Tate put the Jeep in Park and hopped out, leaving the motor running.
“Look, Tate,” I said, putting up one hand, “I’m not going to fight you anymore. I did what I had to do back there and I’m not apologizing for it, either, but I’m done fighting.”
Tate shook his head and laughed gently. “I’m not here to fight you, man,” he said. “I came to pick the two of you up. Though I gotta admit, I thought you’d be long gone with the tattoo twins by now.”
Bray and I glanced at one another. I was confused.
“No hard feelings,” Tate said. “You were in the right, and I admit it. We shouldn’t have done that without you knowing about it. If it was me, shit, man, I would’ve went off on you too.”
“But it wasn’t you,” I pointed out and then looked toward Caleb sitting in the backseat. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Tate pretended to not understand. His smile transformed into something a bit more apprehensive. He forced a laugh. “What are you taking about?”
I put my back to the Jeep and lowered my voice. “Why did you take the blame for what Caleb did?”
Tate gave up trying to cover for him, sighed, and glanced back at Caleb once. Then he looked back at me.
“Because he’s my brother,” he said. “Caleb has some issues. He’s on parole for some shit that went down back in Miami with a girl. If he gets into any more trouble, he’ll go to jail for a long time. I’m just looking out for my little brother.”
He reached out and patted my shoulder and then lit up a cigarette. “I’ll talk to him,” he added. He put the cigarette between his lips and took a long pull. “It’s about time he and I had a brotherly heart-to-heart anyway. He’s starting to fuck up a lot again.”
I shook my head, resolved to take Bray and go back to Georgia now that I finally got her to somewhat entertain the idea. I looked at her. She looked at me. And then I said to Tate, “Look, I appreciate it, you coming back for us like that, but I think it’s better that we go home.” Bray’s hand tightened around mine and at first I took it as her way of quietly agreeing with me, standing beside my decision, but that wasn’t it at all. She caught my eye and I saw in hers nothing but pleading and refusal.
I tried to ignore it.
“Besides,” I said to Tate, “your brother is unstable. I don’t feel like I can trust him anymore.”
I never trusted him really to begin with, but after what he did last night, what little trust I did have was gone. I now realized that in this particular situation, Bray was almost no better than Caleb. She knew what he had done and didn’t tell anyone, just like Caleb. But I made up excuses for her: She wasn’t on parole. She wasn’t the one who dropped the drugs into everyone’s drinks. She—who was I kidding? Bray was just as much at fault. The only difference was that I loved her.
“Caleb won’t be a problem,” Tate said, trying to change my mind. “Like I said, I’ll talk to him. Shit, I’ve already had it out with him on the way here about what went down. He may be ‘unstable’ and a prick at times, but he always listens to me. And he knows I’ll kick his ass if I have to.”
“Elias?” Bray said softly. “Let’s just go with them. Please.”
I knew it had nothing to do with any of them but everything to do with being afraid to go back home and face what happened. I was going to refuse. I had it settled in my mind that Bray and I were going back to Georgia. Nothing that Tate could say or promise was going to change that.
But then I saw something flicker across Bray’s features just as she let go of my hand and took a half step back. She wasn’t going to go back with me. I knew by that look on her face, that pleading, solemn darkness that had consumed her—if I chose to go back, she would stay with them. I wouldn’t be able to force her. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted to leave me and that it would take everything in her to do it, but there was no way she was going back.
All I wanted to do was protect her.
I had already made up my mind by then to stay, but I wanted to know some things about Tate first, before I openly agreed.
“Why do you care where we go, anyway?” I asked.
Tate smiled and blew out a stream of smoke. “We just like having you around.” He started gesturing with his cigarette hand. “I have to go back to work in a week. I had almost a full month of vacation time racked up at my job. If I didn’t use it I was gonna lose it. So that’s what I’m doing. And hell, it’s been great. I’m getting paid to hop around Florida and party.”
