#scenebreak
I don’t know why I walked to the cemetery, but I did. It was much farther away by foot than it’d seemed in a car, so maybe the town wasn’t as small as I’d thought. After the tenth text from Dad, I turned off my cell. The whole point of walking away was to avoid confrontation. Thank God he was too old to think about GPS.
The sun was setting by the time I reached my destination, but it was still blazing hot. Beloved-Wife-and-Mother and Beloved-Husband-and-Father hadn’t moved. A few grackles made those weird noises they make.
Why was I even here? “There’s no one else to talk to,” I told my parents, but that seemed rude. “Not that you’re my last choice, but, really. . . face it. . . you’re dead. The communication options are a little limited.”
The cemetery lay empty but for me and lots of corpses. “It’s me. Ethan. Your son. I’m taller than the last time you saw me. . . and I have hair now. And I don’t shit myself anymore. . . well, unless I’m really sick. Oh. . . and I say things like shit, now. And fuck.”
Deep breath.
“So I have this really big decision to make and sometimes saying shit out loud helps me decide if it sounds stupid or not.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Although I already know what I said to Dad and to K-pop was really fucking stupid.”
Everything had an orange-pink glow from the sunset. It was way too cheery for my mood.
“I shouldn’t have made fun of K-pop. If he never talks to me again, I will utterly understand.” I stared at the block of granite, trying to avoid the word tombstone. “I can’t talk to Dad ‘cause he’ll tell me to go to New York because he won’t want to be the one to say no. I can’t talk to Tango, er, her real name’s Katy and she’s smokin’ hot, but I’ve only known her a couple of days and she doesn’t want to be the one to hold me back, either.” I dug into the grass with a shoe. “Although. . .” I dug further. “I don’t know. She’s stellar. I’ve never felt like this before. All. . . stupid.”
The grackles fell silent. A nice breeze started up so it wasn’t as godawful hot.
“Then there’s Corey. He’s a great guy. My best friend here, really.” More toe digging. “But, really. . . bless his heart, he’s. . . not the sharpest tool in the shed. And after what Monika did to him, he’d tell me to keep as far away from her as I could.” I pulled my hands out of my pockets and wiped my face. “After what she did to him. . . I really. . . really. . . really should.”
I stared at the granite. If Dad was going back to Untouchable Dad anyway, why stay in Dumass? Competition was what I knew. It was who I’d been my whole life. It made me feel good. Better, anyway. Better than this.
“Fucking bitch.”
“Ethan?”
I jumped about a mile into the air and nearly wet myself, despite my protestations to my parents that I was potty trained.
“Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have done that with a psycho running around loose.” Tango regarded me from a few feet away. “But I couldn’t resist.” She could’ve smirked, but she didn’t.
“What the hell?” I asked. “How did you even know I was here?”
“Your dad lojacked your phone. He told me you were here.” She glanced at the granite. “Your other dad, I guess.”
“My dad.”
She nodded.
“You called me ‘Ethan.’”
“If I’d said ‘Foxtrot’ you’d have known it wasn’t your parents and you wouldn’t have jumped so high.”
In spite of everything, I smiled and waved from the granite to Tango. “Parents, this is Tango. Tango, my parents.” I leaned closer to her. “They don’t talk much.”
Her face told me she wasn’t sure if she should be amused or disturbed. “This is probably the last question you want to hear right now, but. . . what do you mean what Monika did to Corey?” She crossed herself and bobbed down to one knee as she moved closer. “Sorry, but that stuck out for me.”
Yeah. Not exactly the conversation I was expecting there. Deep breath. I couldn’t discuss it directly. I was too attracted to Tango to think about it in real terms, so I opted for hypothetical. “Let me play psychic for a moment.”
“Okay.”
“You and Monika bonded over the whole stalker thing, right?”
She nodded.
“You got to talking about cute, weird things boyfriends did, and I never want to know what she told you about me.” I waited for the smirk. “Right. So you told her how Corey leaves the window open every night, in case you decide to climb in. He’s on the first floor, right?”
