Page 76 of The Significance of Moving On

I lay with my arms folded under my head on the pillow after our latest round of play. Groggily Tally rolls over to rest her cheek on my chest, arm slung over my waist. “I love you,” she says.

My body goes rigid and I shove her off.She loves me?

Her eyes grow alert. “What?”

“Why would you say that? Why would you ruin things by saying that?” I push from the bed, finding my jeans on the floor and scoop them up, pulling them on.

“Why would I say I love you? Because I do.” She bites on her bottom lip, tears wetting her eyes. “Casey, you’re scaring me.”

“Bullshit.” I shake my head while grabbing for my shirt. “It’s all bullshit. I told you at Halloween how I felt about that.”

Tally sucks in a sharp breath.

I can’t even look at her, lost to the final words my brother ever spoke to me.

“Don’t be stupid Casey. Pull your head out of your fucking ass,” he chastised me. “Nothing’s ever getting better, we’re fucking foster kids about to age out of the system, thrown out with the trash because that’s what we are, we’re trash. We got nothing… you hear me? We got nothing. I’m tired of being pulled down by you all the time. Nobody loves us. Mom didn’t love us, we haven’t fucking met a foster family yet that gives a damn about us. Anyone who says they love you is a liar. I can’t keep playing fucking Superman, swooping in to protect you every single time something happens in your life. I’ve got to protect me from now on. Get out and leave me the fuck alone…”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Whoever said there’s a thin line between pleasure and pain certainly couldn’t have known they’d be quoting my life, but here we are. Eighty degrees outside, windows down, wind whipping Tally’s hair, she looks as beautiful as ever, but winter has descended inside this car. She’s tried several times to hold my hand during the ride back but I can’t stand to touch her anymore.

Why does life always have to turn to shit? I’ve tried to be a good man to no avail. The universe keeps punishing me for a transgression that I have no idea what it was.

When we finally reach home, Tal doesn’t open her door right away. Her fingers folded in her lap, she silently cries with her head hanging. Out of habit I run around to open her door. She turns her head to look at me and I know this is it.

My phone pings and I pull it out of my pocket. A voicemail from my boss CJ. He wants me on a job. It’s the perfect escape. Tally and I go inside and I turn to the bedroom, dumping the clothes from the weekend in the hamper, and I pull open my drawers to pack a few things in my overnight bag again. Then I leave. The job is in town, but with Tal living here, I decided in the car to head to one of those cheap pay by the week motels.

Maybe I’m a coward and hiding out, but even if it is my house, and even if she lied to me, I just can’t force her out into the streets, especially with no income anymore. She might be like everyone else now, but I still care for her.

A whole week goes by without me reaching out to her once. She’s called and texted. I’ve ignored them all. D has tried to contact me, he’s been on the avoid list as well. Even Kelsey has blown up my phone relentlessly, at first leaving messages of concern but by the end of the week using words capable of making sailors blush. I wouldn’t kiss my mother with a mouth like that, if I had a mother. But she didn’t love me. Luke reminded me of that.

During the second week of no contact she walks across the stage in her cap and gown, receiving her diploma. I should be sitting in the crowd next to D and Kelsey. It should be my arms holding her at the end of the ceremony but I’m not and they aren’t. Instead, she’ll never know I was here, sitting in the very back of the auditorium and making a quick, quiet escape after she finishes her walk.

But the past finally catches up with me the day after Tal’s graduation. Just finishing up my final job of the day, three bodies stand in pissed off poses in front of the company truck. CJ must have told them where the job was.

“Hey, you are still alive,” Demetrius says in a short tone sounding as pissed off as his posture suggests.

“This isn’t the place,” I say back. “This is my job.”

“This isn’t the place?” Tally asks, sounding more hurt than mad. “You didn’t come home, wouldn’t return my calls, but this isn’t the place.”

God I really am a bastard.

She starts crying and my first reaction is to go to her, to hold her and comfort her, but after one step I stop myself right away.

“You’re an asshole.” Kelsey spits the words, glaring at me with precision laser beams, burning a hole in me, right down to my soul.

She’s right.

“You’re right,” I agree. “I am.”

“I’m moving, Casey. You can have your house back.”

“What?No. I left so you wouldn’t have to.”

“Why? Why would you want me to keep your house?” She wraps her arms protectively around her middle.

Her pain pisses me off—at myself—for wanting to hold her, and I run my hands over my hair rather than doing something stupid like going to her. “How do you not get it?”

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