CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I meet with the auctioneer on Friday. I have plenty of questions, but he talks as fast in his dealings with me as I imagine he’ll talk from the middle of Ernie’s living room.
Yes, I can give the company a key and let them handle it all.
Yes, they can sell off the remaining furnishings.
Whatever doesn’t sell, they’ll donate or throw away. The haul-off fee is included in their auction percentage.
They’ll get the place cleaned up.
They’ll take care of everything. If I’ll just leave direct deposit information, the money can plop into my bank account, with the paperwork sent by FedEx wherever I want when it’s done.
In short, I can brush my hands off right here, right now, today. I can hand Paul from HomeSellers my key then get in my pickup and go.
But instead of handing it over, I keep the key. I tell Paul to let me know when they want to do the auction, and we can go from there.
With Ernie’s stuff mostly gone, the house feels both more welcoming (because Ernie has finally left the building) and overly sparse. It’s like a hotel room that nobody bothered to fully outfit. There are cupboards with nothing inside. There’s an empty fridge. The closets are all for show. I didn’t want to move in more than I needed to, and it didn’t occur to me to keep a single fork and plate. If not for the money and responsibility, I’d burn this place to the ground. I’m torn somewhere in the middle, wanting to obey my id while handling things properly, like Dad would have wanted.
But I won’t sleep in Ernie’s bed, or my old one. I won’t eat from his stores, or off of his dishes. I sleep on the couch like a tramp, and let the walls offer nothing more than shelter. I use Ernie’s electricity to watch TV and read, and his shower to get clean. But for the most part, this place could be a cave sheltering me from the weather.
As uncomfortable as being here is, I honestly don’t know why I’m staying. Paul promised me that the auction could happen fast; they’d started putting up signs and advertising on that first day, when I called after hearing from my uncle’s lawyer. He could call me tomorrow; he could call me the next day or the one after that. When that happens, I’ll either need to leave or get a room at the inn. And I’m not really a bed and breakfast sort of guy.
I should go.
But I don’t.
Instead, I lie on the couch as Friday night closes, staring at the pocked ceiling. Brandon and Joe both asked me to go out, but the memory of my near encounter with Tommy Finch is still too fresh in my mind. Some of what I said came from drink, but the beer had only rattled loose the things I’ve wanted to say and do for a very long time.
Oh, the number of times I’ve imagined punching Tommy’s perfect face. The times I’ve imagined all I want to say, and find a way to make him pay. I’m aware of how senselessly macho it is, me wanting to hurt Tommy as if that would make anything better. It wouldn’t change either present or past, but I don’t trust myself enough, by accepting Brandon and Joe’s invite, to find out. Old Town Inferno Falls isn’t big, and if we run into Tommy again, I’m afraid of what might happen.
I use my new, unpopulated LiveLyfe account to snoop on one Thomas Finch. He’s not much better of a user than I am, but even thorough his skeletal information I can tell that he’s landed a much better job than anything I’ve ever had (it’s listed in his profile) and that he’s single because there’s no wife indicated and no two photos of Tommy with the same woman.
According to what I see, nothing has changed since high school. He still looks like a football player in his prime. I thought about Tommy a lot on my drive back here, and was hoping he’d have ruined himself. Bright flames are supposed to burn down to wax, but the lucky star that Tommy Fucking Perfect Boy Finch was born under apparently hasn’t gone supernova just yet. He’s successful. He seems, based on his interactions, to be well liked, as if the poor souls around him can’t see through the skin of a slippery snake. He’s still crass and rude and a pathetic womanizer; that much is clear in a ten-second glance. But everyone’s still falling for it, just like they did back then when Tommy merely flashed his smile to turn the girls to putty. It even worked on the school faculty. The things they came down on me for, Tommy grinned his way through.
Back then, even Maya thought Tommy was hot.
I hated that so much. Even after we were together, she used to joke with me about it because she thought it was funny. And worse, she thought he was funny. Tommy was always big, always strong, and always popular, and it gave him an obnoxious confidence — along with a general obliviousness about what it was to be less than a golden boy. He was an ass to misfits (some were my friends), but Maya always defended him. He’s just screwing around when he makes fun of them, Grady. She’d say it patronizingly, like I was too stupid to understand. But because Tommy never mocked her, she never got how wrong it was. How it could only come from an arrogance so thick as to be irretrievable.
I used to bait her about him. Doing so made me feel pathetic, like a girl begging for a compliment. I should have had more dignity than to force her to compare me to Tommy, given that she’d made her choice and was with me, not him. Maya seemed to see right through the thinnest part of my self-esteem — my Tommy-related weakness, say — and rubbed my face in it because she, like Tommy, thought it was hilarious.
Look at those arms, Grady. How can I not be turned on by those arms?
And I’d say, What about my arms?
Oh, he just makes me so hot, Grady.
And I’d say, Don’t I make you hot?
But she never gave in. Because she thought I was being an asshole, digging for validation. If she wanted Tommy, she’d be with him. But she was with me, so my arms and hotness were, apparently, victorious.
But even while with me, Maya liked Tommy. How could she not? He was well over six feet tall, broad as a truck, without an ounce of fat on his body. He had a chin like a god and a way of moving and speaking that made girls practically beg to wash his anointed feet. And hell, he’s still like that today.
The only thing stopping Maya from being with Tommy, I always felt sure, was that he didn’t feel like bothering with her. She was with me as a runner-up. Perfect Tommy would have been her first choice, the moment his predatory radar found her.
We broke up for a while, and she proved it. That broke my heart. It came out as anger because I’ve never been good with emotion, but it was only hurt.
I put my laptop away. I lie back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I’m restless and, after my day with Maya, unable to sleep. Things never used to be like this. I spent the last third of my life moving from place to place, and there was only the thrill of exploration, occasionally the panic that comes with a life on the edge. There was never this kind of gutting conflict. Never this rehashing of old wounds I’d thought were long healed.
I should go. Maya won’t try to hold me here. I could read her the same as I’ve always been able to. She was thinking the same things as me, but we both knew to keep our mouths shut. We both know that the old bodies are buried, and that digging up one will unearth them all.
What’s done is done. She won’t ask me to stay. We can return to our old lives and pretend this stupid homecoming errand with its ill-advised reunions never happened. She survived fine without me, even if I should have been there. And I survived without them, on my own, worrying only about myself.
With the auction underway, there’s no reason for me to stay in Inferno Falls.
Unless I want to stay for them, and never mind the pain.