She needed a second, then she gasped. “Oh, my God. . . that evil bitch. That’s. . .” She searched for the right word. “That’s practically rape.”
I let her have the silence while she processed a complicated set of emotions.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked.
“Because he would’ve just sounded like he was making excuses.” I shifted weight uncomfortably. “He takes full responsibility for what happened, Tango. That’s the kind of guy he is.”
The sun finally dropped below the horizon.
“Why tell me this?” she asked. “Why tell me something that. . . holy shit, Foxtrot. I don’t think I can blame Corey for any of this, anymore. Why tell me that?”
“Because Corey is a genuinely good human being and there are precious few of those left in the world.” I thought about it. “Besides which, if something does happen with you and me. . . and then you find out I lied to you about this. . . about this. You’d never trust me again.”
The sky cooled to gray.
“He should press charges,” she said.
I managed to avoid chuckling. “Because the cops are going to listen to a seventeen-year-old guy who complains that a smoking hot girl crawled through his bedroom window and mounted him in the middle of the night.”
She made her cheerleader face.
“Just sayin’.”
“Oh, my God, Foxtrot.” She took a deep, deep breath. “Is life always this complicated in the big city?”
I laughed. “Austin, Texas is hardly a big city.”
“Ethan?”
I turned to her.
“You know I’m sorry about what happened to Corey.” She stepped closer. “But. . .”
“But the two of you were bound to break up sooner or later.”
“If it happens like this. . . does that make me a horrible person?”
“Monika’s counting on you to feel that way.”
“I really like you,” she said. “I really think we could have a shot.”
I waited for a few seconds. “But?”
“No buts, really.” She finally met my gaze. “Well, one but. But are you planning to leave?”
Throwing away my only shot to recapture my old life suddenly became the easiest thing in the world. “After what Monika did to Corey, I couldn’t work with her again.” I moved closer to Tango, until we were almost touching. “She was a total bitch to you and I hate her for that, but Corey. . . He’s this big innocent puppy. And what she did to him? If it isn’t illegal, it should be.”
The inches that separated us felt like more miles than I’d walked that day.
“If he hadn’t stopped after he realized who she was,” I said. “I’d have a lot less sympathy, but as soon as he actually woke up he kicked her out of his room. He. . .” I touched her shoulder and she shuddered. I pulled away. Why did she do that? “He loves you that much,” I said.
It physically hurt to be so close to her without holding her in my arms.
She chuckled. “Sounds like you have a crush on him.”
“No, but he’s been nothing but good to me. I can’t hurt him.”
The gathering darkness felt more intimate. God, I wanted to hold her.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made a joke,” she whispered. Her arm bumped against mine.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
&nb
sp; Her arm wound around my waist.
We fit perfectly.
“Is this fair to him?” she asked.
“Is pretending you’re in love with him fair?”
She almost pulled her arm away from my waist. . . but she didn’t. “No. I guess it’s not.”
I exhaled a deep sigh. “Can I even presume to give advice?”
“Mmhm.”
“Let him know you forgive him, but tell him it’s over.”
In the last light of the sky, a tear rolled down her face. “How do you kick the puppy?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
She took a deep, deep breath. “You wanna go see a movie?”
“What?”
She smiled. “It’s what normal people do, Foxtrot. They go see movies.”
“There’s a movie theater in this town?”
She punched my shoulder. “We have two, and if you act all surprised I will take you out.”
“As long as it’s not some gay chick flick,” I said, “you’re on.”
She scrunched her face in confusion, then smiled. “It’s so not fair you get to say shit like that and it’s not offensive.”
“Hey. . . gay dad. Membership has its privileges.”
I took her free hand to see what she would do. She looked down at our clasped hands and then up at me. She smiled. Nice.
See, that’s why I came to the cemetery in the first place: to figure out what I really wanted. Turns out what I really wanted was to hold Tango’s hand.