The Secret of Ella and Micha(42)

"My older sister was a drug addict," she says quickly. "For like a year."

I stop chewing on my gum. "I didn't know that."

"I know. Not a lot of people do. My family is very firm on keeping our dirty laundry to ourselves." She rotates in her chair to look at my dad snoring on the backseat. "But I wanted to tell you so that you know that I understand how hard it is to watch someone you care about hurt themselves."

I turn the car down my street and the tires splash puddles onto the hood as they hit the potholes. "Why did you never tell me before?"

"Why didn't you tell me about your dad?"

"I don't know." Who is this girl sitting next to me? "So my life doesn't scare you?"

She arches her eyebrows and sits forward in her seat. "I wouldn't go that far, but your personal life doesn't."

***

There are three large Keggers on Micha's back porch when we pull up to my house. The garage door is wide open and his car is missing. The rain is pouring down and flooding the sidewalk and the tree next to the house sways in the wind.

"They must have got the car fixed," I say, unbuckling my seatbelt.

"Dang it." Lila smacks her hand on her knee and a smile expands across her face. "I was so looking forward to watching Ethan bent over the hood."

I snort a laugh. "Well, that wasn't really my point," I say when I stop laughing. "We somehow have to get him out of the car and into the house and I was going to have Micha help."

Lila and I turn toward the backseat, trying to figure out a way to get my dad out.

"Maybe we could ask your brother?" Lila suggests.

My eyes roam to the Porsche parked in front of us. "I'm not sure he'll help even if we ask him."

"It doesn't hurt to try."

"Yeah, you're right." I sigh and text Dean to come help. He doesn't answer, but a few minutes later the back door swings open. Dean steps out, barefoot, with a hoodie pulled over his head. He doesn't say anything when he swings the door open. Lila hops out of his way and he ducks inside the car and drags our father out. I scramble out of the car and hold the back door open for him. He lets my dad lean his weight on him and he aides him to the living room sofa.

"Where did you find him?" Dean asks me as he turns my dad to his side in case he throws up.

"At the bar." I place the duvet from the back of the couch over my dad and he snuggles up to it like a child. "Denny helped me get him to the car."

Dean presses his lips together, and bobs his head up and down. "That's where I figured he was, but I didn't want to go looking for him."

"You know I'm not even old enough to be in a bar, right?"

"And I'm old enough to know that I don't want to deal with this crap anymore."

I open my mouth to yell at him but zip my lips and shake my head, regaining power of my temper.

He backs toward the stairway. "I've had enough. I'm moving on with my life and you should do the same." He leaves me in the room alone with a heavy feeling in my heart.

I'd love to move on, but I'm not sure how. Running away to Vegas for eight months sure as hell didn't help because I'm almost back to where I started.

***

Lila and I decide to go to Larry's Diner, the local fast food drive-in, to get some lunch. It's a seventies themed restaurant where the waitresses wear roller skates and skate up the cars to take orders. After they hook the food tray to the window, we eat in the car and listen to music.

The rain is still beating down, but softer, although the roof is draining onto the front of the hood. We're chatting about the group of guys sitting on the tables underneath the canopy, when Lila focuses the conversation to somewhere I don't want to go.

"So where did you and Micha run off to this morning?" she asks, sipping her soda and batting her eyelashes innocently.

I dip a fry in the ranch cup balanced on the console. "Nowhere. He just chased me down the street."

She dumps some more ketchup onto her chicken sandwich. "Then why did both of you come back soaking wet?"

My body tingles at the memory of Micha and me rolling around in the grass. "One of the neighbor's sprinklers turned on while we were running across it."

"Seems like you were awfully wet just from being in the sprinklers for a few minutes." She dabs her lips with a napkin. "And you look really happy right now."

I force back a smile and pick the pickles off my burger silently.

"If you don't want to tell me," she says. "Then you don't have to."

"I'm just not comfortable talking about Micha," I explain. "When I don't even know how I feel about him."

"Okay, well you could talk to me about it. That's how friends help each other figure things out." She pauses, cleaning up some grease that dripped on her shirt. "Didn't you ever have a friend that you could talk to about everything?"

I shrug and take a bite of my burger. "Micha maybe, but I can't talk to him about him."

She looks at me sadly. "Try talking to me then."

I chew on a fry, trying not to choke. Once it's out there, it's real. "I'm not sure I can."

"Just try," she urges. "What's it going to hurt?"