He drove with the window cracked, letting the cold in so I wouldn’t drift off and choke on my own tongue. The smell of the distant fire clung to us.
His house was on the edge of town, one of those shingled boxes with a porch light that flickered like it was signaling distress. There was a dent in the garage door where someone had reversed too quickly, and the yard was a mixture of mud and grass. I felt at home just looking at it.
Dante led me in, kicking off his shoes at the threshold and tossing his keys in a chipped bowl. The living room was crowded with furniture that didn’t match, a lumpy sectional, and a table scarred with old cigarette burns.
You want a shower?” he asked, eyeing my filthy shape.
I grunted, “Yeah.”
Though I knew I didn’t deserve the comfort.
Dante led me to the bathroom and handed me a towel. The light was too bright, exposing, so I showered in the dark. The water hit my skin, and I half expected it to hiss off, steam rising as it tried to boil the last of the poison from my veins.
When I came out, hair dripping, Dante had laid a pair of sweats and a cotton shirt on the ground. I grabbed the clothes and stepped back into the bathroom, tossing them on.
After a few minutes, I walked back out into the main part of the house.
“Alright, man. I’m beat. You can stay up, but I’m gonna get some sleep.” Dante yawned as he finished setting up the mattress that pulled out from the couch.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, sitting on the mattress.
He disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.
I let my mind wander. I still couldn’t believe I burnt the fucking place down. Maybe it was for the best. One less thing that tied me to his ghost.
My mind drifted to Amelia, how I left her at her dead mother’s house, and how upset she probably was when I didn’t come back.
I had checked my phone after Dante picked me up and saw her text messages asking me to come get her. I can’t believe I was too drunk to even check my phone.
Grabbing my phone, I opened her messages again and typed out a text.
Sorry. I’m okay. Hope you’re okay. With Dante. I got fucked up and left my car at the bar, thankfully, he found me
The text went unanswered, and I figured she was sleeping.
I fell back onto the fold-out in Dante’s living room, a blanket tossed over me, the cheap polyester scratchy against my barearms. I listened to the clock tick and the refrigerator cycle on and off.
The house settled and clicked; the world outside was pitch, a thick velvet that pressed against the windows. I was tired, but my body wouldn’t surrender.
All I could do was lie there, staring at the ceiling, letting the dull ache behind my forehead throb in time with my heartbeat.
I wanted to text her again, to try to explain, but nothing seemed right.Sorry. I fucked up. I always do.
It was all a waste of air. Even if I tried to tell the truth, to say that I’d gone to the old house to see if the ghosts were still there, and when they were, I decided to burn them out, it wouldn’t matter.
She’d see it for what it was: a tantrum, a last grasp at control, a way to sabotage something that maybe, just maybe, could have worked if I’d left it the fuck alone.
I rolled over, pressing my face into the pillow.
Every time I tried to close my eyes, something in the dark would flicker on and play back the worst parts of my adolescence.
There were so many of those memories, I could never tell if I was remembering something real or just making it up out of guilt.
Like that one time, after school, when I cornered her at the edge of the soccer field. The sky was a blue grey, the grass covered with November mud. I’d been thinking about her all day, the shape of her arms in that green cardigan, the way she tucked her hair behind her ears.
I’d meant to tease her, maybe fake a shove, something dumb and forgettable. Instead, I’d said:“You think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you?”The words had come out meaner than I meant, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
She’d looked at me with that clear green stare of hers and said,“I think you could be better, if you wanted to.”
