AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We hugged and I caught a sour and unpleasant smell. The room was a mess, with clothes, empty beer bottles and full ashtrays everywhere.
“Let me grab my things,” he said, grabbing hold of the clothes and stuffing them into a bag. He disappeared into the bathroom and then appeared again. “Let’s go.”
“You hungry?” I couldn’t help noticing how thin he was and how drawn his face was.
We drove to a diner, and he had something to eat.
I didn’t ask him any questions. I didn’t want to remind him of his broken promises. I didn’t want to ask if he’d started again with the drugs because I could see that he had. I knew the signs by then. My heart was breaking for him but at the same time, I was so relieved because at least he was alive.
I texted my mother that he was okay and that I was bringing him home.
“I remember coming to Vermont when we were kids,” I said, mostly to pass the time. “Do you remember how you and I used to fish in Lake Morey?”
“I remember,” he said. “It was always us against them. Derek and Helen.”
I didn’t see it that way, however. They were older than we were. There was a natural barrier due to age.
“They weren’t so bad.”
“You don’t think it’s weird they never come to visit?”
“What do you mean?”
But he wouldn’t say anything else.
He was in a strange mood. Bad tempered and churlish. He stared out the window without really seeing anything. I decided to leave him be. When I stopped for gas, I got us some hot chocolate, putting extra sugar in his. When I handed him the cup, he apologized for his behavior.
“I’m sorry, sis, I’m sorry I’m such a fuckup.”
“You’re not! I’m just glad you’re still alive.”
He looked oddly at me. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You haven’t been doing drugs?”
“Just some weed and alcohol,” he shrugged, knowing full well those were off limits too.
“Oh, Tucker.”
For a while there was silence in the car. Then he told me about the friends he’d been planning to join on their drive to Mexico in a camper van. They offered him a ride and they made it to South Carolina when one night, while he was out getting food, they drove off with all his money and his backpack, with his phone and everything.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He shrugged. “I felt like such an idiot. I didn’t even know them that well. I had to get a ride back and I had no money, so I basically hitched rides and I got a ride with this old guy who was on his way to Newport, so I basically hung around.”
“Why Newport?”
“I knew this girl Kayley. She’s from Newport.”
“I remember Kayley,” I said. “Didn’t you used to work together at the hotel in Martha’s Vineyard a few years back?”
“She’s married now,” Tucker said, a hint of his familiar impish grin on his face. “Two kids, fat as a donut, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“No way!”
Tucker found work as a bar man. Then he met a girl in a bar, they started going out and he only found out she was married when her husband waited for them at their room one night, ready to bash his face to a pulp.
“That was the end of the Newport adventure?”
