It took a couple of days for me to work up the courage to approach him. I didn’t want to do it while his entourage surrounded him. I didn’t want to do it when he was in the center of his female fan club. I didn’t want to do it where anyone could overhear what I had to say to him. It was like trying to get close to a celebrity or a member of a popular boy band. Frankly, it was ridiculous that I had to put so much thought into it, that I had to plan out my attack precisely and carefully, but I did, and finally, toward the end of the week, I saw an opportunity.
I was sitting in my AP English class, and I just happened to be gazing out the window that overlooked the front of the school. There was no missing Cable’s long-legged lope as he slipped out the front doors, cigarette dangling from his lips as he headed toward his flashy sports car. It was early in the afternoon, we hadn’t even had lunch yet, and he was leaving for the day. It annoyed me enough that I asked for a bathroom pass and hit the front doors running so I could catch him before he reached his car.
I caught him just as he was opening the driver’s side door. I was winded, sweaty, and more than a little belligerent when I caught up with him. All the carefully constructed concern and gentle censure I’d been working up to vanished. I put a hand on the door and narrowed my eyes at him as he glared at me over the metal and glass that separated us. This close, I noticed he smelled like expensive cologne and marijuana. The cigarette in his mouth wasn’t lit and bounced in irritation between his lips as he snapped, “Can I help you with something?”
His narrowed eyes were bloodshot and his dark eyebrows pulled into a V over his nose. There was a red flush staining his throat and the blade of his cheekbones. He was always ready to snap, but I’d never been close enough to see just how near to the edge he was. Everything about him was sharp, pointed, and dangerous.
I let go of the door and crossed my arms over my chest. I could hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head telling me to walk away, to let sleeping dogs lie, and I could practically see my best friend, Jordan, shaking her head and telling me I had no business bugging Cable about his habits. There was no denying that this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t stop the words that tumbled out of my mouth as we stood there in the world’s most uncomfortable face-off. “My mom was a drug addict.” I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth. “She died a month before I moved here. She overdosed. My dad wanted to start over, to get me away from the loss and pain of losing her, but it never goes away. All of that hurt followed me here, and it will follow the people who love you if you don’t do something about your problem.”
His pinched eyebrows shot up so high on his forehead they almost touched his hairline. “What in the actual fuck? Who are you? Do I even know you?”
It shouldn’t sting that he had no clue who I was, but it did. That was my fault. He looked at me and I looked away. I tried to keep my head down and blend in; all I wanted was to bide my time until I could put Loveless in my rearview. I guess I had done a good job. Our school wasn’t massive, and Loveless was a relatively small town, so even though our paths never crossed and I never engaged, he should still know my name.
“Who I am doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I know what’s going to happen if you don’t get help. You need to talk to someone about whatever it is that you’re using and why. Get in some kind of program, Cable. If you don’t get help, everything you have, everything you love, is going to go away. Addiction takes and takes and keeps on taking. It’s the most greedy and selfish thing in the entire world.” My voice broke a little, and he continued to stare at me like I’d lost my mind . . . which I might’ve. I couldn’t believe I laid all my baggage concerning my mom open at his feet like that, scattered between us, messy and ugly.
“I haven’t ever spoken to you. I don’t know you, and you sure as shit know nothing about me. Who are you to stand here and accuse me of having a drug problem?” I expected fire and fury. What I got was low questions and quiet contemplation as he continued to stare at me with that unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
“I’m someone who lost someone I loved to addiction.” I blinked back the sudden rush of tears that burned in my eyes. “That’s who I am.”
He shook his head and reached up to pluck the cigarette out of his mouth. His sandy hair fell over his forehead, and his dark eyes seemed to get even darker as he did what he did best . . . dismissed me. “Sucks for you, but I’m fine. I have a good time fucking around. None of it is serious, and none of it is a problem. It’s not a big deal, and it definitely isn’t any of your business.”
Whenever I told someone about my mom, I usually got the standard sympathetic look followed by awkward condolences. It was hard to hear she was gone, but it was even more difficult when they realized why she was no longer in my life. We got into a car accident when I was four where she had injured her back. What followed was years and years of addiction to painkillers, followed by an unstoppable addiction to heroin that resulted not only in the loss of our house, but also in her custody of me. Dad left her after her second failed trip to rehab when I was six and fought tooth and nail for full custody of me. He was too nice of a guy to pull me completely out of her life, which is why we stayed in Arizona after they split. After she died, he decided there was nothing for us in Tucson, so he packed us up and moved us to Loveless where his family had spent generations making families and building lives. But, like I told Cable, no place was far enough away from lingering ghosts of the damage from my mom’s addiction.
I spent my entire childhood watching addiction steal my mother away from me, and all this boy could say to me was, ‘sucks for you’? I wasn’t sure how it was remotely possible, but I hated him even more at that moment than I did the moment before.
