Page 72 of When I'm Gone

“We can’t have that,” I say with a laugh.

~~~

Hours later, Parker and I are driving with the windows down and the speakers so loud, I’m sure I’ll have hearing damage. We’re covered in glitter, thanks to a very nice girlwe met with sparkling hairspray and body gel that she was kind enough to share. We twinkle in the moonlight as our fingers dance in the wind. My arms are heavily weighed down from elbow to wrist with friendship bracelets we’ve been swapping with fellow concert goers all night long, but one in particular is hiding in my pocket so I didn’t accidentally give it away.

My heart is light. Lighter than it has been in years. Hell, maybe even longer than that. I finally got my brother back, rocky as it is. There’s a whole family that accepts me with open hearts and doesn't judge my weaker moments.

And most amazingly, there’s a boy who looks at me like I make the sun rise. A boy with glacier blue eyes and a dazzling smile that he reserves just for me.

A boy I’d very much like to get home to considering I haven’t seen him since this morning. Brady tore him away to work on the mess of a deck they left in his backyard, so he’s been fairly busy.

“So, what did you think?” Parker asks as he turns the stereo down to a mostly reasonable level.

We sang until we lost our voices, smiled until our cheeks ached and beyond. He knows, but I tell him all the same. “It was incredible. Thank you for taking me.”

He smirks at me. “I knew you’d have a good time. So worth it. I’m going to have to scrub my scalp raw to get all this shit off, though,” he says, gesturing at his hair.

Just picturing Chase’s face when he inevitably touches my hair and comes away as sparkly as a newborn unicorn makes me laugh. “We might have let her get a bit carried away.”

Parker’s deep laugh joins mine. “Just a little bit.”

Headlights from the car behind us shine brightly in the side mirror, prompting me to turn and look. After a double take, I roll my eyes, catching Parker’s attention. “What’s wrong?”

I glance up again, just to be sure, and sigh. “Nothing. You just ever start noticing something everywhere that normally you wouldn’t?” Parker nods, so I keep going. “Well, my thing is that same model of car behind us. I swear I’m seeing them everywhere.”

He hums in consideration. “I feel you. Mine is Saint Bernards. I mentioned one time to Em that I never see them, and I’ve probably seen a dozen since then. The universe is weird.”

“Super weird,” I agree.

The silence grows between us, the comfortable kind where we both just fall into our own thoughts and don’t feel pressured to fill it with chatter. The concert must have really worn him out.

Seattle passes us by slowly as I try to take it all in. It’s a beautiful city, but more than that, it’s the first place I’ve felt remotely comfortable in years. Aaron never let me explore much, and we bounced around too often to ever get attached to any one place. Even when we’d go out to a nice restaurant, the only outing we ever did together, he’d almost always order a car service and make sure I was too busy entertaining him that I didn’t get a proper chance to look around.

I’ve seen more of Seattle in the weeks I’ve been here than I have of anywhere I lived over the past four years. It makes me sad, even disappointed in myself for not noticing what was happening to me. Chase wants me to give myself some grace, he says it all the time, but he didn’t spend years ignoring the constant dread sitting in his stomach like lead.

How small I made myself just for an ounce of approval.

It makes me shudder to even think about it.

Not having to earn someone’s affection is really doing a number on me. It feels like I have to be super aware of every second so I don’t miss a thing, but I’m somehow more relaxed than I know what to do with. It’s also making melook back to six months ago, and feel blindingly embarrassed.

What sucks is I knew better. I saw how the church kept my mom dependent on my dad so she never had any choice but to put up with his rage. She couldn’t leave. How could she when she didn’t have a job? The house and cars weren’t in her name, and I’d bet the same with the bank account.

I used to hear the pastor’s wife talking about submitting to your husband and cringe. I would promise myself that it would never be me, but what I wasn’t prepared for is how fucking gradual it is. No one sits down a potential partner and says, “Hey, I like you and I’d like to take this to the next level by cutting you off from everyone that loves you, and making sure that you can never leave me by manipulating you to sacrifice yourself. That way you don’t even blame me when you have nothing besides this toxic relationship.”

It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, even harder when I still can’t decipher half of what actually happened to me. How many times did I think about reaching out to Brady, even if it was only so he’d have to disown me to my face?

Maybe it was supposed to be this way. Maybe I needed time, perspective and to be a little older before I was ready to see the harsh reality I’d found myself in. Doesn’t really do much for the invasive thought wiggling around in my brain about how different things could have been.

Parker slams on the brakes so suddenly, I can barely get my hands up in time to prevent myself from slamming into the dash. He swears colorfully, while I try to take stock of my surroundings. Literally no one is in front of us, except for the car that nearly made us rear-end them. Maybe an animal was in the road?

As I press a shaky palm to my chest, I find my heart racing. “Fuck, Easton. Are you okay?”

Am I? I think so. Scared, mostly, which is fine. “Fine. Andyou?” The emblem on the back of the car snags my attention, before it takes off at top speed, like they didn’t almost just cause a collision. I wonder if it was the same one that had been behind us. Surely not, just an odd coincidence, I suppose.

He shakes his head, dislodging some of the glitter holding his chestnut hair in place. “Good thing I was paying attention,” he mutters. “That’ll certainly make you keep both hands on the wheel.”

He takes off again, and I swallow the remaining tendrils of fear sending chills down my arms. Near miss, is all. Everything is fine. Parker saw it and nothing bad happened.

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