Page 146 of Faking It With the Small-Town Bad Boy

shop just to get a bit of my sanity back.

I head up the porch, every step away from that fridge in the garage

like a painful movement forward. It feels right and wrong at the same

time, my jaw still throbbing from the hit I’ve taken too many times

in the past. I’m just happy my reflexes were under control the whole

time.

There were times when I’d see my mother hit my father, and his

instincts were to strike back twice as hard.

No matter how many times I think I’ve buried my demons, they rear

their ugly heads back up through the soil to show their faces. I need

to pour concrete on their graves and build a wall around that

graveyard that not even I could climb. But just like my father’s

addiction to needles and liquid delusion shooting into his veins, I’m

stuck on a fast track back into the family tradition.

I wipe my face before going inside, taking a minute to myself to

breathe before I face Leah as if nothing has happened. I need to talk

about how great band practice was, and how we have decided on a

setlist for the wedding where there are one or two songs I can come

down to dance with my wedding date. But I find out soon that

burying this secret isn’t going to work.

I’m too on edge to hide it.

There are fourteen vertical railing bars on the porch, four screws in

them each, two at the top and two at the bottom. There are nineteen

boards that make up the base of the porch, six squares to a

windowpane, and four chandelier tubes that hang in the wind,

singing a tune that should put me at ease.

It doesn’t.

Car tires catch sight of a truck speeding down the driveway, kicking

up clouds worse than the rainy season in Rally. Sitting up straight,

my fingertips roll up and down the seams of my denim jeans,

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