Tethered (7 page)

That’s what Emmy said to me when I got back to her house just as dark was falling. I dropped my skateboard in the foyer and inspected the scrape on my elbow from when I fell. After I skated away from Emmet, I went to my top secret hideout so I could clear my head. I hopped a bus to Philly and spent my day at the art museum. Something about the sculptures, the various paintings and displays was soothing. My favorite spot there was the European art. Sometimes I’d spend a good hour just admiring
Portal from the Abbey Church of Saint-Laurent
. I was never a religious person, but the beautiful stone work left me mesmerized.

“Doesn’t matter where I’ve been,” I said. I was unwilling to give up my secret place. “I’m here now.”

I looked up and discovered the entire family had gathered into the foyer: Fred, Sam, Emmet, and Emmy. They were all looking at me. My heart just about leapt out of my ribcage.

“Is it my mom?” I asked in a panic.

“No,” Emmy said, taking my hands into hers. “It’s your dad. Donya, he...” she paused and looked at me with deep sadness. “He overdosed. He didn’t make it.”

“Overdosed?” I snickered and shook my head. “On what? On life?” I laughed. “No, that’s impossible since he was barely living one. My dad wasn’t on drugs.”

Sam and Fred exchanged a look, but remained quiet.

“Don’t have a private conversation with your eyes that I’m not privy to,” I snapped, pulling out my adult words like ‘privy’.

“Honey, your dad overdosed on heroin,” Sam said.

“But…” I looked into all of their faces. “My dad didn’t do drugs. I’ve never seen him do drugs.”

“He hid it from you very well,” Sam said sadly.

Of course he hid it from me very well. He was never around. By the time I was thirteen I would sometimes go days without seeing him. He would show up, pay the bills, ask me about my life and listen just long enough to get the bare minimum and when I’d wake up in the morning, he would be gone again, leaving me to deal with my mom. When I called him on it, he said he was working long hours and it was easier to stay closer to work since it was an hour plus drive away.

I pulled my hands out of Emmy’s and wiped my palms on my jeans.

“I’m going to go to my mom’s house,” I said softly, looking at the floor. I picked up my skateboard and put one hand on the door behind me.

“I’ll drive you,” Emmet said.

“It’s a few blocks away,” I said, irritated. “I’ll be fine.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” Emmy said.

I laughed and looked at her. “When I get to my mom’s house, I
will
be alone. I’m
always
alone there. I think I can handle the few blocks alone to the house that I will be alone in.”

“Then I will come with you,” Emmy insisted. “I’ll stay with you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to get sucked into the black hole with me,” I said and to my surprise my voice waivered.

“You are my best friend, D,” Emmy said. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

She ran upstairs to get a few things, leaving me the center of attention in the foyer. I felt like I was one of the objects I had looked at in the museum.

“I’d really appreciate if you all stop looking at me as if I’m going to fall to pieces, because I’m not. My dad left me a long time ago, so this really…” I took a deep, shaky breath. “This really isn’t a surprise that he found a way to leave permanently.”

Without warning, without any kind of shudder or whimper, I was hit full force with grief. I hated to cry in front of anyone. I wasn’t a crier. I cried once today because that whole kissing thing was just damn confusing to my teenage hormonal body and mind. I
did
fall apart. Suddenly and brutally I was sobbing as I dropped my board on the floor with a loud clatter.

Emmy was halfway down the stairs when the onslaught started, but it was Emmet who wrapped his arms around me and held me. I held on to him fiercely. I was afraid if he let me go I would melt to the floor and just die myself. I cried in his arms for several minutes before I was able to pull myself together. He released me reluctantly, pushing my hair off of my face for the second time that day.

I convinced Emmy that I needed to go home alone. I didn’t know how my mom was going to be and I didn’t want her there if it was bad. Emmet looked at me knowingly, but I didn’t elaborate to anyone else. After some further discussion, Fred convinced me to let Emmet take me home and I finally agreed. Sam and Fred, the parents I wish I had all along, hugged me and kissed me and promised to be a phone call away. Emmy wiped my tears and promised she would be over bright and early no matter what. She walked out to the car with us and stood in the driveway as we pulled away.

