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“Hey, Soldier.”
After almost ten years of being away, there were voices I was sure I wouldn’t recognize if I heard them again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pick out my old boss from the grocery store out of a lineup, and if you asked me to recognize my first-grade teacher by voice alone, I wouldn’t be able to.
But there were some voices I’d always remember, and when I dropped my hand, not caring about my mother’s nudity anymore, I was faced withthewicked grin time wouldn’t let me forget.
“Levi.”
Levi Stratton stood in my mother’s living room, zipping his pants up. He was missing his shirt and shoes, and given the casual way he moved around, it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was comfortable here.
I wanted to throw up.
He walked over, every shitty tattoo on full display, and looked me over. “God, how long has it been? Oh”—he tapped his temple—“that’s right. Just short of ten years, isn’t it?”
Mom had turned her back to me and hurried to pull a shirt on as I managed to ask without wincing, “You’re fucking my mom?”
He grinned and offered a nonchalant shrug while Mom hurried, barefoot, to thrust her hands against my ungiving chest.
“I told you not to come back!” she shouted, frantic.
“And where would you like me to go, Diane?” I asked, turning my narrowed glare from Levi to look at her. The woman who hadn’t changed her mind the way Harry had said she might. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“You think I give a fuck where you go? I don’tfuckingcare as long as you’re nothere.” She smacked my chest. “Now, get the fuck out. Go!”
“Better listen to your mother, Soldier,” Levi said, passing us to head to the refrigerator.
I ignored him and brushed her hands away, unwilling to show any of the hurt and anguish I was feeling. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what I would do. But wherever it was, she wouldn’t know, and she’d never be aware that she was breaking my heart with every hateful word.
“I have to get my stuff,” I said, my tone as cold as the world outside.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Make it fast.”
It had been a long time since I’d been inside the apartment, and most people in my position would presume that their belongings would’ve been moved, put away, or even thrown out. But I knew better than to think my mother would lift a finger to do anything productive regardless of how much time had passed, and when I pushed past her and Levi and headed to my old room, I found that I’d been right.
My room had remained frozen in time. It was as neat as it’d always been, save for the empty envelope where my savings once had been, still lying beside the bed where I had left it almost ten years ago. Nothing else appeared to have been touched or moved, and I slammed the door behind me to quickly collect everything worth taking.
A pair of boots in better shape than the shoes I was wearing. Some clothes that I thought might still fit. A smaller stash of money I’d taped beneath my dresser—a couple hundred bucks maybe—surprised that the thieves in the next room hadn’t found it first. A picture of my grandparents and me, another picture of Billy and me from when we had been young and untouched by death and the loss of innocence.
Then, I opened the closet and grabbed Grampa’s tackle box from the top shelf. I hadn’t opened it since the day he had died, hadn’t even cared to. But there was no way in hell I was letting Diane keep it. And who knew? Maybe I’d even pick up fishing again, wherever the hell I ended up.
I left everything else and didn’t bother turning off the light or closing the door behind me as I reentered the living room. I ignored Levi and stared my mother down, who was now, once again, sitting on the couch.
That was the only thing that had changed about this place. The fucking couch.
I guessed she only gave a shit about the things she needed the most—drugs and a place to crash after the high.
“You’re never seeing me again,” I warned her, keeping my voice even. Unmoved as my heart ached incredibly. “The second I walk through that door, I am gone, and you will never see me again for the rest of your miserable fucking life. Do you understand that?”
She said nothing.
“You won’t know where I go. You won’t have any way to contact me. This is it. Tell me you understand that, tell me you’re good with it, and I’m gone forever.”
That was when she looked right into my hardened glare, her pupils missing from her eyes, and she said, “I should’ve aborted you.”
Levi laughed, grinning like she’d just told the funniest joke he had ever heard. “Man, our lives would’ve been easier. Think of everyone who’d still be alive. Imagine that.”
I could kill him. I wanted to, and you know what? Maybe I should. I could be thrown back into Wayward. I would have a place to live, eat, sleep …
But it was what he wanted.