I never took him for the hard-working type, much less being such a hard worker that he had that much vacation time he had never used. This actually kind of blew my mind. And I felt very small all of a sudden. Here I was, jobless, homeless, standing in a parking lot with nowhere to go and no way to get there. I had worked all my life, from the age of sixteen. I helped my mom out with bills and groceries just about every month. Now, I felt as much a lowlife as that piece of shit who stole my car.
Tate went on, “Damn, man, I thought it was just going to be me, Jen, and my brother. Now, with Ditzy Dope-for-Brains and Grace the Powerpuff Girl back there, sometimes I feel like I’m going to lose my shit. As if Jen beating the shit out of me at least once a week and Caleb fuckin’ up wasn’t enough. You two are a breath of fresh air.”
“She beats the shit out of you?” Bray asked with an air of serious disbelief.
Tate threw his head back and laughed. Then he flicked what was left of the cigarette across the parking lot. “Well, I let her, of course. I like it, she likes it but pretends she doesn’t. It all works out.” He shrugged and added, “So what do you say? Go back home or stay with us for just one more week and help keep me sane before I have to crawl back into that nut-suffocating suit?” He cocked his head to one side thoughtfully.
“You work in a suit?” Bray asked, her eyebrows drawing inward.
I admit, I was just as astonished by the possibility as she appeared to be.
Tate smiled with teeth. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”
Jen slid the window down on the Jeep and yelled, “Baby, come on! Your gas light just dinged!”
Tate looked back at us with what I thought he meant as being puppy-dog eyes, but he looked more confident and impish than innocent.
I thought about it for a moment. Bray looked like she was holding her breath the whole time.
“All right,” I said, and both of their faces lit up. “But seriously, man, talk to Caleb. I know you’re his brother and all, but if he fucks up like that again, and Bray or I are involved, I won’t come to you for permission to beat the fuck out of him.”
Tate nodded. “It’s a deal.”
We shook on it and were on our way to Panama City.
Chapter Twenty
Elias
Panama City was the turning point. I didn’t think that things could get any worse, but lately rock bottom was just never the bottom anymore. We had stayed there for four days, and the week Tate had left of his vacation time was suspiciously extended.
It began on Sunday night when Tate got a phone call. We had been staying at the house of one of Caleb’s friends, Adam. He was someone Caleb apparently had gone to college with. Like Tate and his job, I never took Caleb for the college type. Come to find out he had to drop out when he was sent to prison after that thing with the girl in Miami that Tate had mentioned to me previously.
Adam’s house was several miles from the beach. I was glad for that, because I was getting sick of looking at the ocean and dusting sand out of my shoes.
I missed home. As much as I wanted to be with Bray, I missed the summer river parties and the southern lakes. I missed my mom’s fried chicken on Friday nights. I missed hanging out in a friend’s backyard with a beer and listening to the crickets and frogs with their strangely calming melodious racket during long summer nights. And the fireflies. Always the fireflies. But what I missed the most was my quiet life, the one where I went to work every day and came home to my own apartment and could kick back and watch television.
I didn’t have to worry about anything except maybe Mitchell. But he was fixable. This situation, I knew, wasn’t.
As I sat on the back porch of Adam’s house in Panama City, listening to Tate get upset while on that phone call, I pictured being home. I wondered—every single day, in fact—what life would’ve been like if that night at the river had never happened. I thought of Bray and how she came back into my life, and how everything was so perfect, the way I had always imagined it. A part of me couldn’t help but blame her for how everything ended up… destroyed. I felt guilty for thinking that way, not only because it was half my fault, but because I didn’t want to feel that way about her at all. I loved her so much. But I had begun to feel a lot of anger and resentment toward her, too. I… OK, I started to realize that Bray, despite all that I loved about her, was ruining her life and selfishly taking me down with her. And my tolerance for forgiveness was beginning to fade.
