Old Man drops a dead mouse onto my lap when he jumps back through the car window and I guess that’s my sign it’s time to eat again. I check the take-out bags from the day before but come up empty.
“How about we go get burgers instead?” I pet my cat and hide his “gift” in the bag then start my car—only to slam the brakes a second later when another car pulls up, blocking me.
I swear when Bauer gets out, his heavy brow looking heavier than usual.
He slaps my trunk as he approaches the passenger side door then bends down to frown directly at me until I unlock it for him. Once inside, he grabs my phone off the dash and holds out the glowing screen to me. “Look at that, it does work.”
I sigh and roll my head toward the window. “I didn’t feel like calling you back.”
He tosses the phone at me. “So now you get me in person. Worked out for you.” He shifts, then reaches underneath him to pull out the fast-food bag that I’ve been using as a mouse coffin. He swears when he looks inside and then throws it outside, leaving Old Man no choice but to growl at him and leap out after it.
“That your cat?”
“Yep.”
“He gonna bring that bag back in here?”
“Yep.”
Bauer rolls the window up.
Old Man gives him a death glare and stalks off to a nearby tree, waiting.
“How’d you even know I was here?”
“I didn’t. Rebecca figured it out.”
My head snaps to him. “You talked to her? What’d she say?”
“About you? She was pretty tight-lipped on that topic, protective even. Said you got back but left again to stay with friends.” He nudges the fast-food bags I’ve been piling up by his feet. “Guess they haven’t been feeding you.”
Between the trash and the obvious fact that I haven’t showered in a couple of days, he knows the only “friend” I’ve been with is the cat currently plotting to kill him.
He sighs. “Ethan, what are you doing?” When I raise my eyebrows at him and glance purposefully out the window, he sighs again. “I know what you’re doing here.” He points out the window then motions to the car. “I mean what are you doing here?”
I glance away, staring at the apartment building I’ve been watching for days. “She’s gotta come back sometime.”
“Maybe, but maybe she doesn’t need to see you living in your car and stinking of dead mice when she does, you ever think about that when you were making this plan?”
I resist sniffing my shirt. “I didn’t have a plan, okay? I was in Arizona and I got into—”
“A fight with your girl? Yeah, I figured that part out.” When I stiffen, he adds, “Not that she told me but when she texted you and you didn’t respond, well, I do have a few unfried brain cells left.”
I glance down at the phone he tossed at me and turn it over. It immediately lights up telling me that along with a million missed calls from Bauer and my grandparents, I have an unread text from her.
I put the phone back down and hear a sound I’m getting pretty tired of when Bauer sighs yet again. “What? You got some brilliant fatherly wisdom for me?”
Bauer backs himself into the window. “Hell no. I’m just glad the only things you’re hiding in these bags are rodents.” Then he eyes the bags again. “That’s not a thing kids are snorting these days, is it?”
I sigh in a way that sounds eerily like him.
He raises his hands. “Okay, okay. But there are kids out there eating laundry detergent, so snorting crushed rat bones or whatever isn’t too much further. And—and this isn’t fatherly anything—you’ve done dumber things lately.”
I scowl at him. “Did you just say that to me?”
“Did you take off on that girl again? Yeah,” he adds, when my scowl turns inward. “Sounds pretty dumb to me.”
My words quiet. “You don’t know anything about it. Or me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I know she’s the only thing you talk about with anything close to happiness in your voice. I know you talk to her even when you won’t talk to anybody else.” His voice softens. “I know you hurt her, and maybe she hurt you some too.”
I turn away to stare out the window only this time the only thing I see is my own reflection. In my mind I see Rebecca when I came back from Bauer’s this last time, the pain she tried to hide when I realized I’d broken more than one promise. And then I see her again and again, younger with that same expression better hidden behind a smile, but there all the same. I see her beside me in the car when she couldn’t hide anymore because this time I hurt her too deeply.
I didn’t mean to, but then again I never did.
She meant to hurt me this last time though, and she knew just what to say to cut deep.
It hurts every time I think about it, but I still lift my phone again and swipe to read her text.
Rebecca:
Still need time?
I do, but I text her back anyway.
Me:
Bauer found me. I don’t know if I should thank you for that or not.
When those three little dots appear by her name, I almost can’t believe my heart starts beating like it does every time I’m near her.
Rebecca:
You’re okay?
Me:
Yeah. You?
Rebecca:
I’m okay.
I don’t know what more to say right now, or if I’m ready to say it. But I couldn’t put my phone down right now if I tried, so I send her one last text.
Me:
If I call you later, will you answer?
She makes me wait this time, almost a full minute.
Rebecca:
I’ll answer.
Air passes through my lips, emptying my lungs, but I’m the opposite of deflated.
“Now that wasn’t dumb,” Bauer says. He can’t see my phone but I guess he didn’t need to. Then he joins me in staring out the window. “You know that neighbor is gonna call me. You don’t have to do this.”
But I did. And he knows why.
This time I stop him before he can sigh. “I don’t have a dad. I never did.”
“I know that. I’m never gonna pretend otherwise. Telling you—” he struggles to find the words and settles on something vague enough not to raise my walls even higher “—what we are, that’s not about erasing the past or trying to make it something it wasn’t. It was shit. I was shit. And if you tell me to get out of your car again, I will.” I’m seriously considering doing just that when he adds, “But I hope you don’t.”
I glance over at him to see he’s staring at me with a kind of intensity that halts anything I would have said.
“Because you’ve got a family in me and Tara and Os, and a flesh and blood little sister on the way. I don’t want you to miss out on them or them you, just because once upon a time I would have snorted rat bones if I got it in my head they’d get me high.”
The corner of my mouth lifts, just a little.
“And if that’s too much right now, hey, fine, just come home with me, sleep somewhere that isn’t your car, and eat something your cat didn’t literally drag in here.”
He waits then, trying to be still but only half managing it.
A bed would be nice, actual food too. Somewhere to call Rebecca from. I glance out the window again. “You sure that neighbor’s gonna call?”
“If they want my money—and they do—they’re gonna call.”
I nod. “Alright then.”