Shattered (23 page)

Even though Alyssa wouldn’t say that she’d moved in,  I would have guessed that eighty percent of her belongings were now in my house.  Our house.  I couldn’t have been happier.  We’d quickly fallen into a routine.  She’d spend the days hanging out around the house, helping Kelly down at the bar or Mrs. Evans over at the flower shop.  I went to the farm every day and worked with her dad.  He always asked how she was and I’d tell him that she was happy.  It wasn’t a lie.  She was happy.  Every day when I’d get home we’d have dinner and watch television together, among other things.  It was working out even better than I’d hoped.  The work at the farm had slowed down a bit since all the planting was finished.  Paul let me and the other two workers head home early one Friday.   I walked into an empty apartment.  Alyssa must have been over at the flower shop.  Her car was still parked in its usual spot.  I took a quick shower and walked into the bedroom.  I smiled when I saw all her girly shit lying around.  Fashion magazines, makeup and a fluffy pink bathrobe were strewn across the floor and the bed.  I noticed a glass jar sitting on her nightstand.  I picked it up to examine the contents.  Little bits of broken glass clanged off the container as I spun it around.  My mind immediately flashed back to the accident.  She’d kept all of the tiny pieces of broken windshield she collected from the site.  They were all mixed in with other fragments she must have found in other places.  I thought it was strange that she would keep all of them, but I guess we all have our way of coping.  I still hadn’t worn the t-shirt I’d had on that night.  It was still hanging in my closet because I refused to throw it away.

I heard the door open and quickly put the jar back in its place.

“OMG!!! Jesse!”  she squealed in excitement as she burst into the bedroom.  I had no idea what had her all worked up, but her excitement made me smile.

“What’s up?” I laughed as she dramatically fell across the bed.

“You’re never going to guess what I just saw!”

“What?”

She sat up for a moment and tried to get a serious look on her face, “I saw one Ms. Wendy Evans and one Mr. Jim Reynolds making out in the back of the garage!”

“No way.”

“Yes, way!  Wendy told me that she was going to run over the garage and see about getting an oil change scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Is that what the old folks are calling a booty call these days?” I joked.

  She laughed as she continued, “I finished up all my work and walked over to tell her I was leaving for the day and lo and behold, there they were! It was crazy.”

“Good for Jim.” I sat down on the bed with her, “Jan’s mom is pretty good lookin’.”

“Yeah. Good for Jim and for Wendy.”

“I can’t wait to tell Jan.”  She fell to her back, letting her chestnut waves splay out around her face on the bed.  “She is going to die!”

“I don’t know if I’d tell her yet,”  I said as I watched the giddy expression on her face fold.

“Why?”

“I mean, it’s great all, but maybe her mom should be the one to tell her.  Besides, maybe they’re just fooling around.  They might not even be serious.”

“It looked pretty serious to me.  They were so into each other they didn’t even hear me in the garage.”

“I know, but it might be a hard pill for Jan to swallow.”  She knew I was right.  It had been just the two of them, January and her mom, for so long that throwing a new step-dad candidate into the mix could be shocking.

She nodded her head in agreement.  “You’re right.  I won’t tell her.  I’m just so excited that the two of them finally got together.  They deserve to be happy.”  It was cute that she was always thinking about other people.  It was one of the things I really admired about her.

I lay over on my side, resting my head in my hand. “Good.  Now get over here.  I want to schedule an oil change,” I wiggled my eyebrows with a cheesy grin.

Later that night, Alyssa insisted that we watch a marathon of some show she was obsessed with. I didn’t know much about it, other than four pretty girls were being sabotaged by some “A” character.  I gave in to Alyssa’s demand. For three hours I laid on the couch while she sat on the edge of her seat and whispered “omigod,” over and over to herself.  It might not have been my first choice of what to watch, but it made her happy so I went with it.

When it was finally over I snatched up the remote and quickly changed it to a more masculine selection.  We watched as a deep sea fishing crew reeled in a huge marlin.  It was pretty awesome.

“You miss it?” she asked as she snuggled down beside me, her head resting on my chest.

“Miss what?”  I ran my fingers through her silky hair, releasing the coconut scent that I loved.

“Fishing?” She gazed up at me with her big brown eyes.  “Florida?”

“I guess.  It’s pretty awesome.  I can’t wait to take you there.”

