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I take his cell and scroll through the list of text messages already appearing on the screen. A grin attempts to pull at my lips. My mother is going absolutely ba
llistic. Not that I enjoy her panic, but it’s nice to see something familiar. The text conversations between my parents and Eli confirm it: I really wasn’t kidnapped.
I swing his phone back and forth. “Can I?”
“Contact them? It’d calm your mom down.” Eli relaxes back on the window seat and that stupid sloppy smile that I stupidly love crosses his face. “The past twenty-four hours have been so messed up that I haven’t had a chance to tell you how happy I am to see you. Because of Mom’s condition, I wasn’t sure when I was going to make it to Florida for a visit.”
My heart plummets and I focus on the texts even though I stopped reading. The expectant hope on Eli’s face cuts right through me. God, I’m an awful person and I don’t want to be an awful person. Eli’s a good guy and he has no idea how much I dread his annual visit to Florida.
When I was ten, I made a horrible mistake. One I continually pay for. A mistake that has brought heartache to my mother and a ton of continual hurt for me. I asked if I could see a picture of Eli because...because...I was curious.
Until then, Eli was a figment of my imagination. He was this floating nonexistent guy who had spared a few minutes of his life to create me. Thanks to a school report on family trees that included pictures, the eyelid-flipping boy I had hated since kindergarten pointed out that I resembled no one in my family. Not Dad’s parents, not my mother and definitely not my father.
I called the boy a jerk. He called me a brat. We were both called into the principal’s office. My parents were also summoned and in the middle of the parent-principal powwow, I asked if I resembled Eli.
My one question snowballed into a slew of arguments between my parents, a whole lot of tears from Mom, and it avalanched into a day at McDonald’s PlayPlace with this freaky-looking guy with tattoos and holes in his earlobes. He crouched in front of me with a sprig of daisies in his hand and introduced himself as my dad.
I’ve never been slapped before, but that’s as close to the pain as I could imagine. I curled myself around my father and he had to repeatedly pry me off him like dried-on glue. Since then, Eli, my father and I have been playing this game of once-yearly awkward visits because I was curious.
Curiosity is highly overrated.
Pushing reply, I text my mother:
It’s me. Just woke up with a dog next to me. Eli’s here. Glad to know you’re safe. I love you. Tell Dad I love him too. What’s going on?
Mom’s response is immediate. The cell buzzing every couple of seconds as she sends a flurry of texts:
We both love you very much. A dog? Please tell me they at least let you have a bed in the house. If you are in the clubhouse, tell Eli I’ll castrate him. Did Eli explain?
Not one explanation. Will demand one now.
“Mom threatened you with castration. Besides that, would you mind filling me in on what’s happening?”
Eli chuckles then pulls on his earlobe.
“She’s serious,” I say.
He chuckles more. “I know she is.”
I can’t stop gawking at his ears. I don’t understand plugs. It’s holes in your ears.
In your ears.
Holes.
Like stick-your-finger-through-them holes.
That will never close up.
I drag my eyes away and focus on the dog that currently has a sticky line of drool hanging from its mouth.
“You know the business I own?” Eli asks.
I should say yes because that would imply I know Eli, but the truth is I don’t know much about him or his business. “No.”
Eli’s expression falls as if my answer disappointed him. Dad asked me once if I ever told anyone I was adopted or that my biological father was part of a motorcycle gang. I told him no. He asked if I was embarrassed by either and I gave him the truth: Dad was my dad, Eli was Eli and the most I ever felt about Eli was ambivalence.
I’ve never told any of my friends about Eli, not even Trisha, and she’s the type of friend you can tell anything—the type that doesn’t judge me for being scared of the dark or adopted.
