Wild Reckless (Harper Boys #1)(18)
“We should make a fire,” my mom says. “Your dad said he got some wood during the week. Go check on the side of the house.”
I haven’t been outside once this weekend, not since the clean up. Owen’s truck came home sometime after I fell asleep Saturday morning, and it hasn’t moved from its spot. I would have heard him.
Slipping my feet into my warm boots, I wrap my scarf around my neck twice and push through the front door, letting the screen slam behind me. I follow the small woodchip path along the side of the house, along the driveway, noting Owen’s tires still at rest at the end of their skid marks.
My neck is still craned to the side when I hear the sound. He’s standing right in front of my mom’s car, his ball dropping every few seconds to the pavement, then bouncing back up into his hands. I could run, but he’d hear me, so I keep my eyes down at my feet as I walk past him to the wood stacked in the corner.
“You really had to take the f*cking hoop down?” he asks. He bounces the ball two more times while I look at the pile of wood, deciding I can carry two logs at once.
“It didn’t do it,” I say, not lying. My inside voice begging my outside voice to tell him I saved it. I saved your hoop. It’s here. I promise. I don’t know why I care so much.
“Right,” he says, throwing the ball against our garage door, making it ring out loudly. “Like hell you didn’t.”
Grunting to myself, I shift the wood in my arms so I can hold it tightly to my chest, and I walk back around the corner of the house until I can see him. His eyes are different now. They’re…sad. But they’re angry, too. And it’s the shades of angry that won’t let me trust him.
“Really,” I say, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. “Like hell I didn’t. It was my dad. You kind of left a mess, and my dad doesn’t put up with bullshit.”
There’s stillness in the air after I tell him this, and I’m caught in it, my eyes unable to move away from his. He’s chewing at the inside of his cheek. His brow falls a little, and there’s a shift in his eyes, the sadness making room for the danger that usually lives there.
Willing myself to walk away, I let my weight shift, and I bring my lips into a tight smile and begin to turn on my heels.
“So who does your dad talk to late at night, out here in the driveway?” he asks, suddenly interested in my family.
“Uh…my mom. She works a lot of overnights. And my dad gets home late,” I say, realizing I have yet to see Owen’s mom—or anyone else in the Harper house.
“Right, that’s what I thought,” he says, and I turn with a shrug, really missing the warmth and easiness from just a few minutes ago inside. “But I meant the other times.”
Something about what he says—the way he says it—slams into my chest, and I halt, hugging the heavy wood even tighter, bits of the bark cutting into the palms of my hand.
“You know…” he continues, my back still to him. “Who does he talk to out here while your mom is asleep in bed? Those times.”
The tear surprises me, and my hands are full, so there’s no way I can stop it, so I let it slide down my face into the threads of yarn in my scarf.
“I bet it’s whoever drives that blue BMW I see parked here when I come home for lunch. I bet that’s who it is. Whoever…she is,” he says, every word purposely hurtful. I hear his feet shuffle toward his ball, and soon, it hits the ground again, only this time it’s dropped and discarded, rolling by my feet until it stops at the tire of my mother’s car. He’s casting one more stone, just to let me know who’s in charge. And for the first time since I’ve met Owen Harper, I’m willing to relent—he’s in charge. And his words just broke my tiny shred of happiness like a thin sheet of glass.
My arms ache from flexing with the weight of the wood, so I force my feet to climb the steps inside, and I busy myself with the fire, sparing a quick trip to the restroom to wash my hands, and wash my face of any trace of that one solitary tear.
By the time I come out of the bathroom, my mom has the fire roaring, and she’s holding out a mug for me, her smile innocent.
She doesn’t know. She can’t know.
Owen’s words—his hurtful, despicable, mean, purposeful words—are all I can hear through the next two hours of pointless television. I sit there next to my mom and feign our world is fine. If I could only shut off the sounds echoing in my head, I could maybe find a way to forget, to chalk this up to just some cruel prank.
But I can’t.
When my mom busies herself with housework, I turn to my piano, pulling out the books of sheet music I’m supposed to be memorizing—only now, it’s not just a thing I’m not interested in. Now it’s a thing I want to fight against doing with all I have. I open those pages and I see his face—my father’s face. I play those notes and I hear his voice, his expectations and condemnations for the music I like.
Playing from these books has quickly become a thing that represents something ugly. Something I realize I haven’t felt love for in a year, maybe more. Something disappointing. My father.
With a smooth stroke, I take my finger and push the loose sheets of music and the book behind them from the ledge to the floor, leaning to the side to see them slide in various directions. A mess—a beautiful, classical, fake mess.