Page 3 of Don't Love Me
“I got this.”
George smiled. “I don’t doubt it, Peanut.”
I walked through the house until I came out the back door. I circled the pool, butIdidn’t see him. Finally, I spotted him on the other side of the fenced-in tennis courts. He was sitting in the grass in his good pants, which George probably wouldn’t like, but I wasn’t going to say anything about that.
He wasn’t crying but I could see streaks of dirt down his face, evidence that, at some point, he had been.
I popped open the top of one can and sat next to him, setting the soda near his hip. Then I popped mine and took a sip.
“I told you to go away,” he said, but I could tell he was tired. Bone weary, George would say.
“I know. But George says you’re hurting and that you didn’t mean it. So I wanted to bring you a soda in case you were thirsty. And if you still want to be mean to me, it’s okay. I can take it.”
He reached down to pick up the can and when he took a sip of the soda, it made me feel like I’d won something.
I didn’t say anything else. Just leaned my back against the fence and sipped my soda. I didn’t tell him that my mom had died. It didn’t seem fair because I was only three when it happened, and didn’t really remember her enough to miss her. It wasn’t like his mom was even dead, but that might have been worse. That she was still alive but he couldn’t be with her.
Eventually the sun started to go down. George would start looking for us soon. “We should go inside,” I said. “You must be hungry.”
After a second, Marc nodded. He stood and offered me his hand. I took it and he yanked hard enough to help me to my feet.
We ate sandwiches in the kitchen with George at the main house. Then George and I walked with Marc down the path to the carriage house. When we showed him to his room, he collapsed on the bed with his shoes on and everything.
I looked up at George and watched him watch his nephew. There were tears in his eyes, so I reached out to grab his hand and squeezed as hard as I could. George squeezed back.
And that was the first day I met Marc.
* * *
Six months later
Marc
I didn’t remember much about the first day I met Ashleigh. I remembered being mad at everyone. I remembered being mean to her. I remembered that my mouth had been so dry because, as much as I hadn’t wanted to cry about leaving my mom, I had.
Then there’d been the taste of grape soda. It’d always been my favorite, and, in that moment with my dry mouth and my head so filled with anger at everyone, it had been cold and sweet.
I’d been grateful. Ash was just a kid, but she’d sat next to me and given me a grape soda even though I’d been mean to her. And she said I could keep being mean to her, which, for the most part, I usually was.
It never seemed to bother her. Even now.
“Stop humming,” I snapped, looking at the back seat. She had buds in her ears, so I shouted it a little louder. “Quit it!”
“Marc, you don’t need to yell at her,” George said as he drove us from Harborview to South Jersey where I was from.
“She’s doing it on purpose,” I accused and gave her my most reviled look so she would know I was mad at her. It was then she took the buds out of her ears.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re humming to the music. Off key. Cut it out.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know. I won’t hum.”
I looked forward out the fancy car window as the scenery of where I now lived flashed by. Big houses, manicured lawns, expensive cars. It was crazy that this was where I’d landed.
About as far away from the twenty-story apartment complex in Heights, New Jersey, as you could get. Ash would see my town for the first time today. She would see how different it was from everything she knew.
“I don’t even know why you came,” I muttered.
