Chapter fifty-two:
“This is our stop,” I say, and I pull her up to standing. “Thanks,” I say to the driver as we get off.
“Onwards and onwards,” he retorts, and I smile at that. It’s funny how a couple of days can change your perspective on things.
“Yeah, onwards and onwards, buddy,” I say to him.
We walk down my street, hand in hand. Nothing has changed, yet everything has.
Music is blaring, tears are falling, and horns are beeping. Pain is still pouring from the windows and seeping from under the doors. I see the whore from upstairs come out the door. She looks both ways, and when she sees me I nod to her. She scowls at me and frowns at Carrie when she sees her messed-up face, but she doesn’t say anything, instead she gives me the middle finger and flounces away.
“You’ll get used to her,” I say to Carrie. “She’s just a piece-of-shit whore.” I laugh and shake my head. And even to me the words seem crude, but what can I say, I’m embarrassed by where I live. By the whore and the way she looked at me and Carrie like she knew what had gone on between us. When really she knows jack shit.
She looks up at me, her one good eye catching me and taking my breath away. Even like this, she is still beautiful. Light dances across her face, shining blue and red, and I smile as the colors flash across her face. I pull her hood tighter around her face and I turn to look at my front door.
A police car has pulled up, lights flashing. Two officers get out and the front door to my apartment opens and out steps my counselor-slash-therapist-slash-parole-officer-slash-Mr. fucking Jeffrey.
“Shit,” I say.
Carrie begins to pull on my hand, not away from them, but toward them. She opens her mouth to speak as the officers climb the steps and head inside my apartment building, and I slap a hand across her mouth to shut her up.
I stare down at her as I drag her into a nearby alleyway and throw her against the wall. The air leaves her in a whoosh, and it’s now that I see her fear is back. Gone is the doe-eyed Carrie wanting to start a new life with me, and back is the monster who keeps trying to fuck everything up.
“Why?” I grind out. “Why, Carrie?”
She blinks and raises her chin. “Because I can still get myself out of this mess.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t a mess.”
“It is!”
“It’s not,” I say, and I place my hands on her shoulders when she tries to move away from the wall. “I can fix this. I can fix it all.”
“You killed him,” she says.
And I laugh. “No, you killed him.”
She shakes her head, her tears spilling free. “But I didn’t mean to.”
“Doesn’t matter, and you know it.”
And I don’t know who we’re talking about anymore: Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam or her dad. It could be both, or neither. I don’t really care anymore. We’re beyond that—or at least I thought we were.
“I’ll tell them you made me,” she says between sobs.
“But I didn’t.”
“They’ll believe me over you, Ethan. They always do.”
And she’s right.
She’s got me there.
It’s true; they will believe her.
They always do.
Even when she’s not there to tell the lie.