“I can’t wait to go.”  She moved her fingers in a circle pattern over my chest.

“Let’s go then.”  I sat up, moving her with me, and prepared to ask her a very serious question.

“What?”

“What’s stopping us?  Let’s move to Florida.”

“Seriously?” she asked with a confused smile as if she couldn’t believe I was asking her.

“Yes.  We don’t have a reason not to.  You’re out of school and everything is all lined up for me to go back.”

“I don’t know.  Things with my parents are screwed up and I…”

“Stop.  You’re thinking about this too much.  You’ve said all along that you can’t wait to get out of here.  You can sort things out with your parents and everything will be fine.  So let’s do it.  Let’s go.”  I felt my head bob enthusiastically as I tried to convince her this impulse would be worth it.

She bit her lip and thought about every reason that she should and shouldn’t say yes.  I watched the corners of her eyes turn up and knew that she was about to make me very happy.  “Yes.”

“Yes?”  I tilted my head and smiled, hoping that heard her right.

“Yes.  Let’s move!”

Alyssa

I woke up the next morning feeling excited and nervous all at the same time.  I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to be moving to Florida with Jesse.  I thought back to the day that Jesse, Garrett and I had made our big plans.

“God, I hate this freakin’ place,”  Jesse said as he sat down at the lunch table across from Garrett and me.  “I can’t wait to graduate and move the hell away from here.”

Garrett laughed, “You sound like Alyssa, drama queen.”

“Hey!” I smacked his arm, resenting the comment about me.  “What’s the matter Jess?”  I asked as he spun his fork around in the instant mashed potatoes our school served and insisted were homemade.

“I’m just over this small town bullshit.”  He wouldn’t admit it, but we knew that his parents had just left again after one of their three day visits.  “I’m just ready for something new.  Something different. You know?”

Garrett and I both nodded in agreement.  Living in a small town was pretty mundane.  There wasn’t much to do, so each day dragged into the next.  There were two kinds of people in Harrington: those who loved it and those who hated it.  The older we got, the more the three of us started to fall into the latter category.

“So what do you wanna do, Jess?” Garrett asked, taking a bite of his meatloaf.  I still couldn’t believe that he ate that shit, but he always had a clean plate at the end of the period.  “Join the circus?”

“Is there a circus coming through town?” I asked sarcastically.  “I think I could make it on the trapeze or maybe I‘ll grow a beard.  I could be the next bearded lady!”  I saw a smile crack Jesse’s lips.  Garrett continued the charade.

“You know, come to think of it, I think I could kick some major ass on a tightrope.”  Imagining Garrett’s tall, broad frame on a tightrope was enough to get a full laugh from Jesse.

“You guys are crazy.”  Garrett and I laughed along with his observation.

“Seriously, Jess,”  Garrett said, “you come up with a good plan and I’m game.  I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life working at the garage with my dad.”

“Yeah, me too,”  I added.  “I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

“Oh really, princess,” Jesse smiled at my enthusiasm, “you think Mary Boyd is going to let her daughter run away with us two clowns?”

He was right.  My mom would throw a fit.  As far as she was concerned Harrington was the end all, be all and I was destined to live out my days the same way she did.  Married to a successful farmer and perfectly content with having babies and cooking.  The same day to day routine that she had done for the past twenty years.

“I’m going,” I said with a finality in my voice that I’d never heard before and judging by the response on their faces, they hadn’t heard it either.  “I don’t care what my mother has to say about it.”

“Ok then!” Garrett slapped his hands down on the table.

“Yes!” Jesse smiled brightly, removing any sadness from his eyes that had been there when he sat down.  “We’re getting out of here.”

We spent the next fifteen minutes of lunch coming up with the idea of moving to Florida.  Jesse said he would call his uncle and see if he had any work for us.  The only problem was we’d have to wait almost a full year until I graduated from high school.  I told them that they didn’t have to wait for me.  They insisted saying that if they didn’t I would never go.  It was probably true my mother would have had me married off by the time I graduated.

As we walked up to the front of the cafeteria to toss our trays away, I paused for a moment.

“Remember what you said about you two being clowns?” I asked with as serious a face as I could muster.

“Yeah, what about it?” Jesse and Garrett turned to me.

