Page 42 of Ride With Me

WHEN YOU COME BACK

HINSEL MEYER

CHAPTER 1

OLLIE

Insultingbullshit.

That’s what it is. There are no other words to describe what my parents just did.

I’m twenty-seven fucking years old and they actually thought they could forbid me from going out. From getting a job. From finding a way to get out of this suffocating hold they have on me.

I’ve given them too many passes.

It couldn’t have been easy, watching me lose control over my life for so many years. I bet they were terrified from the second the doctor diagnosed me when I was five. It must’ve been scary as fuck, having to go every day to the hospital because that’s where I lived for months on end. It was the only way to ensure they could keep me alive.

So yeah, I understand why they’ve been overprotective.

To a point.

I gave them free passes for every time they wouldn’t let me go to the movies without them, for every time Dad accompanied me to the bathroom on the rare occasions we went out to eat at a restaurant.

I gave them a pass when they wouldn’t leave me alone at night. There always had to be someone with me.

Every second of every day. Never alone.

Not even to shower, sometimes.

I gave them a pass when they wouldn’t let me watch anything online in case there were any flashing lights.

I got that it all came from a good place, from a place of wanting me to be alive to grow up.

But I’ve been doing a lot fucking better for four years now, and now that I’m asking them to let me grow up—which is what all that work was for—they won’t let me.

They took my bike for fuck’s sake.

Because it’s not my bike.

Because I have nothing of my own.

I keep my hand held out with my thumb up, trying to get someone to pull over and give me a ride to... wherever they’re going.

Anywhere is better than the small, idyllic town where everyone knows my parents and everyone has had a lecture on how to treat me. What food and drinks to serve me. What techniques to use if I have a seizure on the sidewalk.

Not one car pulls over, because of course they don’t.

It doesn’t matter.

If I have to walk the ten miles to the next gas station, then I will. I’ve accepted that if I want anything in my life to change, then I’m the one who has to get up and do it.

So even though I’m hitchhiking next to a four-lane highway, I feel better than I did for the past year being safe at home.

My parents let me walk out the door because I didn’t give them a choice, and because they had no idea that the second they refused to let me ride downtown to look for a job at the most popular café, I decided I was moving out and never moving back in.

It would’ve been smarter to get a bus ticket, I know that, but now I’m committed. Besides, there’s absolutely no betterhighway to do this on than this one. From Carmel-by-the-Sea south to LA, there are no better views in the country than the endless Pacific.

The time it will take me to getsomewherewill pass fast enough, I know that. It will also be good thinking time. I have a lot of things to figure out, like...

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