Page 8 of Restored Dreams

“I never blamed you, not directly at least, but I won’t lie and say it didn’t break my heart.” She shrugs as if it was no big deal, as if hurting her didn’t kill me inside.

Our relationship was…complicated. We were only fooling around. I guess you could say she was a booty call before those were a thing, but that belittles how I felt about her. We snuck around because I didn’t want to get caught with her, or rather, I didn’t want her to get caught with me. She didn’t want her family to know she was with me. Garage mechanic. Struggling student. Dad a known alcoholic. Those were good enough reasons. Plus, she was still a kid in my head at nineteen. I couldn’t even take her to a bar. We didn’t go out on dates. We were each other’s dirty little secret.

I didn’t want to be the one to steal her innocence—well, not all of it at least—but my feelings for her were strong, stronger than I wanted to admit at twenty-three. My life was in chaos then. Pop. The shop. Classes. Lily was fun for me in a world lacking anything remotely funny. Still, I could have had her virginity. Another man eventually took her, I suspect, and I cringe at the thought. I could have had everything from her, and I threw it away.

Guilt wracked me for weeks after what happened with Lauren. Being old enough myself to know right from wrong, I chose stupid instead, so stupid, and then kept the truth from Lily until I had no choice. Fuzzy memories swirl at the edges of my brain. I’ll never have back all the facts of that night, but I just know it coincided with my life falling apart. Lost my scholarship. Pop too sick to work. Debt for the garage.

“Remember Rick Begerton?” Lily blurts, interrupting my memories. Rick Begerton was a guy from my class in high school. He was trouble—car racing, drugs, minor thievery. “Lauren was in love with him. Well, as much as you can be in love with someone at eighteen.” Lauren is two years older than Lily, which means when said love happened, Lily was sixteen. Rick would have been twenty.

Lily swallows, eyes staring out at the rolling ocean. She’s lost in her head for a moment, and my fingers itch to touch her and pull her back from the memory. My skin tingles like an insect with ten thousand legs crawling over my bare feet. Something bad is coming with the mention of Rick.

“He was into me, instead,” she clarifies. If she said she killed someone, I wouldn’t have felt as sick as I did.

“I don’t understand,” I say although I did in some strange way. Who wouldn’t be into Lily? But Rick? “Son of a bitch. Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?” I don’t know why the words blurt from my lips, but I shiver as I recall Rick was eventually arrested for domestic abuse.

“No.” She shakes her head. “But he was persistent, and it drove Lauren mad. She was willing to be with him, and I wanted nothing to do with him. Anyway, Lauren was jealous because she wasn’t the one Rick wanted, and I was.” She pauses, her eyes drifting to the bottle in her hand. “She was convinced I encouraged him. Said I led him on and I was a tease. But I would have never done that to her.” Sadness fills Lily’s voice. We didn’t discuss her family much when we were younger. Her home life wasn’t good, despite her living in a nicer part of Pasadena at the time. I thought the reason she didn’t want her family to know about us was because of me, who I was. Slowly, hindsight sees there might have been more to her keeping me a secret.

Her older sister’s voice haunts me. So the little tease got to you, too? Jet black hair and heavy makeup hinted at her sinister, reckless side. Lauren Warren was a known flirt, a vicious tease, and an easy lay by the time I met her. She was twenty-one, new to the bar scene, and knew how to make a scene. Somehow, I think that’s how I ended up in the corner with her. It also might have been how her eyes matched her sister’s. Those damn blue eyes got me in trouble. I can prove I’m better than her.

I shiver in disgust at myself. I want to kill someone as the truth hits harder.

“Lauren found out about you. She knew how I felt. And she went after you because of me.” How did she feel about me? I want to ask, but I don’t. The revelation weighs between us. There isn’t forgiveness of her sister but an understanding of motive. Lauren’s jealousy was so malicious it destroyed her younger sister and me.

What was my excuse?

Lily exhales deeply, and my mouth clogs like the murky seaweed spit out of the ocean. My stomach feels nauseous, and my beer suddenly tastes sour although I take another sip for something to do. My arms tremble with the need to wrap them around Lily and hold her to me. How did I fall into Lauren’s trap?

