Chasing After Infinity (21 page)

“Are you ready to go?” Blake says, his eyes glinting as he drinks some punch.

I glance back to Adrian and then to Blake’s nonchalance. Suddenly, this night is just too much. “Yeah, let’s just leave,” I suggest to Blake, feeling silly and confused.

When he doesn’t reply, I grab his hand and start tugging him away from Adrian who’s still standing there, watching us.

After I get home, I wash away all my make-up until I look like myself.
Until I’m vulnerable inside.
Gazing at myself, I look tired and exposed. I curse myself for losing control, for succumbing to Adrian’s willpower, for acting like one of his marionettes.

“Coward,” I say to my reflection. “You’re nothing but a coward.”

chapter
seventeen

ADRIAN

I drive around aimlessly, my mind blank and heart stinging as I fight for control. My fingers grip the wheel too tightly as I race down the highway, going well above the speed limit. The black sky is glaring back at me, the shadowy silhouettes of forests and
lightlamps
in the distance of the big city corporations and billboards screaming light in the night.
The sounds of girls laughing in my ears ring repeatedly, the drunken whoosh of air past my ears and their hands all over me; ripping off my jacket, my discarded tie lying in the huddle, my senses buzzed and silent--mute. I don't remember anything else about two hours ago. After
Avena
had left with Blake Ryerson and after the sixth round of tonic, I was barely semi-conscious.

Flashes of her dancing with Ryerson comes
to me. She was always there, out of reach, flitting towards me as if to beckon me closer. Then she pushes me away.

Him holding her,
him
brushing a stray lock of hair out of my eyes sends fire through my veins and I have to keep my eyes straight on the road or else I'd veer off the slope. I curse under my breath.

When have I, Adrian Huntington, ever have given two shits about anyone that I've ever toyed with? When did this even start?

The car yanks to a screeching stop at the white line as the light
turns
red in front of me. I exhale sharply and close my eyes, trying to squeeze the bridge of my nose to stop the aching between my eyes.

What do you
got,

if
you
ain't
got love
Whatever you got,

it
just
ain't
enough
You're
walkin
' the road,

but
you're
goin
' nowhere

You're
tryin
' to find your way back home,

but
there's no one there
Who do you hold,

in
the dark of night
You
wanna
give up,

but
it's worth the fight

I keep on driving, my hands shaking on the wheel.
If you
ain't
got someone,

you're
afraid to lose
Everybody needs just one,

someone
...

If you
ain't
got love,

it's
all just keeping score
If you
ain't
got love,

what
the hell we doing it for

I don't
wanna
have to talk about it
How many songs you
gotta
sing about it
How long you
gonna
live without it
Why does someone somewhere have to doubt it
Someday you'll figure it out

What do you
got,

if
you
ain't
got love
Whatever you got,

it
just
ain't
enough

I rub my eyes, feeling exhausted as I stop at yet another red light. I can barely keep my thoughts collected.

This feeling scares me.

Or maybe it was just awakening.

Like being asleep for so long and then gradually, one day, opening your eyes.

I glance at my
rearview
window and curse when I see the telltale red lights behind my car, zooming closer. The sirens are put up a second later and I hit the gas, willing for speed, for adrenaline. My tires squelch, burning rubber, and jerk around a tight bend as I start to lose the police cruiser.

As soon as the adrenaline wears off, my mind is wary. I need to get away from all of this for a little while. My life is fucked up as enough as it is and instead of messing things up further, I need to straighten my past mistakes out.

I need to find my biological father.

Maybe then finally, I'd have someone to guide me through.

To help me not to fuck things up again.

****

AVENA

I look at the night sky, starry and black as charcoal. I have an urge to draw the beautiful sky, as immense and vast as it is. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't sleep. I look at the glowing red numbers on my alarm, reading a 12:38 P.M. My knees are tucked under my chin as I stare out my bedroom window, still in my pyjamas. There's a restless feeling that I just can't shake.

I close my eyes. An image of Adrian's face appears behind my eyelids. There's something in his eyes--that forces me to exhale.

Adrian.
His green eyes like the mysterious creek in the meadows.
His words--that cut into me like no one else's can and bittersweet at the same time.
His stubborn and aggravating side--the side that has my teeth hurting in intense itching to kill him.