“I think that is a perfect idea.  Maybe we would should rethink Florida and go back to the original circus idea,”  I smiled.

We laughed our way to our next classes.  Even though it was all fun and games, truth be told, I would have joined the circus, the military or even a cult to get out of Harrington with those two boys.

As I pulled up the gravel lane of my childhood home, I took in a deep breath and prepared myself for the discussion I was about to have with my mom and dad.  I hadn’t seen them since I left that night.  Jesse told me that he talked to my dad about me and relayed messages of “Hello,” and “I hope you are well,” from him.  

When I walked in and found them sitting down to dinner, their faces surprised me.  They both looked overjoyed that I was home.  Unfortunately, my mother’s face quickly turned to irritation when I told her my reason for the visit.  My dad, on the other hand, didn’t seem surprised.

“I do not approve of this,“ my mother said.

“I doesn’t really matter, Mom,  I’m eighteen.  I’m an adult.”

“You’re not ready to go traipsing off yet.  What about college?  What about your father and me?”

“Mary,” my dad tried to reason with her, “Alyssa is a responsible young lady.” He smiled at me, “If she thinks she’s ready to go, she’s ready.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I turned my attention back to my mother, “I can go to college anywhere.  Besides, Jesse has jobs lined up for us.  Everything going to be fine.”

“I should have known that Jesse Vaughn was at the root of this!”  She quickly got up from the table and pretended to busy herself with the dishes.

“Don’t,” I said, following her over to the sink.  “You don’t get to say anything about him after what you did.  I came back here to tell you I was leaving out of respect.  I didn’t come here for your approval and I certainly didn’t come here to have you bash the man I love.”

“What?” She dropped a glass into the sink, shattering it to pieces.  “You don’t love him.”

“Mary, don’t do this.” My dad shook his head from his seat at the table.

“You don’t know anything about us, mother.  Jesse has shown me more love than you ever did.”  I reached down and pulled a piece of the broken glass from the sink.  Old habits, die hard.  I rubbed my fingers over the smooth finish, careful not to graze the sharp edges, trying to remain calm.

“Alyssa, I…” she tried to respond, but I held up my hand stopping her.

“I’m done with this conversation.  I just wanted to grab the rest of my things and let you know that I was moving.  Have a great life.” I stormed up the stairs to my room and quickly gathered up the few things that were remaining.

“Lyss.”  My dad stepped in the doorframe.

“Yeah?”  I walked over to him, lugging the duffle bag I’d stuffed full.  He took the bag from me and tossed the strap over his shoulder.

“Let me walk you to the car,” he smiled.

We walked down the stairs and past the kitchen, my mother never once looking up from the sink.  As I watched my dad toss the bag in the backseat, I felt the finality of the situation settle on me.  I was really going to do this.  I was moving.  My dad broke my train of thought when he wrapped his arms around me.

“I’m gonna miss you.”  He placed his lips on my forehead and I placed my arms around him.

“I’m gonna miss you too, Dad.”  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.  He slipped the plastic card out and handed it to me.

“For emergencies only,” he smiled as I pulled the credit card from his grasp.  “Or groceries, or new clothes, or whatever you need.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I smiled, tucking it in my back pocket.

“She’s going to come around, Lyss, I promise you.” We looked back at the house at my mother staring out the kitchen window, watching us.

“I hope so.”  With that, I got in my car and left.

When I got back to the apartment, Jesse was waiting for me.

“How’d it go?”

“About like I expected.  She’s impossible.”  I tossed my bag down on the floor with a thud.  Jesse pulled me into his arms and I settled my head on his chest.

“That sucks.  Do you still want to go?”

“Of course I do,”  I looked up into his warm green eyes, “I can’t wait to go.  I’m not going to let her ruin this.”

“Okay,” he bent his head down and pressed his lips to mine.  “Come on, let’s go for a ride.”  He led me by the hand, down the back staircase to a door that led into the bar.  He unlocked the padlock that was holding it shut and we walked through the bar, undetected, and out the back door to where his Jeep was parked.  I’d almost forgotten about the other exit from the apartment.  We always used the door off the street side.  We hopped in to the Jeep and Jesse started the engine.  It only took a couple minutes for us to be out on the back roads, cruising along with radio blaring.  Jesse was still holding my hand in his as I let the warm country air attempt to blow my worries away.