We were quiet for the three or four minutes it took for Emmet to drive me home, but he drove with one hand and stroked my hair with his other hand. I never found the words to explain how comforting that small gesture was.

When we pulled up in front of the house, I noticed cars of the relatives that rarely stopped over, that never helped out, and it made me angry. Emmet saw the cars, too and his eyes narrowed a bit.

“Just try to be patient,” he said, picking up on how I was feeling.

“I’ll try,” I said without any commitment. I put my hand on the door to let myself out.

“Donya,” he said my name quietly. I looked at him expectantly.

He brushed hair off of my cheek and even in the lightly dimmed car I could see his eyes drop to my lips. Then he took a breath and pulled his hand away.

“Call me if you need me,” he said simply.

“Okay,” I said and now my eyes dropped to his lips.

We sat staring at each other for probably almost a full minute before I finally made myself look away. I pushed open the door and got out to go face some demons.

Chapter Six

I kissed Emmet again the night of my dad’s funeral. My mom had locked herself in her bedroom and my dad’s siblings and a few other random relatives were sitting in
our
home saying terrible things about my mom and my dad. The things they were saying were true, but they weren’t trying to be helpful. They were putting themselves on pedestals, separating themselves from us as if they were somehow better people. There aren’t better people. Just better circumstances. I was only nearly fifteen and I got that. Why didn’t they?

“I’m going out for a walk,” I had said as I walked through the living room with my board under my arm. “And when I come back I want you all out of my house.”

“Who she talking to?” I heard my Aunt Amanda snap. “Oh, I know you’re not talking to me, little girl.”

I whirled around and looked at the gossipy, hypocritical bunch.

“None of you ever came over here to help before,” I snapped. “Don’t sit there and pretend that you give a shit when you don’t. No one ever came over here to make sure I was okay or to make sure mommy was eating and none of you ever came over to check to make sure she was still breathing. Get
out
of our house. You don’t belong here.”

I slammed the door behind me and before I could skate away, my aunt was in the door yelling at my back about how she was going to kick my ass if I ever spoke to her like that again and that I was in no position to tell her what to do and I’m just as crazy as my mom. With restraint I barely had, I skated away without looking back.

I had found myself back at that parking lot where I had kissed Emmet. It was dark at nearly eight-thirty in late October. There was a soft hum from the tall lampposts that bathed the lot in soft light. I really shouldn’t have been out there by myself in the dark. It was set back away from any main roadways and there were few houses or open businesses in the vicinity, but I really wanted to clear my head.

I had been moving in slow lazy arches for some time when I saw the headlights of a car. I started to worry that it was going to be some psychopath out for his nightly killing and raping, but when the car stopped a few yards from where I stood on my board, I realized that it wasn’t a psychopath at all. It was just Emmet. I looked on with curiosity as he got out of the car, reached inside and then produced his board. Did he know I would be there, or was it a coincidence?

“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself in the dark,” he said, stopping in front of me.

“I’m not by myself,” I said pointedly.

“You were before I got here,” he said, dropping his board to the pavement.

I gave him a little shrug and pushed off and away from him. We rode in a comfortable silence for a long time. It was getting very cold and I was mad at myself that I had forgotten my gloves in my haste to get out of the house. I pushed my hands into my pockets but it wasn’t quite enough to keep them warm. Every few minutes I would take them out and rub them together and blow warm air onto them before pushing them back into my pockets. I stopped for a moment to adjust my jacket and pull my knit cap over my ears. Emmet stopped in front of me just as I started to rub my hands together again. Startling me, he grabbed my hands. He put them together as if I was about to pray and then he rubbed his hands over mine. I sighed happily as my hands began to heat up under the friction of his hands rubbing on mine. He bent over slightly and cupped his hands around mine and blew. My hands warmed, but so did my whole body.

What the hell was this feeling? What was with the tingling that started in my fingertips and radiated throughout my entire body?