“You’re not only hurting yourself, Cable. You’re hurting the people who care about you. You should let them help you.” I took a step back and waved him off. “Not that you care about whom you may or may not hurt. From what I can tell, you don’t seem to care about much of anything or anyone.”
He cocked his head to the side. “What’s your name?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“You seem to have some pretty strong opinions about me for someone who won’t even look me in the eye when we pass each other in the hall. You might want to worry a little bit more about you and less about strangers.” He circled a finger in the air in front of me and sneered. “Get a haircut. Go buy some clothes that are from this century. Put on some damn makeup and maybe practice smiling in the mirror. Maybe you should work on yourself before trying to save the rest of the world.”
It took every ounce of self-control I had not to wince. I knew I didn’t spend enough time obsessing over the way I looked or the image I presented to the people who I spent my days actively avoiding. I was too busy doing everything I could to make it out of this town to worry if the wing of my eyeliner was on point or if my jeans were skinny enough. My hair was a few shades lighter than his and straight as an arrow. I kept it chopped in a messy bob so that I didn’t have to do much other than wash and dry it. I wasn’t interested in being a knockout, but that didn’t mean I wanted this boy, or any boy, to give me fashion and makeup advice. I didn’t want him to see me, and I’d never given him, or anyone, a reason to look.
I took a breath and let it out slowly. We stared at each other silently for a long minute until Cable broke the tension by sliding into his open car and dismissing me, the same way he did with everything he deemed unworthy of his time.
Before he had the door closed I told him, honesty and sincerity heavy in my tone, “I hate you, Cable James McCaffrey.” I felt it like a weight in my chest.
Our eyes met through the window as he reached forward to grab the door handle. “Join the club.”
He shut the door, cranked the engine, and peeled out in a shower of gravel. It was so very him and so very disappointing. I don’t know why I expected him to admit he had a problem or what I hoped to accomplish by letting him know he was not alone in hi
s struggle against something that was so much bigger than him. It felt futile and silly after it was all said and done. I’d wanted to help him, and I’d wanted to help my mother back then. My dad warned me about losing myself in lost causes, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Later that night I sent an anonymous email to Cable’s mother after asking my dad to find her work email address for me. She was indirectly my dad’s boss, so he had a million questions in his eyes when he handed it over, but he didn’t ask them. And I didn’t offer any answers. We’d been through so much together he trusted me to steer clear of the things that left wounds that never healed. We’d both been burned, but I couldn’t seem to stay away from the fire.
I warned Cable’s mom that her son was on a perilous path, and if she wanted to save him, she better intervene on his behalf. It was reckless and crazy, but I couldn’t let it go.
She never responded, but Cable wasn’t in school the following few days, and rumors started to swirl that his parents were pulling him out of school and shipping him off to a prestigious boarding school in Europe.
I was breathing easier, patting myself on the back for making a difference, when something happened that made it clear I’d done too little, too late. That weekend the entire town of Loveless finally stopped pretending its golden boy wasn’t tarnished. They had no choice other than to face the truth because it was a bloody, brutal mess right in front of them. By the end of that weekend, everyone decided they hated Cable James McCaffrey just as much as I did, and I regretted that those were the last words I said to him.
Affton
The day after high school graduation
“YOUR FATHER WORKS for me, doesn’t he, Affton?”
The woman lifted a perfectly groomed eyebrow at me and cocked her head to the side as if she was honestly waiting for me to answer. She knew for a fact that my dad, my uncle, and two of my cousins worked for her and her ex-husband at the brewery and bottling plant which had been in her family for years. I also had an aunt who worked at the McCaffrey grocery store, and my best friend was a waitress at one of the three restaurants they owned. Nearly everyone who lived in this town worked for—or knew someone who worked for—her and her ex-husband, so I thought the question was ridiculous and misleading. I was supposed to be celebrating my freedom and relishing my escape. I was meant to be soaking up the last hours I had with my friends and the last few days I had with my dad. I was not supposed to be pandering to Melanie McCaffrey.
“Yes, ma’am, he sure does.” I forced a smile and fought the urge to roll my eyes.
I had no idea why Cable’s mother had tracked me down almost two full years after I sent her the email clueing her in to her son’s hazardous habits, but here she was. She was standing across the counter from me, waiting for her non-fat latte while she picked me apart with her narrowed gaze. The coffee shop was one of the few businesses in Loveless the McCaffreys didn’t own; however, that didn’t stop my boss from comping her drink, and readily agreeing when she asked if it was okay for me to take five minutes to speak with her. No one bothered to ask if I was okay with it . . . I wasn’t. Sadly, I still had a couple of months left before I left for California. I’d been dreaming about Berkeley since I decided I wanted to go into psychology. It didn’t take . . . well, a psychologist . . . to figure out that I wanted to work with broken people because I’d been raised by one. I was forever searching for answers that no one could give me. Why couldn’t she love me more than her habit? Why wasn’t I enough for her to want to fight it? How could she throw everything away? Wasn’t I enough for her?
