Every time I close my eyes, I see her naked curves. I remember the way her skin felt against mine, and I imagine what it’s going to be like next time we happen to have the opportunity to get a little risky.
I replay last night in my mind, like a movie on repeat in my head: from the moment she started sucking on that pink-striped candy stick to the moment she kissed me this morning and disappeared out my window.
It helps the time pass while I’m out raking.
“Josh!” Rosie’s on the back porch, which is really a small deck raised a story off the ground, standing halfway out the kitchen door. “Take this trash out?”
It’s not really a question, or a request, judging by the way she drops it and heads back inside before I even acknowledge that I’ve heard her.
I give my mother a nod through the exterior walls of the house.
I’m taking Chatham to Homecoming tonight, and the parade starts at five, so Rosie’s going to have to know she’s on her own with Margaret and Caroline starting at four.
It shouldn’t be a problem; I checked her schedule, and she’s not due on shift until Sunday evening.
I drop my rake and make my way up the porch steps to grab two bags of trash—one for the landfill, and one full of recyclables—and retrace my steps back to the lawn. Just as I’m about to dump the landfill bag in its bin, something catches my eye through the plastic bag: an envelope with my name, typewritten, on it.
I have to tear the plastic to open the bag, but I dig out the envelope, which is soiled at the corner with spaghetti sauce, so I wipe it off in the grass.
The orange-and-green return address stares at me: Miami University. Coral Gables, Florida. The fucking U.
I tear open the envelope and scan the letter. It’s an invitation to visit their website and, eventually, their campus. Enclosed is a list of the U’s scholarship offerings, majors, and extracurricular campus groups.
My fingertips tingle, and I’m already plotting ways I could get myself to south Florida to visit. A train? Maybe. My insides flutter with the mere suggestion of the word. I doubt I’ll ever look at a train the same way again after last night.
Definitely a Greyhound bus would get me there. How much could that cost?
I go back and carefully read the letter again, which is addressed to me personally, and signed—my heart almost stops—by the head of football recruitment.
Football.
Recruitment.
And Rosie threw this in the trash?
I bound up the porch steps and into the kitchen, where my mother is cleaning up after the pancake breakfast she offered my sisters and me—which I, of course, silently declined—and I shove the tomato-stained letter under her nose. “You think I wouldn’t have wanted to see this?”
She glances up at me, then turns her back and wipes down the same patch of countertop again.
“Rosie.”
“You call me Mom.”
“Do you know they might want me to play for them? Football, Rosie! In the Atlantic Coast Conference! Do you know who’s come out of the U? Vinny Testaverde! Brad Kaaya! NFL players. And they’re inviting me—”
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s a form letter.”
“No, it’s not! It’s addressed to me.”
“Yeah, well, wait till they see your grades. They’ll back-pedal faster than—”
“What?”
“You can’t cut it there, Josh.” She looks at the letter. “And we can’t afford it. I’ll scrape up all I can, put your sisters and me into poverty, you’ll have mountains of student loan debt anyway, and you’re only going to flunk out. You know that.”
I’m shaking my head. This is really what she thinks of me?
“If you go anywhere at all, and that’s a big if, it’s Creekside Community.”
“No. I’m going to the U.”
She smirks and keeps wiping down the dingy countertop, as if she’ll someday make it sparkle. “You might be second in line to King Shit at Sugar Creek High, but when you get into a big pond like that . . . have they even seen you play?”
“I know you haven’t.”
“Oh, stop it. Do you know how many times I sat in cold, rainy weather—”
“When? At the park district when I was seven?” She hasn’t been to a game in at least that long.
“My point is,” she says dryly, “that you’re the second-string junior quarterback for a high school in a fly-speck town. You think they’re coming all the way up here to no-man’s-land to see Josh Michaels ride the pine?”
She doesn’t even know I’ve been starting as quarterback since the fourth week of our schedule. I want to call her on this, to tell her about everything she’s missed since . . . well, since forever ago, since she’s been twisting in the turmoil her life’s become. But looking at her, I know it’s pointless. She’s too caught up in her own bullshit to notice she’s way off base, or to care that she’s killing me with every word she speaks.
She doesn’t know anything, but still she says again, “Don’t get your hopes up. They didn’t even see you play.”
“You know who did see me play? Twice?” I ask. “You know who gave me his card, and wants to talk to me about playing for them? North-fucking-western.”
“North-fucking-western,” Caroline parrots from the next room.
I bite my lip, instantly regretting that the girls are hearing this.
Rosie ignores my sister. “Ha! You know who comes out of Northwestern? Astrophysicists. Cardiovascular engineers. Smart people. They’ll be real impressed with your one-point-nine grade point average, I’ll tell you that much.”
For a second I wait, give her a chance to ask how my grades have been this semester. Does she care that lots of this year’s grades will nullify last year’s? Just another second. She’ll ask. She’ll say something.
She gives her head a minute shake. “Northwestern.”
“You know who was there at the game last night? Wisconsin-Madison! You know who was QB? Me. But you don’t know because you don’t care!”
I fold the letter and turn away. It doesn’t matter that I see a touch of regret in Rosie’s face. What matters is that she actually said those things to me. She doesn’t believe in me. And if that’s the case, I don’t need her. All the rest of the bullshit she puts me through . . . okay. I understand it’s post-traumatic, I get that it’s defense mechanisms at work, and I can deal. But I can’t deal with living with someone who doesn’t believe in me.
I head to the stairs, toward my room.
“You’re not finished raking!” Rosie calls after me.
Yes, I am. But I don’t reply beyond the slamming of my bedroom door. “She can clean up her own damn yard from now on,” I mutter to myself.
I yank my duffel bag off a shelf in my closet. I jam it full of jeans, sweatshirts, socks, boxers. Whatever I can fit. I grab my school bag, shove in my Chromebook and phone, my chargers.
I grab Chatham’s bag of cash. Once I pull my jersey out of the dryer—it’s not all the way dry, but close enough—I have everything I need. I head up the half-flight of stairs to the front door.
I fling Rosie’s re-engagement ring—still in its box—up the second half-flight of stairs. It slides beneath the old dresser she tucked against the wall next to the kitchen table. Let her find it in a month or so when she’s doing her own fucking cleaning.
I walk out the front door, laden with all my worldly possessions—when you don’t have much, it’s easy to carry it all on your back—and get in my beat-up Ford Explorer.
One last glance at 4421 Carpenter Street proves two little girls, with hands pressed to the glass in the living room window, might be the only ones who realize I’m leaving. I should’ve stopped to hug and kiss them. I should’ve told them everything would be all right, but the truth is that I’m not sure it will be. I don’t want to lie to them. She’s their mother, too, after all. Without me there to verbally shred every now and then, who’s she going to turn her claws on when things don’t go right? Who’s going to clean up her messes in the middle of the night, when she’s feeling lonely, and makes a bad decision?
“Sorry,” I say, although I know my sisters can’t hear me. “I wish I could take you with me.”