“Better?” he asked softly as he slowly rubbed my hands.

I nodded. I couldn’t speak. Not with the way he was looking at me. Why did he have to have such beautiful eyes that made me feel like I was happily drowning in a green sea?

“Did you know I was out here before you got here?” I blurted out.

Where had that come from? Who cares? I guess I did.

Emmet nodded slowly as he again blew hot air onto my hands.

“How did you know I was here?”

He shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

He had said that when I fell and hit my head years before. He had told me he’d always find me, and he had said that to me the week before, the day he first brought me to the lot and kissed me, the night my father died.

“You didn’t find me after you found out about my dad,” I murmured more to myself than him, but of course he had heard me.

“Not exactly,” he said with a half of a shrug.

“What do you mean not exactly?” I had never told anyone where I had gone. It was still my secret place and I wanted to keep it that way.

“I could…feel you,” he said carefully. “I can’t explain it. Sometimes I know…I just know you’re close by and sometimes I know when you’re not. I knew you weren’t. I knew you weren’t very far, but you were…out of my reach.”

I stared at him with an open mouth. This was deep. Too deep for my teenage mind to understand. It was scary, maybe it was scary because…well…I kind of always felt Emmet, too. Even when we were little kids, I always knew when Emmet was near without having to look. That didn’t scare me back then. I didn’t think much of it then, but at almost fifteen years old, I began to understand how rare that was, and how absolutely freaky it was. So freaky.

We met half way this time. Freaky or not, his lips were so close and we were alone and I was feeling a little miserable and I knew Emmet could make me feel better. His lips crushed against mine and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He held me close, his hands shifting up and down my back as he kissed me. His mouth was so warm and had the perfect amount of moisture. I was getting better at using my tongue with his and I could tell he liked it. The same soft moans that I made, he was making, too. I took a page from his book and pulled his bottom lip between my lips and gently sucked, then nipped, and then soothed it with my tongue. Oh, yeah. I was learning.

Emmet pulled away suddenly and took a couple of steps back. I was left unbalanced on my skateboard. I wobbled madly for a moment on weakened knees and fell backward on my ass. He was helping me up before I even had time to process that I had fallen. Once I was firmly on my feet, he backed away again.

“I have to stop kissing you,” he said and let out a long breath.

Embarrassed, I picked up my board. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m going to head home. I’ll see you…whenever.”

“Donya,” Emmet said with a frustrated tone. His hand was on my arm, stopping me. I let him. “I
want
to kiss you, but…I’m older with…more experience and you’re making my head all cloudy. I don’t want to…disrespect you.”

Ohhhh, I get it.

Emmet was telling me that he wasn’t a virgin and that he didn’t want to do something crazy like feel me up or lure me into losing my virginity in the backseat of his car. I almost snickered at how quickly I caught on to that. Sometimes I thought I was just a naïve kid, but I got that. I understood it so fast.

I didn’t want that to happen either.

“Okay,” I said to him. “We probably shouldn’t kiss anymore then.”

“I
like
kissing you,” he said, cupping my cheek. “I love you because you’re part of my family, but I have…other feelings for you, too.”

Okay, now this was just too much for me. My brain was getting overloaded. I know teenage girls fall in love all of the time, but I didn’t romanticize life like they did. I wasn’t in any hurry to fall in love and be anyone’s girlfriend and to have regular make-out sessions. I wanted to skateboard and get through school and get through
life
before all of that. Falling in love or lust or strong like as girls did at my age
changed
them. One day they are carefree and maybe a little broody because hormones do that to kids, but life isn’t as…heavy. Then the next day they’re all dreamy eyed and head over heels for some guy and then life gets complicated. I saw Emmy already headed down that path with Reed, even if she said it was just flirting. Since the party, their just flirting turned into a “just making out” and in a matter of days she had that dreamy eyed look and is fantasizing about her future with him. I was way too young for any of that, despite how my heart seemed to beat harder for Emmet than for anyone or anything else in the world. Despite the fact that I also felt that invisible…tether…