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Before
Trevor
I used to be the guy who had it all.
I had the girlfriend most guys drooled over—easy on the eyes, curves in all the right places, and always up for a good time. I played guitar in the hottest band around and made first string on the football team. My best friend was like a brother to me, and my family was relatively free of drama. Sure my dad worked a little too much and my mom bitched about it, and yeah, my little sister could be annoying as hell, but we were good.
I was invincible. I had goals and dreams, and I was damn close to getting them.
Until I wasn’t.
Until a night went so wrong that I ended up in a coma, and by the time I came out of it, months had passed. By then I was already running to catch up to everyone else, and running to catch up wasn’t something I was used to. I was the guy at the head of the line. I was the lucky one. Until I wasn’t. And like everything else in this new life of mine, it totally sucked.
Thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. I hate it. There are nights when I can’t sleep. Nights when all I want to do is close my eyes and see nothing. Hear nothing. Smell nothing. I don’t want to remember how I used to be, and I sure as hell don’t want to remember that night.
Except that I can.
I can remember every single detail.
It was hot. The kind of hot that makes you sweat like crazy and leaves your lungs feeling heavy. The moon was out, and it never went away, kind of like perpetual twilight.
My girlfriend wore a tight black halter top and a white skirt that barely covered her ass. I gave her hell for it, but I liked how the other guys checked her out. I liked knowing that she was mine. And I really liked the fact that we’d get busy in some dark, quiet spot among the trees.
Of course, that didn’t happen because I drank too much. I got wasted, like stupid wasted, and I puked. Even my girl, Bailey, was disgusted. So yeah, the “getting busy” thing never happened.
Then I got in a car with someone I knew was almost as wasted as me. And that is without a doubt the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I remember thinking Nathan shouldn’t drive, but he laughed me off and said he was fine.
I remember thinking that we should call my dad. He was always good for a pickup if one of us screwed up. And man, we were screwing up. But at the time it seemed like too much work to make it all happen, so I did nothing.
If I’d done that? Called my dad instead of getting in the car with Nathan at the wheel? Things would be so damn different. I’d still be the old me. Not some loser with shit for brains and a TBI (traumatic brain injury). Now there’s a great handle.
But I don’t like thinking about what if because it depresses the hell out of me. What if doesn’t matter anymore because I have to deal with right now.
And for me, right now is crunch time. I gotta believe that right now just might change my life. And the scariest truth of all?
Right now is all I got.
Before
Everly
Twelve months, two weeks, and three days is exactly three hundred and eighty-two days. I’m fairly certain it doesn’t mean squat to anyone else, but to me, it’s everything. To me, it’s how I measure my life, because nothing that happened before then matters. Not now and maybe not ever.
I used to be that girl. You know the one. I had it all.
Until I didn’t.
Three hundred and eighty-two days ago, my whole world imploded, and ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get it back to what it was. How to unsee and unhear everything that happened.
You see, those things, the things that could break me, I hold them close, buried so deep that sometimes I don’t even think they’re real.
But they ar
e. They’re as real as the blades of grass beneath my toes. Or the big fat cucumbers in the back garden. They live in between those three hundred and eighty-two days, like the sawdust that fills the cracks of the floorboards in my father’s church. And it’s the sawdust that chokes.
Every morning I wonder, is this the day that I can forgive him for what he did? Is this the day that I can forgive her for not knowing? I mean, how can she not know? That thought alone haunts me every single day, which leads to other questions. Is it my place to tell her? Is it my place to make him?
Is this the day I can break free from the silence that weighs me down?
Every morning as I sit across the table from my father and watch him eat his toasted bagel with chunky peanut butter, spread so thin I don’t get the point of even putting it on his toast, I wait. I wait for something inside me to shift.
I wait for him to talk about it. To explain the lie that is his life.
I wait for something to change.
I wait for it, and I die a little when it doesn’t happen because I want it so badly.
I watch my mom breeze into the kitchen and kiss him on the cheek, her hands lingering on his face because she loves to touch him. I watch her frown because the Nutella on my toast isn’t a healthy choice, so she grabs her homemade strawberry jam and puts it in front of me.
I let her touch my shoulder, lean over, and kiss me before running her hands through my little brother’s hair.
I watch her smile, and I wait for her eyes to light up the way they used to. Because for as long as I can remember, my mom’s smile was the most beautiful thing in the world.
But her smile never quite reaches her eyes, and her penchant for humming hymns from church borders on crazy. She knows things have changed, but for the life of her, she can’t figure out what those things are.
So I pop my toast in my mouth and force the dry crust down. I know that I’ll have to put on a fake smile and head out into the world and pretend that my life is just as perfect as it was before. No one can know the secrets that hide behind our front door. The secrets that are slowly tearing my family apart.
To everyone in Twin Oaks, we’re the Jenkinses—the perfect and loving Pastor Eric Jenkins; his beautiful wife Terry, who spends all her time volunteering for the less fortunate in the community; and their kids. Isaac, the free-spirited little guy who loves baseball, fishing, and above all else, his father.
And then there’s me, Everly, the All-American girl, with a heart of gold and truckload of morals to go along with it.
That’s how I was brought up. That’s what he taught me.
Ironic isn’t it?
So here I am, day three hundred and eighty-three. I’ll push my feelings aside and pretend that everything is freaking A-OK. I’m a good daughter who’s learned from the best, even though the best is flawed. Even though the best is beyond redemption.
Apparently, in my world, the best means being a hypocritical jerk. A liar. A cheat.
I hate pretending. But most of all, I hate him for what he’s done to my family. Him. My father.
I love my father.
I hate my father.
How screwed up is that?
