Take Me On

Chapter 34

West

I’ve never slapped a woman, but the pain that slashed across Haley’s face earlier this evening when I told her I was going home... I felt like I had. My entire body flinches. I hurt Haley tonight. Like I always do, I acted and didn’t think.

I’m on autopilot as I race down the rolling hills of our sprawling gated community. Mansions dot the land every quarter to half mile. Some properties, like my parents’, are practically their own zip code.

Turning, I spot our house and my foot falls off the gas. The house is larger. Somehow even bigger than I remember and I remembered it huge. The towering white columns and white marble stairs are illuminated against the night sky.

It’s massive and for the first time in my life a pit forms in my stomach as I ease into the driveway. It’s not just massive. It’s excessive.

I bypass the attached garage used only by my parents and whip around the back to the structure built for me and my siblings to park our cars. On instinct, I reach for the garage opener attached to my sun visor and a sickening nausea spreads through me as the door opens. Where three cars should be sitting, there’s only one. Ethan’s car looks lonely in the spot to the left. I park the Escalade near the right wall and close my eyes, unable to glance at the empty middle.

That’s where Rachel’s Mustang should be. In fact, that’s where she would be if she’d never been in that accident. The entire garage rings loudly with memories.

At midnight on a Saturday, Mom would be asleep and Rachel would have escaped out the kitchen door to slip in here to work on the cars. She’d be knee-deep in grease and would have sent me a smile the moment I rolled in next to her.

Rougher than I mean to, I push the door open and slam it behind me, doing my best to ignore what’s not there...what I want to be there.

The house is quiet. Dark. With the flick of a switch the lights of the kitchen spring to life. The air from the heater rolls out of the overhead vent and the sound only presses against the silence.

A loaf of bread sits on the counter. A bowlful of apples on the island. The pantry door’s cracked open and a dozen or more boxes of assorted foods pack the shelves. My stomach growls and my hand lowers to stop it. I’ve eaten two meals a day for two weeks. Sometimes one. The meal always small. And here...we throw food out.

“Welcome home.” Ethan leans against the doorframe leading to the foyer.

“Miss me?” I ask casually. I didn’t hear shit from him or any of my brothers.

“I texted and called,” he says. Sometimes it’s hard to look Ethan in the eye. He’s too much the spitting image of Dad. “You didn’t answer.”

It’s a convenient excuse that’s probably true. “My phone died.”

Ethan nods like that explains everything away. “I was worried about you.”

I pause, knowing that means I left Ethan here alone...by himself...worrying not only over our sister, over our mother’s sanity, but also over me. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re a goddamned asshole for leaving. You know that, right?”

“Just an asshole.” I drop my bag, readjust the hat turned backward on my head and open the fridge. “Let’s leave God out of this one.”

Ethan chuckles and the thick tension between us eases.

Ham. Cheese. Milk. Eggs. Leftover spaghetti. My stomach cramps at the thought of eating it all. I grab a chicken leg out of a bowl and start devouring it while swiping a Tupperware container of potato salad. With the chicken in my mouth, I flip off the top of the potato salad, fish a fork out of the drawer, then spike it into the container.

“Hungry?” Ethan asks.

Famished, and my response is scooping a forkful of the salad into my mouth. I sit at the island and Ethan joins me. “Where the hell have you been?”

I shrug and mumble between bites, “Living in my car.”

“Sounds cozy.”

“Fucking Four Seasons.”

I continue to eat and Ethan fills me in on the status of our household, which is the equivalent of saying nothing changed while I was away. Rachel’s still in the hospital. Mom’s still a basket case. Dad’s back at work.

Speaking of work. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” says Ethan.

“Did Dad’s company buy Sillgo?”

“Sleep in your car for two weeks and now you’re coming home a corporate tycoon?”

“Not even close. I remember the paperwork around but don’t remember if the sale went through. Was it Dad’s company that bought it?”

Ethan shrugs. “Dad mentioned something over dinner last year that there were problems with the deal and that someone else might buy it, but I never cared enough to ask what happened. Why?”

“Curious.” Maybe I don’t have anything to be worried about. Maybe Dad isn’t responsible for the destruction of Haley’s family. Even though it’s a shred of hope, it falls short within me.

“Why?” asks Ethan.

“I told you, curious.”

“No, why did you decide to live in your car?”

My gut tightens—too much food too fast. I slow up. “Dad threw me out.”

“Not that why,” he says. “Why didn’t you crash with Jack? Hell, Gavin’s already living there. One more of us there wasn’t going to hurt.”

I move a potato chunk in the container, searching for an answer. Why the fuck didn’t I go to Jack’s with my tail between my legs, begging for a place to stay? I slam the top back on the container, toss it in the fridge and throw the chicken bone into the garbage. “I didn’t need someone else in my face reminding me how I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” says Ethan.

“If that’s true, then tell me why I’m here and Rachel’s not.”

“Because this is your home!”

Home. According to Haley, home meant a safe, warm place to fall. I scan the room as if I’ve never been here before. It’s cold. It’s unwelcoming. Dad was right the night he threw me out. I’ve never felt like I belonged. “It doesn’t seem right. I shouldn’t be here without Rachel.”

I never should have come home. All this luxury, all the excess— I don’t deserve it, especially since Rachel isn’t enjoying a damn thing lying in that hospital.

Ethan lowers his head, and, when he doesn’t say anything, I head into the foyer, then up the winding staircase. My footsteps echo as I climb the steps two at a time.

Rachel’s in the hospital with no comfort on the horizon. Haley offered her soul to me when she thought I had nothing and I hurt her by callously dropping that I get to go home when Haley has no escape from her nightmare. I’ve hurt the two most important girls in my life.

At the top of the stairs, my foot angles to the right, toward my bedroom, but my head turns in the direction of the gravitational pull of Rachel’s room. How many nights have I ended up in there?

All the nights that I felt the guilt creeping up for the sins I had committed. All the nights of being in the middle of a crowded party and suddenly struck by the sensation that I was out of place. All those nights I knocked on Rachel’s door, walked in and found relief in my sister’s easy acceptance.

And there’s the punch in the throat...Rachel always accepted me for who I was...the bad and the downright ugly...and, in my mind, I repaid the debt by protecting her. I stood up for her. I took on fights for her. I made sure she knew she was never alone.

Standing in her doorway, I can’t find the courage to turn on her light. I strain to listen...to hear her soft voice tell me to come in...to tell me that she loves me...to tell me that it’s all going to be okay.

I hear a voice...a whisper in my mind. The voice doesn’t belong to Rachel, but to Haley, and it only reflects the loneliness inside me: “I’d give anything to go home.”

My fingers grip the edges of the doorframe. “Me, too, Haley. Me, too.”