I’d fucked up. Not for the first time in my life, and sure as shit not for the last time, but I’d definitely fucked up. With Cash, and with Lee, and even with Danny and Wilder, who’d heard enough of my fight with Cash to know exactly how much of an asshole I was. So when I got home after work, I didn’t go straight inside. I walked down the side of the house instead, found a nice space between some overgrown bushes, and wedged myself in there. I drew lines in the dirt with a stick and stared at Avery’s house next door.
I felt like I’d been punched in the face and then kicked in the guts repeatedly. First by Cash, and then by Lee. And I’d gotten my own hits in too, but they didn’t feel very satisfying. There was no hot burn of anger running through me, keeping me sharp. I just felt tired and sore, even though it had only been words. I felt alone.
I sat hunched between the bushes for a while, until the thought of being found there was worse than the thought of going inside, and then I got up and went into the house. I still felt like shit, but I went into the kitchen to grab a snack like I usually would and then remembered the peanut butter cookies in my backpack. I set the box on the kitchen counter and tookone of the cookies out. I left the rest there for anyone else to eat and took my cookie to my bedroom.
I lay on my bed and ate it, not caring about crumbs. Then I remembered I had nothing to wear to work tomorrow unless I did some laundry, so I went and did that. Just stared at the machine as the clothes went around and around, all twisted up together. I thought about my busted jacket too and wondered if I could beg for a ride to Walmart in South Hill with Danny or Wilder when they got home. I’d hoped the old jacket would see me through to the summer, but it probably wouldn’t now I couldn’t even zip it up. Just another thing I didn’t want to think about right now, though it was better than thinking about how much I’d fucked up.
The house was quiet until Wilder and Gracie got home. I heard Gracie first, chattering her heart out the second the door was open, and then Wilder said, “Hey, did you want to take that over and show Avery?”
“Yes!” she yelled, and a moment later there was silence except for the tread of Wilder’s footsteps through the house.
He found me staring at the washer.
“What are you doing?” he asked, leaning in the doorway.
“Waiting to put shit in the dryer,” I said and stretched. “Can I get a ride to Walmart? I need a new jacket. The zipper on mine’s busted.”
“Today?” he asked.
“Whenever.”
“I can take you on the weekend,” he said. “Come here.”
He led me through to Gracie’s room and opened one side of her closet. It was full of his clothes since he didn’t have anywhere to store them in the living room where he slept. He dug through there for a moment and tossed a brown jacket at me.
Brown like Lee’s, just to add another layer of emotional damage to this shit show of a day.
“You can borrow this one until then,” he said. “Should fit you okay.”
“Thanks,” I said, running my hand over a sleeve of the jacket.
“You doing okay?” he asked me. “With everything that happened with Cash?”
“I guess you guys heard all of that, huh?”
Wilder’s mouth quirked. “It was hard not to.”
“It’s whatever,” I said, glad he hadn’t found me hiding in the bushes a little while ago.
Wilder hummed, like he didn’t believe me but he also didn’t want to disagree. “How’s that fit?”
I shrugged the jacket on. It was a little broad across the shoulders, but it was fine. “Good.”
Wilder’s phone pinged and when he checked it he gave a dumb little smile, and a minute later he headed over to Avery’s as well. I tried not to be jealous that he had someone who made him smile like that.
The washer beeped to let me know the laundry was done, so I went and loaded the clothes into the dryer, then lay down and stared at my ceiling some more. I only moved when I heard the rattle of Danny’s truck in the driveway.
When he came in the door, I was sprawled on the couch flicking through the television channels. He sat down next to me and started pulling his boots off, pausing when his phone buzzed at the same time as mine. He shot me a grin as he checked his messages, already typing a reply. “Wilder says Avery’s invited us for lasagna tonight. You in?”
And normally, I would have already been halfway out the door because Avery made a bomb-ass lasagna. But I hesitated. If we went to Avery’s for dinner, everyone was going to be there, and someone was bound to ask how I was doing. And I could handle feeling like trash when I was alone, but if someone hintedthat they actually cared, I was likely to start bawling like a little kid.
Not that I’d cried much as a kid—not where anyone could see anyway.
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “I have a headache.”
Danny stopped typing. “You doing okay?”
“I’m fuckingfine,” I said. “But I’d be better if people stopped asking me that.”
