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My unseeing eyes stare at the air of the interview room, still caught in that moment beside Jake. I can smell his deodorant. He didn't wear cologne very often, so that was the most recognizable scent. And he always smelled so good. I can't even describe it, because I haven't been around anything scented in a long time. It was just a Jake smell.
Without thinking, I try to raise the wrong hand, to run it through my hair, but just feel the cuff cutting into my wrist. My other hand is still free but any sense of freedom that lingered in my memory disappears, replaced with bitter resentment.
"I'm pretty sure that all of this is my mothers' fault. Because of her, I have been trapped my entire life."
Some people choose to take a lonely path because they like the solitude, but some people have no choice. Some people just live a loveless life: they can't pass on what they don't have and so, remain alone. Even after they get married and long after they have kids.
It's not a crime to live without love; it's just a shitty road to take. My mother didn't love herself so she couldn't love me. It's that simple.
Taking a deep breath, I let the words I usually keep down, surface with my anger. "She treated me like her perfect little doll: comb my hair, put me in pretty dresses, but don't feed me. Don't listen to me. Definitely don't talk to me, because that might make you want to care. No. Just set me in the car. Don't let me buckle up. And drive as fast as you can straight into a tree."
What recourse is there when the people who brought you into the world reject you? You're small, helpless, and have no way of knowing that life should be different.
There was nothing to do but try to deal with being born to a father I never met and a mother who tried to kill me when she killed herself. The part that really eats away at me is that I don't think she put that much thought into killing me.
For all I know she had no plans to include me at all. I was an afterthought. She decided to drive off an embankment into the trees, and on her way to the car she saw me and thought, "oh yeah, I should do something about that." How pathetic is it that I want to think she cared enough to plan to my murder?
Love is the most wonderful and powerful force on earth. It's the drug that gives you the most wonderful highs and horrific lows. It means the most to people like me, who grew up deprived.
When you're young and desperate, and you're presented with something you want, you don't think twice about it. You take it without even knowing what it means. Life with the boy you love, who has no idea he barely knows you-that you barely know yourself?
Take it. Don't think twice about what it means to run off two months before you turn eighteen, to turn your back on the one woman who spent the last year nurturing and caring for you without a second thought. Leave the only friend you ever had to move off to a place you know nothing about. Do it for the boy.
Jake was that important. I didn't think twice. Not an ounce of apprehension after those first five seconds of shock.
With Jake, I felt truly loved by the one person that mattered more than any other and having that was like . . . oxygen or sunlight. I depended on it. As long as I had him, I knew whatever we came across we'd be fine and I gave it no more thought beyond those three words-go with me. It meant he loved me. That he chose me.
+++
Jake showed up twenty-five minutes after he got off work-a whopping nine minutes after the Foster left for her graveyard shift at the confection factory.
When I opened the front door, he was just climbing out of the van. I stepped out onto the porch wearing a bright yellow sundress. It wasn't really my style, but Jake liked that the straps tied up on my shoulders. He was freshly showered and carrying two forty-ounce bottles of beer.
"Contributing to a minor?" I teased taking the sweating bottles from him when he reached the porch.
"That's nothing new." He tugged at the ties on my shoulders with his newly freed hands and smirked. "So, Austen's home?"
Both of us turned to the curb out in front of the trailer, where Austen's faded gold Mustang was so obviously parked. "Yup."
"Damn."
I put the beer in the fridge and stirred the sauce that was warming on the stove. As I plunked the spaghetti noodles into the pot of boiling water, the echoing riff of Rush's Dreamline began drifting from the living room. I glanced back to see Jake moving from the Fosters stereo cabinet. My heart thundered at the sultry way he strolled towards me. It was slow and deliberately provocative the way he lifted the front of his shirt to touch his stomach.
"Honey, you cooked?" His dark grin made my insides melt.
"Oh yeah. You know me." My sarcasm was obvious. I couldn't do much beyond boiling water.
The Foster made the sauce after she got up that afternoon. I had already eaten with her and Austen, but I guessed that Jake would be hungry when he came over.
Jake crept up behind me, taking me by the waist, and kissing my neck and shoulders while I tried to prepare a plate for him.
"This foods gonna end up on the floor." I sighed, leaning into his chest. The plate teetered.
Jake stepped back and eased into a dining chair at the small table in the kitchen. He said nothing, but slowly looked me up and down. I tried to focus on the food, but the heat he exuded had my blood blazing.
"Hey, man." Austen greeted, appearing from the hallway.
Jake halted his visual groping, releasing me from the spell, and turned to greet my foster brother. I took advantage of the clarity and drizzled a little olive oil over the noodles, followed by a sprinkling of salt and pepper before hitting them with the sauce. It was the way his mom served it when I went over for dinner once. I remembered because it was odd to me that she kept the noodles separate. I'd never had it like that before.
