Page 99 of Wrecked

Dad pats my hand. “The consequences of idealization. Just in reverse. You have both created monsters out of each other.”

“He started it.”

“He was brave enough to create an opportunity for you two to find common ground.”

I blink back at my dad. “No.” I shake my head. “There’s too much to our past. It was wrong to think we could even be friends.”

He leans back in his chair. “Life is a series of commas, not periods.”

I look up at him. My mouth opens and then closes, confused by what my ears think they just heard. “Did you just McConaughey me?”

“I believe I did.”

Bowing my head, I laugh. The man never ceases to amaze me.

I rise and lean down to give him a hug. “I’ve never been prouder to be your daughter.”

He grabs my arms and looks me square in the eyes. “And I’ve never stopped being proud that you are my daughter.”

I walk across the living room and up to my room. Closing the door, I flick on the lights and walk over to my vanity. I’m taking my earrings out and looking out my window. Across the way is a black pickup truck sitting on my street. Adam is leaning against the driver’s door, wearing blue jeans, that T-shirt from earlier today, and construction boots. He looks devastatingly handsome.

The worst part is, now, I know what it feels like to have that body in my hands. I know that, if I run my fingers down the outside of his torso, he’ll push his hips into me to fight the shiver. I know that his hair is silky and thick. My fingers can rake through it and tug when I want to draw him closer. And, if I flick my tongue on the inside of his lip, he’ll swoop in and suck on it.

Shame is, I also know what it’s like to be lied to by that man. I don’t know what his motives were, and I don’t care. He played on my greatest insecurity. He played me for a fool.

Even still, it’s not as bad as the words he said to me years ago. The words that kept me at a distance for seven years.

It rained the day of Brad’s funeral. I stood on the grass, my heels digging into the wet sod, as I clutched on to Emma, who was holding a hot-pink umbrella. It was the only one I had. My parents were in the crowd with a sensible blue one. Emma and I stood out in a sea of dark with the hot pink dangling above our heads.

It wasn’t like we had an aging uncle or a sick grandmother. No one had expected a vibrant, healthy, happy eighteen-year-old guy to die. And we certainly hadn’t expected it to rain on his funeral. If I had, maybe then, I would have bought a black umbrella.

I cried on Emma’s shoulder, ruining her silk dress she wore to performances. She never said a word. She just held me and let me mourn the first boy I’d loved. The one I had given all my firsts to.

Yet, even as I cried into my sister and prayed for the boy I’d lost, I couldn’t help but think of the one person who wasn’t there. Everyone asked, and no one knew why Adam wasn’t at the funeral.

His mother didn’t even have a good excuse other than, “He’s taking this really hard.”

Brad’s family received guests at their home after he was laid to rest. I drove to their home with my family. My dad had made a casserole. My mom had knit an afghan. Emma played the violin, and Luke sat awkwardly on the sofa, too young to know what to do with himself at such an event.

I talked with friends and relatives of Brad. All were wondering what I knew, and most of them were eyeing me up, wondering if I, too, was using drugs. The only people who didn’t ask were my parents.

For the last three days, they’d sat with me and talked to me about death. They’d asked me how I was feeling and encouraged me to write down my feelings. I didn’t know what to write, so I’d made a collage of images I’d found in a magazine. My dad had been pleased but had warned me that he was going to sit down with me every day to talk whether I liked it or not. I was okay with that. I felt like I could use someone to talk to.

That was why I left Brad’s house the day of his funeral and walked in the rain. My hot-pink umbrella in my hand, I let my feet carry me through the streets, over two miles, until I was in front of a home with green shaker-style shingles and a wood porch.

It was warm out, but my feet were wet and cold as I knocked on the door to Adam’s house. I knocked, and no one answered. I knocked again. Still, there was silence. I started ringing the bell. Again and again. I rang that bell consecutively until, finally, he opened the door.

He didn’t say a word. He just opened the door, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. His feet were bare, and his eyes were red-rimmed. For a moment, he looked relieved to see me. Quickly, that relief was replaced with something morbid.

“Why didn’t you come today?” I asked.

He tried to close the door, but I leaned in and pushed it open. His eyes looked up at my pink umbrella with utter disgust.

“That’s how you show respect?”

I looked up at my umbrella and closed my eyes in embarrassment. “I came to see if you were okay.”

His nostrils flared, and his eyes glazed over, tears threatening to break through. “You left my best friend’s funeral to see if I was okay?”