I followed the perfectly polished and severely elegant woman to one of the four tiny tables. Love & Lattes was about as far from Starbucks as a coffee shop could get. We didn’t even play the requisite, mellow, college rock. It was all Willie, Waylon, and Johnny Cash. Not that I was complaining. My dad loved classic country, so I was one of the few high school students working here who could sing along to almost every single song. It annoyed the crap out of my coworkers, so obviously I did it during every single shift.
We sat in silence for a long moment. I had no clue what this woman wanted, but everything inside of me screamed it was nothing good. The haves did not lower themselves to mingle with the have-nots without reason. Cable didn’t come out of the womb a user; he learned it somewhere, and I would put good money on that somewhere being at-home with this woman and her equally entitled ex-husband. Mr. McCaffrey was no longer in the picture if the rumor mill was to be believed. Cable had a hand in that as well. Apparently his parent’s already strained relationship couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to save their son.
Melanie tapped her manicured nails on the side of her cup and lowered her eyelashes so she was looking down at the table and not at me. “I know you’re the one who sent me the email about my son before the incident.”
I blinked, and then blinked again a little faster. No one talked about the incident. Not unless they wanted to be run out of town and ostracized. No one brought up the incident when one of the McCaffreys was within earshot. The whole family had done their very best to erase the incident from the town’s memory. The incident was nothing more than whispers in shadows and rumors bandied about after too many drinks. No one wanted to bring down the wrath of the McCaffreys, and no one wanted to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the incident would never have happened if someone, anyone, had reined in Cable or intervened on his behalf.
I fidgeted nervously across from the woman who could end my father’s livelihood with a single phone call and wished I had listened to him all along and not borrowed trouble. “That was a long time ago. I thought I could help.”
Cable’s mom cleared her throat delicately and lifted her eyes back to mine. “You were the only person in this entire town who even noticed Cable needed help. Everyone else was too busy trying to please him or wanting to be exactly like him, so much so that they encouraged his behavior. His father wasn’t around much to notice one way or the other. And I’m ashamed to say I was so consumed with worry that my former husband wasn’t around, that I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t do my most important job. I didn’t protect my son.” Her voice cracked slightly, and I watched as her lips tightened and her eyes started to shine. Talking about her lack of parenting skills was a sore spot. It had to be hard to have your failure tied to every single heartbeat and every minute that passed without the person who was supposed to be able to rely on you.
I wanted to be sympathetic. I wanted to be understanding and forgiving, but the place inside of me where all that lived was taken up by resentment and anger. I was too little, too young, to help my mom. But this woman had forever to get a grip on her son before he slipped away, and she hadn’t even tried to reach for him until it was too late. He ran through her fingers like rushing water.
“How did you find out I sent the email?” And why did it matter now . . . two years later? The damage had already been done, and no matter how deep the incident was buried, there was no taking back the consequences of her son’s actions that night. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as alarm buzzed across my skin. “Did I do something wrong? Is that why you brought up my dad?” I was so close to getting out. So close to being someone better than this town let me become, but I would never leave my dad in a lurch. He was all I had.
“When I confronted Cable after I read your email, he mumbled something about ‘that blonde bitch ratting him out.'” Eyes as dark as her son’s softened a little. “I figured it was a classmate. Maybe one of his ex-girlfriends, but he wouldn’t say anything more. He kept telling me he didn’t have any idea who sent the email but he was very upset about it. He was going to a very exclusive, very expensive treatment center the day the incident occurred. I told him if he didn’t go he was going to lose his inheritance, and I would legally bar him from the family trust he gains access to when he’s twenty-one.” She exhaled slowly. “I forced my only child to get help and it blew up in my face. I want to help him for real this time
around, and the only other person who seemed interested in Cable’s well-being was the person behind the email. I hired someone to trace the IP address it came from. Luckily, you haven’t upgraded your computer in the last couple of years, and your father often brags about you. He couldn’t wait to tell me all about what a hard worker you are. And Berkeley, that’s impressive. I went to Stanford.”
I wanted to laugh, but I bit it back. Our computer was old enough that it could be in a museum, and there was no chance it was getting updated until I could afford to get my dad a new one. “Yeah, impressive.” The sarcasm was thick in my voice as I forgot for a hot second that I was speaking with my dad’s boss and the woman who had the means to track me down like it was no big deal.
She made a little sound in her throat and tapped her fingers faster on the side of her cup. She was nervous and agitated. I was surprised she wasn’t trying to hide it. I was the one who should be fidgeting and restless simply because I was sitting across from her. “Cable was released from prison three months ago; he’s been living in a group home for recovering addicts as part of his parole. He gets to leave next week. He’s refusing to come back to Loveless . . . for a lot of reasons. Obviously.”
In the grand scheme of things, eighteen months in prison and three months in a sober-living facility was nothing more than a slap on the wrist. As usual, Cable James McCaffrey came out of a horrific situation mostly unscathed. Nothing stuck to the boy . . . nothing.