Oh, right. My dick. My head. And too much alcohol.

“I mention all this as a way to explain why Lauren did what she did. Not defend it but understand it,” Lily clarifies, pausing as she wipes sand off her toes by rubbing each foot with the other. Two things strike me. One, Lily is too good of a person. She isn’t forgiving her sister, but she understands her, and that’s more than her sister deserves. It’s more than I deserve because I don’t even understand myself why I did what I did. Why I didn’t go to Lily with my problems. The second thing I question is this: She knew how I felt about you. How did Lily feel? We never shared emotions. No declarations of love. Maybe an occasional I love when you touch me like this, but nothing deeper. We were having fun, but my heart knows I’m lying to myself. Did she feel something more for me?

“When I was young, I was looking for love, and marriage, and a baby in a baby carriage. Any means to escape my family. Make a better family. I wanted someone who would dance with me in the rain, build dreams of what-if someday, and make love to me under the moonlight.” She scoffs a dismissive laugh, and I add it to my catalog of her noises. “Romantic dreams, I guess.” She brushes sand off her shins, and it distracts me for a moment. Does she still want these things?

“Anyway, after you, I lived with the next guy. We were together for five years until I realized it was never going to happen. Not marriage, not babies. We were playing house, and I was holding out for something that would never be. He’s the one who hurt me.” My head rattles with all I’m learning. I’m about to ask if she still wants all those things when something else hits me. She speaks before me. “Annnnnd I have no idea why I told you this.”

“Hold on. What do you mean he’s the one who hurt you?” My heart rate skyrockets in my chest. Lily doesn’t look at me, keeping her eyes trained on the ocean. I have my answer, but I still want to hear it from her.

“Lily?” I question.

She huffs, a nervous dismissal of things as she lifts her lemonade bottle and drinks heartily. Again, I watch the roll of her throat as she momentarily drowns herself in the drink.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she says, her voice quieting. “A little grabbing and a few slaps. A fist was the final straw.”

“Don’t excuse him,” I snap. “Don’t excuse any man for laying a hand on you.” My voice rises, my anger matching it. I’m ready to punch something myself, but it sure as fuck wouldn’t ever be a woman. And I’m pissed as hell that someone touched her like this—in anger, with his fists.

“I’m glad you told me,” I add, after a moment of seething rage and feeling helpless for a number of reasons. “I never knew.” Not about Rick. Not Lauren’s motives. Not Lily’s romantic dreams. Certainly not some asshole’s abuse.

Her shoulder lifts, and her head tilts. Finally looking at me, she smiles weakly. “How would you?”

My chest pinches, heart aching for Lily—the one I didn’t know at sixteen, whose sister’s vengeance held until she was nineteen. For nineteen-year-old Lily, who I lost because I was stupid. I should have taken better care in how I handled her then. Should have slowed her down when she wound me up. It’s almost laughable in hindsight how slow we went, and I’d chuckle if the sourness of what she just revealed wasn’t so unsettling. Because I also ache for the twenty-something Lily, who struggled to find dreams of happiness in an unhappy situation. It wasn’t fair, and it was all my fault.

“Anywho,” she exaggerates, trying to sound more cheerful. “You have Chopper, and he grew into a great kid, right?”

I’m startled at her mention of my son. He wasn’t born with that name. I had it legally changed once his mother abandoned him to me. Lily and I grew up in the same part of Pasadena, and I suppose we know circles that circle each other. Still, it’s strange she knows his name.

“He has. He’s full of trouble like his old man.” I chuckle with a hint of pride, still troubled by what I’ve just learned but letting it pass for the moment. “Not certain what he wants to do with his life, though.” The irony strikes me. Chopper grows closer and closer to the age when I fucked up. I’ve pressed the issue of higher education, and his concession was community college. He says he wants something in the music industry, but he isn’t musically inclined like his uncle Hank. Me, I don’t hold a musical note in my body.

“He’ll figure it out,” she assures me. “You did.” Her added smile is meant to comfort, but she’s wrong.