we did and turned it into a game or a story.

I hit dial before I thought it through. I hit dial and then crossed my fingers like I was six, praying he’d answer. But when he did, I almost wished he hadn’t, because his voice was full of all the remorse and self-loathing I’d feared he’d be feeling.

“Jers, I can’t really do this right now.”

This…breaking up. Telling me to leave. Telling me what I already knew—that he regretted it. I held back my tears and choked out, “We need to talk.”

Silence on his end continued to stab into my unprotected soul. The one I’d uncovered just for him.

“We do. But…” His voice deepened with his own wave of emotions. “I have to figure out things with Dawson first.”

I got that. Dawson came first for him, just like Violet came first for me. Even if we’d had a choice about it, I knew we both would have made the same decision. Our siblings were more than our responsibility. They were our worlds. They were everything that made us who we were and everything we needed to be.

And yet, it still tore another hole inside me to hear him say it.

“I understand. It’s just—”

“I can’t do this right now,” he said, the bitterness in his voice so not the man I knew. Directed at me or directed at him, it didn’t matter. I wanted to cry. Our beautiful day, our beautiful night, had turned into more loss and guilt. When would I learn? When would I learn that I took everything good and turned it to ash?

I was just as responsible for this as I was for destroying Ana Perez.

My silence seemed to hit him, because his next word was softer. “Jersey—”

But I didn’t let him finish this time. “We can talk later.”

I hung up, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door, texting Violet as I walked, trying to see the letters and words through the tears blurring my eyes but that I refused to let fall.

ME: I’ll be at the bookstore. Why don’t you and Jada come and get the rest of my festival tickets?

VIOLET: Wait! Why do you have tickets left?

So many reasons…ones I wasn’t ready to share with her.

ME: It rained, remember?

VIOLET: Right. But why can’t you use them today? Truck is still off.

ME: He got called into work.

Which wasn’t a lie. He had been called to the base. But it wasn’t my place to tell the story of Dawson’s arrest. I didn’t know the whole story, just like I didn’t know the full story of Dawson at all. I’d been so absorbed in my own past that I hadn’t bothered to ask Truck about his. About Dawson. If I had, maybe I could have just stayed away and let them be. Maybe I could have said no from the very beginning when he’d asked to marry me for all the wrong reasons.

VIOLET: That bites.

ME: I’ll be at the store.

VIOLET: See you soon. Love you.

ME: Love you, too.

Wil was surprised to see me, but I told him I needed the hours and he should go enjoy the festival with his family. He accepted it and left with a wave and a smile I had a hard time returning. I sat down at the counter, staring out at the ocean and the sunshine filtering in the windows, lighting up the dust motes and making me think of the stars that had shown the night before as we’d sailed back to port.

I’d been wrapped in Truck’s arms then. I’d felt safe. Wanted. I’d felt hope. I’d seen a future for myself I’d never seen before. But I should have known it was really just a sweet dream. A dream that, like everything else I touched, I turned into a nightmare. I pulled my sketchbook out of my purse, opening it to the picture I’d drawn of Truck. It hurt to look at it. The beauty of that moment before it had been torn apart. The picture wasn’t right. There was something missing. I turned to a new page and lost myself in the scratch of my pencil on the paper. I lost myself in the smooth lines and shadows. In the memories and the touch.

The bell on the door rang, but I didn’t really register it until a hand touched mine. I jumped and looked up to see Violet staring at the picture I’d drawn.

“Holy shit!” she said.

I slammed the sketchpad shut.

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