It was my fault as much as it was hers, but I had tried on several occasions to talk some sense into her. I tried to get her to go back. I knew I never should’ve let her leave in the first place. But I was weak in that moment, standing next to Jana’s body with Bray next to me shattered and lost and afraid and in so much pain. It was a fucking mistake to run with her. I know. I fucking know it more than anyone. But I couldn’t take back what I had done. All I could do was try to fix it along the way. But Bray fought me at every turn and for that I began to feel resentment.
“Listen, man,” Tate said into his cell phone pressed to his ear. “I’ll get it, all right? No—No, just hear me out. I’ll bring it myself. I can leave first thing in the morning after the bank opens and I can be in Corpus Christi by tomorrow night. Yeah. This is my cell phone number. Don’t call Caleb about anything. No, just let me deal with it.” He began to nod heavily as if wanting the call be over with already. “I know, man. Do me a favor and don’t deal with him anymore.” A few more nods and broken sentences and he hung up. I saw his teeth grinding as the cell phone disappeared in his fist. I thought he was going to smash it on the concrete beam holding up the porch roof, but he calmed himself at the last second.
“I know it’s none of my business, Tate, but why are you still covering for him? Sounds like some serious shit.”
He sat down heavily in the empty wrought-iron chair. The cell phone clanked against the matching table as he tossed it carelessly on top. He ran both hands over the top of his head and let out a long, aggravated breath.
“And why are you covering for her?”
His question shocked me motionless. I don’t think anything moved other than my eyes for a long while. It wasn’t the manner in which he said it—there wasn’t any bitterness to his tone—but that he said it at all. Because he knew more about me and Bray than I assumed he did.
“Maybe I’m out of line,” Tate went on, “or I have no idea what I’m talking about, but in my opinion”—he pointed at me—“I think you’d do anything for that girl.”
“I guess I would,” I admitted.
“The question is, how far would you go?”
I looked away and thought about it. Then I turned back and said, “Probably as far as you’d go for your brother.”
Tate nodded, slouched down a little in the chair with his long legs splayed out in front of him, his fingers locked over his stomach. “Then you just answered your own question. Why are you two running, anyway?”
“Who said we’re running from anything?”
Tate smiled faintly and shook his head. “It’s kind of obvious. Even though your car and your shit was stolen—which, by the way, you never got the police involved in—I haven’t seen either one of you try to call anyone back in Indiana. No Hey Mom, we’re doin’ great, or Yeah, bro, we’ve been partying with this masochist pothead and his asshole brother, but we’re still alive.” He laughed and then shook his finger at me. “You’re not homeless—you’re both too groomed and healthy for that. What did you do, Elias? Or rather, what did she do?”
I looked away from his eyes and began staring at a porch light on the other side of the street.
Tate raised his back from the chair and leaned over, letting his hands dangle between his knees. “No disrespect, but your girlfriend, fiancée, whatever, she’s a loose cannon. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great girl from what I know about her. But she seems unstable.”
I wanted to punch him, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I knew what he was saying wasn’t far off the mark. So I sucked it up and left it alone.
He leaned back in the chair again and locked his hands behind his head. “I guess sometimes good people do bad things, almost always in the name of love.” He laughed lightly. “But after all is said and done, is what we do really ‘bad’ or just necessary?”
Tate surprised me the more I got to know him. I wondered how he got where he was when he had such a strong hold on his own life despite all the partying he did, but then I realized that he and I weren’t really so different.
“It’s all right if you two don’t want to go to Texas,” he said. “It’s probably better that you don’t, anyway. Maybe Adam will let you stay here until I get back.”
Then suddenly he added as if an afterthought, “Well, whatever you’re covering up for her, by now you’re probably in as much trouble as she is.”
