“Want us to come with?” Chad asked and rose from the couch.
Noah was shaking his head no.“Let me go into the lions den alone this round.” I knew why he was wanting to go alone. Shame knew how I confided in Noah, that Noah had done the work to hide my scars as well as Noah understanding abuse on a level Shame and the rest of TAT never could.
The guys understood why as well and nodded in agreement. Noah kissed Candey goodbye and I say kissed loosely. He basically fucked her mouth with his mouth before leaving. The two of them were so openly freaks with each other, you couldn’t help but laugh and accept it.
Noah left and our group of friends all started rummaging through cupboards looking for food.
The pigs.
“Pizza?” Carrie said and started calling in the order. I just wanted a hot bath and my bed. I had been up all night looking for Shame as well as fucking him goodbye.
“Where you going Chica?” Candey asked following me down the hall.
“I need a bath and some sleep.” I could hear the defeated and exhausted tone in my voice.
Candey nodded and pulled me in for a hug.“I love you Cass and I promise if anyone can make Shame see reason in all this garbage it’s Noah.”
I didn’t say anything because I knew she was right.
*
Shamus
I walked through the house, looking at the pictures on the wall, the dirty dishes that were still in the sink and the bottle of Jim Beam black that sat on the end table a single shot sat in the bottom of the bottle that my dad hadn’t finished. I walked to the mantle and looked at a picture still on display of Cassa and I from her senior prom.
I’m four years older than her but still agreed to go because she had wanted too and for me it was that simple. W had been going steady for a little over a year and a half and I had an underlying need that maybe she would finally have sex with me. I got the tux, I got the limo and I got laid. I smiled at the memory.
The night was ending and I wanted to take her right there in the limo, but she was a virgin unlike me and I knew she was scared. I sat next to her my arm around her when she closed the sun roof to the limo before resting her head on my shoulder. “I want to make love Shame.” She had whispered in my ear a little drunk from the champagne. I could still hear the fear in her voice as if she were beside me now asking me again.
I looked at her a smile of victory and love when I kissed her. I had no clue how to be gentle with a virgin, my first time was with a loose girl in my ninth grade class. So I started with her lips and worked my way down. I slid my hand under her dress ripping a hole in her leggings to reach her clit. I knew how to please Cassa with my mouth and my fingers but now it was the big deal, no curtain call no trial chance. This was it.
I took her to my room and laid her on the bed, stripping her of her dress and me my fifty buck tux. Kissing her and fingering her till she was coming on my fingers I finally realized that it was really happening. Looking back it all seemed so robotic, I was so nervous and scared of hurting her. I rolled a condom down before climbing in next to her. She pulled me on top of her and took me in her hand ready to take me in when I stopped her. “I don’t want to hurt you Sassy.”
“You love me Shame, you could never hurt me.” She pulled me towards her and I did it, slowly methodically I took from her the most precious gift a woman can give a man, and it was a damn near religious experience. In a million years I never thought I would be that lucky. I lay over her and thrust slow kissing her gently as her body stretched to take me in. She came in myarms and I followed, and it all lasted about five minutes. It was the best five minutes I had ever experienced.
I smiled at the memory, knowing I had been a fool to walk away from her, to leave my dad to take a nose dive to the bottle. I had ruined so many lives by wanting to fulfill my dream. I did and no pact with the devil would take it back, I had everything I had wanted and it cost everyone I loved. I looked around the house remembering how this house had built me. My father painted and remodeled to surprise my mom every nail every board had built the foundation but it was the love that was once inside that built it had made it a home.
I could see the Christmases and Thanksgivings; I could see the morning I woke on the first day of Junior high when my mom had brought me in a second hand black acoustic guitar. The same guitar I still played every day and never went anywhere without it. I loved that guitar more than my drums, I just lived and breathed my drums where my guitar was personal and if I was being honest I was nowhere near as good as Cal, Chad or Noah.
I walked down the hall and looked in my dads room, my parent’s room. I could see my mother lying in the bed, her body frail, her skin bruised because the chemotherapy had made her immune system completely incompetent. I saw her, the shawl she wore on her head to hide her baldness, it was pink the tribal color for the cancer that was robbing her of her life, her breasts and her hair, robbing me of my mother. She would smile and say she was fine, call it a headache. I knew she would be gone before the end of the year. That was October of 1998 and she didn’t make it to Halloween.
Now tomorrow I would lay my dad to rest next to the woman he missed every day from the day she left. In some small way I wondered if that was when my dad decided to follow her, because the night he buried her he drowned his sorrows in a bottle of Whiskey and every day thereafter. They were now full circle, he would join her tomorrow, side by side for the rest of time.
It was poetic; in a dark and beautiful sort of way.
I walked into my room. I could see Cassa lying in my twin size bed, her hair rumpled and her skin flushed from the many times I made her come in that small bed. I saw Cassa in that room yesterday scared to death of being alone with me.
Yeah no fuckin’ shit things had changed.
Now I sat alone the impact of this trip home weighing heavy on my heart. I was alone, no mother no father. Jerry was dead and I never had the chance to tell him that he was right. I made it big sure, but Jerry was right. I left a hole in my absence, one bigger than I had been warned of. I should have been a Crabber; I would have married Cassa and had a family. My dad wouldn’t have been a drunk because I would have stopped it. I would never admit to him how badly I wanted to come home and fix it all. I wanted to fix him, fix Cassa…just like I wanted to fix my mom.
Music was in my blood, I loved the feel of my drum sticks in my hand, the way the wood felt in my hands. Hands that blistered from teaching myself to play. Hands that were now worth more than this house in gold. I reached for my black acoustic that was leaning against the wall. I looked at the posters on the wall, still there from my younger years. TOOL, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam all paved the way for the band.
Jerry hadn’t changed a thing and I couldn’t help but wonder if my dad missed me…as much as I missed him now.
*
Noah
