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“No one else wanted to,” I say quietly.
Her hands tighten around mine. “What happened with your dad? You said he hated you, but I never saw that in high school.”
I draw in a deep breath. “That’s because I conformed to what he wanted then.”
“With football?”
“With everything. He never understood who I really was or what I wanted. He didn’t care. No one did. Football, prom king, all that shit was to make him and everyone else happy. I learned early on people didn’t care about me, just what I could do for them. It was confirmed when I decided to pursue music instead of football after I graduated. I meant nothing to him after that. I had just been an idea, not a person. Once that idea dissolved, so did I.”
“Not everyone thought that,” she says quietly. I hear the pain in her voice and pull her closer. “I always saw you. I always saw the boy with the guitar.”
“Until I broke your heart,” I mutter.
I feel her sharp breath, but I don’t regret saying it. She needs to remember who I am. What I’ve done. Why this entire moment isn’t real and shouldn’t even be happening.
“Was it really because you didn’t want me to follow you and ruin my future?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t actually want to say no? Youwantedto go to prom with me?”
I release a bitter laugh. “Fuck, Iz. Turning you down was one of the hardest things I had to do up until then. You were the only person who saw me. The only one who gave a shit about me. Even Kim didn’t…”
I can’t finish. I can’t tell her the part about how, after Dad gave up on me when I turned down the football scholarship to Penn State, he put all his hope and attention on his perfect daughter. How he also blames me for her eventual downfall. In an ironic way, that’s accurate.
“And taking the fall for the accident? Was that for the same reason?”
I blink at the far wall, forcing away the trauma of that night. “I don’t know. Maybe. I was so insignificant at that point. No one needed me or even saw me. I was fucking invisible once I stopped being useful, and I guess I thought by taking the fall for Kim it would make me important to them, give me a purpose, you know? For the first time in my life I could feel like a hero instead of a fuckup. Like my life meant something and maybe...”
My words crack, and I clench my eyes shut.
“Tristan…” I hear the pain in her voice as she clings to my hand.
Forcing in a tattered breath, I rest my forehead against her hair.
“I didn’t know what really happened until it was too late,” I say faintly. “Kim thought she hit a deer. She shouldn’t have been driving at all on a junior license, on top of being drunk. She had everything going for her, and I had nothing to lose at that point. Dad would have imploded if both his kids became massive disappointments, so it seemed to make sense that I say it was me.”
“Even when you found out it wasn’t a deer? That someone had been killed?”
She traces her fingers along my arm, and I let her touch soothe the ache in my chest. This story sounds ridiculous out loud, especially in the wake of what happened next, but at the time, our naïve teenage brains thought it was the only option that made sense.
“We didn’t know it was a person until after I already confessed. The cops showed up. Asked if it was my car in the driveway and if I’d been driving it that night. I said yes, like Kim and I had planned. I should have known then something was wrong. They don’t come to your house over a deer, but we were young and stupid and scared. When they told us it was a person, I almost threw up. They arrested me on the spot. Given my record and confession, it was an easy case.”
She turns toward me, and I wince at the glisten in her eyes. We shouldn’t be talking about this. None of it matters, and it’s already broken so much of my life. I don’t want to give up any more.
Call me as soon as possible.
“So when you found out it was Amber, why didn’t you tell the truth then?”
I cringe at the anger in her voice. For Kim? For me? For the universe? I have no idea, but I recognize it well. She wants to re-write the past. As if understanding the answer to that question will somehow erase the last four years.
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” I say in a scratched tone. “They wouldn’t have believed me and it’s very likely I would have lost at trial. I couldn’t take the chance. They hit me with homicide by vehicle, recklessly endangering another person, leaving the scene of an accident, driving on a suspended license... You name it, they threw it at me.”
I blink hard, emotion closing my throat again. “What was I supposed to do, Iz?”
She threads her arms around me and buries her face in my chest. I hold her close as my shattered question echoes around us. I’ve tortured myself with it so many times. Should I have fought harder? Should I have taken my chances? And even if I’d won, would I have been able to live with myself if Kim had my fate—a worse one since she was intoxicated and had lied to police. Three-to-six seemed like a bargain at the time. How could I possibly have understood the catastrophic price I’d be paying?
We lay in silence for a while, each of us lost in our own heads. I don’t know what she’s thinking but I’m trying desperately not to go back to that awful night or the countless more that followed. All I want is to letthisone overpower them all.
