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“Yeah, I am. But, so are you.”
“You think I want to date Vi?”
“I think you’re in love with her. And, I’m happy for you. I think you two might be really happy together.”
“Are you saying I’m a lesbian? Fuck you, Cage!” she said refusing to entertain the idea.
I shifted to get out and then stopped.
“Look. I know how hard it is to escape the box that we put our lives in. When we’re kids we think we know what we want and we keep going after it even when we realize that it’s not. But there is a liberation that comes when you don’t allow everyone else’s dreams define you… even when the other person won’t text you back,” I said solemnly.
“Goodbye, Cage,” Tasha said not giving me an inch.
“Goodbye, Tasha. Thank you for the ride,” I said throwing my bag across my shoulder and exiting on my crutches.
Tasha didn’t wait for me to reach the door to pull off. I didn’t blame her. She probably wasn’t ready to accept how she felt about her best friend and I had forced her to look at it. If the situation was reversed and she was saying that about Quin, I would probably be pissed too.
But, there was no doubt that she was in love with Vi. I hadn’t realized it until I said it, but it all made perfect sense.
The girl was practically heartbroken when I said that I didn’t want to have a threesome with her. I didn’t know if she was lesbian, or bisexual, but Tasha had unresolved feelings and she needed us to break up as much as I did.
The only problem was that the person I was in love with might not feel the same way about me. It had been days since the game and Quin was gone. Why? I didn’t understand. What had changed?
The only thing I could think of was that he was no longer my tutor. Could that be it? Was everything I thought that was happening between us just in my head? Was I just a stray puppy to him, and once he found me a home he was done?
I didn’t want to think about that now. I had more pressing things to deal with like how I was going to smooth things over with my father. He was clearly pissed. The man hadn’t checked up on his only son as I lay in the hospital. I would have been upset if I hadn’t come to accept it. The bar for him was so low that all he had to do was come home and that would be enough.
Balancing on my good foot, I retrieved my keys and let myself in. What I found surprised me. I was expecting to find the entire place a mess. It wasn’t. It almost looked cleaner than the last time I saw it. That was weird because my father hadn’t cleaned anything in years.
Crossing through the kitchen to the living room, I realized that the place hadn’t been cleaned. Things were missing. The liquor bottles that sat on the glass table next to the couch were gone. So was my father’s coffee mug and favorite drinking glass.
Dread filled me as I slowly realized what was going on. Dropping my bag I quickly made my way to my father’s bedroom. A long time ago he had put a lock on the door. He was sure to lock it whenever he left. I didn’t know what he kept in there and I didn’t want to know. But, when I turned the knob this time, it opened.
The room was a mess. There were papers and house decorations everywhere. What was he doing with all of this stuff? And why would he keep house decorations in his room?
Pushing past the crap, I navigated to what I really wanted to see.
“It’s empty,” I said staring into the closet. “All of his clothes are gone.”
Quickly I turned to his bed. Part of the reason he had put a lock on the door was that he realized I had found his hiding spot under it. It was a metal box under loose wooden planks. In it, he had more cash than an unemployed man should have had. And sitting on the cash was a gun.
Tossing my crutches aside, I fell to the ground and made my way past the junk and under his bed. If his cash and gun were gone, so was he. My heart pounded as I inched closer. Was this it? Had he done what he had threatened to do?
Peeling back the planks, I found the metal box. There it was. I didn’t want to open it but I had to. I prayed to God that it was all still there. But, opening the lid, it wasn’t. The gun and cash were gone. The only thing left was an I.D. with my father’s picture on it.
He left me. He really was gone. I pulled myself from under his bed and retrieved my phone. My first thought was to call Quin. I desperately wanted to talk to him. I needed to talk to him.
‘I’m not sure why I haven’t heard from you, but would love to talk,’ I texted hoping beyond hope that I would get a text back.
I didn’t. Not that day or the next. I was alone in the world. I had no one and nothing.
Heartbreak overwhelmed me plunging me into darkness. Days earlier I had everything and a guy I loved. I had lost it all and now I was barely holding onto my sanity.
I probably would have wallowed in despair forever if it wasn’t for one thing, hunger. I had no money to buy anything so the only thing I could eat was what was in the cupboards. That lasted me a week and a half before it ran out.
Luckily spring semester was about to start. I couldn’t lose my scholarship in the middle of a school year even with an injury. And with my scholarship came meal stipends.
I would be fine as long as I attended classes and found a job. Both things meant that I would need to reengage in life. I wasn’t ready to do that, but what I was ready for didn’t matter. This was about survival.
