Bad Boy Blues(26)

I’d helped Dad plan the whole thing. Besides, I had good news of my own. I was going to tell them that after graduation, I was leaving on a cross-country road trip. My mom would’ve been ecstatic. She always wanted to get out of this town but never could. So in a way, I was fulfilling her dream.

“They died because my dad wanted to give her something special. Something she never had and something you guys take for granted,” I continue with fisted hands and stinging eyes. “Something that most of you don’t deserve. Because you never lift a finger to earn anything. You don’t even change your own sheets. You can’t even put your laundry in the basket and somehow, people like you get to rule the whole world.”

I take a deep breath and look into his black eyes. They are shimmering, penetrating, and if I let them, they’ll suck me in and drown me.

“So I don’t want you to replace it because you can’t. All I want you to do is let me go so I can get a good night’s sleep and get back to working for you so you get to be a big bully and potentially ruin lives.”

I have no idea where I even got the energy to say all those things. And why I even bothered to tell him this.

But whatever. I said it and now, I need to go cry in my pillow.

As I step away from them in my sticky dress, I look up and find everyone watching me. There’s Grace and Leslie. There’s Maggie too. They are all looking at me with pity.

Mrs. S is nowhere in sight. But I’m sure news will travel and she’ll come to know tomorrow.

Maybe I’m really fired after this.

But I can’t seem to care. I want to lie down. I feel heavy like my wet dress. A little dead too, I guess.

They let me go without a word and when I reach my room for the night, I curl up and hug the pillow, crying into it.





There’s a little bottle on the counter.

Leaving Ashley behind, I go and pick it up. Laxative.

It probably belongs to her. Sighing, I bow my head before pocketing it.

“Get lost,” I tell Ashley.

“What?” she asks, confused.

I turn around and face her. “Get lost.”

“But Zach –”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Are you doing this because of her?” Ashley asks, looking up at me with pleading eyes.

There was a time when my dad wanted me to marry her. That was reason enough for me to just fuck her, steal her virginity in a cheap motel room, and leave her sleeping on the bed.

Just to spite my dad. Anything to spite my dad.

But I underestimated the blonde, virgin princess. She never really left. She hung around, year after year, watched me fuck other girls. Always others, never her.

I never understood why but I think I do now.

She loves me. In her own way, she was giving me the time to sow my wild oats. She still thinks we’ll end up together one day.

Poor Ashley.

“This isn’t St. Patrick’s anymore,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means stop being a bitch and grow the fuck up.”

Her eyes flash fire. “Excuse me?”

I shake my head. “Jesus, how much have you had to drink?”

Ashley draws back as if I slapped her. I might as well have. Drinking used to be my way of coping three years ago – not sure if I’m allowed to preach about it. That and my bike.

“Are you… are you taking her side?” she almost shrieks as a reply. “Did you see how she was? She was going to attack me.”

“And I’m thinking I shouldn’t have stopped her.”

Ashley is hurt. Her bee-stung lips tremble. “Why did you, then?”

“She would’ve gotten fired and you’re not worth it.”

An actual tear slides down her cheek.

It’s not that I deliberately want to hurt Ashley. She hasn’t done anything that she wouldn’t have done back in school.

It’s just that I don’t want anything to do with her or the old crowd or all the things we did back at school.

“Ashley, look –”

“You’ve changed,” she cuts me off, looking at me like I’ve grown two heads or something. “I can’t believe after all those years, you’d defend her. Her. Cleopatra. Do you even remember how much we hated her? How she didn’t belong with us? The way she talked back? And she’s not better now. She’s a freaking maid. A maid, Zach. Nothing about her has changed.”

Yeah, nothing about her has changed.

Blue is still the same. Loud, spunky… bright. Brimming with so much life that it’s hard to look at her.

But still I looked.

I watched her get humiliated for years. I watched her get pushed around, get insulted, laughed at.

For years, I was her bully.

I’m not a fan of words or letters or anything. Never have been.

But bully is the word I hate the most. I hate it so much that it might be a living, breathing person.

A person I want to strangle and choke the life out of.

“I’m not defending her. I’ve never defended her,” I say to Ashley. “I’m just letting you know how things are.”

“What did they do to you at Oxford?” Ashley muses.

“That’s the thing. I never was at Oxford. I’ve never been to the UK. I was in New York, crashing on strangers’ couches.”