What just happened? I thought as I stared right through Tate. Just minutes ago I was full of resentment and had started to envision my next conversation with Bray. I was going to lay down the law and tell her that I was going home and she was going with me if I had to drag her back kicking and screaming. But out of nowhere, the resentment was gone. I now realized Tate was in a similar situation with Caleb, and I wasn’t so alone in my plight. I wasn’t the only guy running around doing stupid things for a person that he happened to love. Maybe I took Tate’s words and subconsciously twisted them into advice, because deep down I was struggling to find justification for what I had done and what I continued to do.
I never asked Tate exactly what Caleb did to warrant a trip to Corpus Christi. I didn’t think it was right, since I wouldn’t tell him anymore than I had about us, so it was only fair. But I left Tate at the table that night with a new outlook of moving forward with Bray. I still knew that what we were doing was wrong, but I wanted desperately to find another way out of it. I couldn’t let Bray go to prison. Like Tate had said about Caleb, she wouldn’t make it in there.
So from that point on, I made it my mission to use the time we were away with Tate to figure out how to get her out of this. It wasn’t just about running anymore. What I was doing now had purpose.
Later that night, after Tate and Caleb argued behind closed doors in the guest bedroom, the only agreement the two of them came to was that Johanna and Grace had to go back to Norfolk. Everyone in the house heard the conversation:
“Dammit, Caleb! Why do I keep having to bail you out of shit? You owe this guy eight thousand dollars. What’d you do with the money, Caleb? You know what, I don’t even wanna know.”
A loud bang vibrated down the hallway. I could imagine it being Tate’s fist against the wall inside the room.
“I hope he doesn’t tear my place up,” Adam said from the couch. He was a tall, skinny guy with sandy-brown hair and stylish black-rimmed glasses that made him look like a stereotypical intellect sipping a latte.
“We’re leaving in the morning,” I heard Tate say with a demanding edge in his voice. “I’m going to pay this guy off and then I’m done. I’m fucking done, little brother. Eight thousand dollars is about all I have left in savings.”
“Nobody asked you to bail me out.”
“If I don’t, who will, Caleb? Dad? You’ve already milked him dry of his savings. Kyle? Shit, bro, if he finds out I’m helping you he’s going to kick my ass. Everly? Baby sister is siding with Kyle, bro. I’m all you’ve got left.”
Then he said, “Why don’t you just call Mom? Talk to her and see how she’s doing? You haven’t called her in a year. You know she’ll l
et you move back in. You can get away from all that bullshit. Get a decent job and start putting your life back together. Maybe Cera will take you—”
“Don’t even go there,” Caleb snapped. “Just don’t—”
A long, dark silence lingered.
“I think it’s time you sent Johanna and Grace home,” Tate said. “It’s not a good idea to take them to Corpus Christi.”
“Yeah, and what about your new freeloader friends out there?”
“I don’t know yet,” Tate said. “But you need to worry about you and this shit you’ve gotten us into. Send the girls home.”
“I’ll take them to the bus station tonight,” Caleb said.
Grace and Bray locked eyes from across the room upon hearing that. They both looked dejected. But I could tell right away that Bray was forcibly trying to hide the fact that she was utterly heartbroken. I hated to see it. I hated to know that the one person Bray was closest to besides me was about to walk out of her life and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Thirty minutes later after the arguing and Tate scouring the house and outside in the yard for his keys, Bray and Grace were saying their good-byes.
“Here’s my number,” Grace said as she slipped a torn-off piece of a magazine page into Bray’s hand. “Call me when you get back to Indiana. Maybe we can visit sometime.” They fell into a tight embrace.
“As soon as I get another cell phone, I’ll call you with my number,” Bray said.
I could tell that Bray was on the verge of tears. They hadn’t known each other long, but they’d bonded, and Bray always had a hard time bonding with people. Besides me, Lissa had been her closest friend growing up, and it turned out that Lissa wasn’t as close to Bray as she thought she was. As I stood there watching the two of them say good-bye, I thought to myself how I wished it could’ve been different, that they could’ve met under better circumstances. Because I knew that once Grace walked out that door, they’d never see each other again.