But.
When I think of the time when we held hands sleeping on the same futon, I've never seen him in the way that I saw him before. He suddenly looked different. Not like the same sarcastic and sardonic person who fights for the hell of it and use girls like wads of tissues, but like a person who held me in my weakest period.

Because...

While lying there, pretending to sleep and feeling his hand in mine, I thought I could lay there with him forever.

And that was scary.
Because that was the thing that I was most afraid of.

Falling too deep into something.

***

ADRIAN

I had passed the sign OKLAHOMA CITY, five hundred thousand people living in the city a while ago. It's only been an hour and a half drive but it's been feeling like an eternity. I'm dehydrated and slightly half-drunk and lost in the city.

It's bustling here even at midnight, half-broken inns' neon signs radiating in the darkness, cars passing by with whizzes and I've been trying to find the street,
Keelon
Road for far too long. I'm cruising past the road with a boarded up convenience store and my phone beeps again. One hand on the wheel, I flip it open and find ten voice mails. Six are from the dance, the girls chirping similar drunken giggles. The others are from home. My adoptive dad's voice yells swear words into the phone, shouting where the hell I am and I have to get my ass back home or else I'll be grounded for an entire year.

I can barely hold back a
drunk
snort and cut him off as I flip my phone shut, tossing it into the car compartment.

It's not like I've heard it all before.

Five years ago, I broke the family's china and he pushed me so hard that I fell into the cocktail table. The glass had shattered and cut my arms, the shards stuck into my skin. There was this moment--this pause--where he stared at me and I stared at him and we didn't say a word. Then I just tore it out of there. That's what I do. When the going gets tough, I pound my worries away.

I go back to the present where I look up to see the street Jasper Street, a block away from the road I'm looking for. I speed up, nearly running down a worn mailbox in the row of boxes that are houses.

And there it is. I hold the paper that I've stolen from my parent's drawer that contains all of my adoption papers and hold it up to the graying house in front of me. The shutters are closed and the steps are cracking, the lawn pitifully yellow. I park the car near the side of the road.

I go up to the front door, exhaling. I rap the door, once twice and a third time. I hear a dog bark in the house as someone grunts and gets up. A light is turned on and a second later, the door is opened.

A paunchy bald man with light blue eyes stares
squintingly
at me, holding a newspaper and wearing a stained pair of nylon shorts. "Who the hell are you--has the delivery come yet?"

"I'm looking for William Huntington," I say, my voice low. "I'm his biological son."

First, the man looks shocked,
then
disbelieving then clear apprehension goes over his pasty face.
"Him?
You're looking for him?" He pauses. "He passed away two years ago."

The landlord pats my shoulder but I can't feel anything. I nod slowly. My mouth is dry. A sound comes out--a twisted sound.

The father I never knew that died already.

And they never told me. They kept it from me--all this time.

How long have they known?

Without another word, I walk away from the porch stiffly and when I get to the car, my hand twisting the keys shaking.

My eyes sting as I start to drive away. Fast, hard and angry, I step on the pedals, getting away from the neighbourhood.

When I’m far away enough, I pull to the side of the road when I can’t take it anymore.
Finally, the detached emotions that have been suppressed for too long, I bow my head and start to cry.

***

AVENA

Waking up in a cold sweat, I gasp and my eyes fly open. My hand restlessly gropes for the lamp and my room is enveloped in a warm glow. Wrenching pain and devastation in my heaving chest has shot me awake. I squeeze shut my eyes, remembering the earlier sadness and grief feelings swirling in me. I had dreamt of Adrian.

He was standing alone in a sea of white, looking lost and so alone. His eyes reflected pain—the kind that you know is like a stain.
The kind that can never be washed out.

I’m still trying to breathe evenly.

I fall back, groaning muffled by a pillow held into my face.

I needed to erase him.

Get him out of my head.
Out of my system.

I’m not just scared of it anymore; I’m already in too deep. And I don’t know what to do.

Remembering the dance and what happened, I recall Adrian’s hands on me, his mouth swooping down to meet mine, gnawing on my bottom lip, tasting like tonic and sweet punch, him moaning slightly, me barely holding back a gasp--

Turning onto my back and biting back a frustrated scream into my pillow, I try to go back to sleep.

chapter
eighteen