The Way to Game the Walk of Shame(30)

“Yeah, well, I just know I need to get as far away from him as possible.” I waved my hand toward the stairs. “But if you want to hang out with them, then be my guest.” I went into the room without seeing if she would follow.

She did. Slowly. As though she was worried that the door was going to snap shut and lock her in. I flopped on the bed and waited to see what she would do.

When Taylor was certain that I wasn’t going to throw her on the bed and jump her bones or something, she edged closer into the room. Her fingertips traced the painted waves on my surfboard before she walked over to the dresser and bookshelves. She peered at each of the pictures on the surface, skipping all the pictures with the girls and lingering on the ones I’d taken a few weeks ago of a coral reef when I went scuba diving.

Finally, she sat down on my desk chair and spun the chair around and around. “Your room looks different.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just not what I remembered.”

I glanced around, but it looked the same to me. It’s not like I had underwear and bras hanging around. In fact, I don’t think another girl had been in here since Lauren a few months ago. Besides Taylor.

“So you were right.” She finally swung the chair around to face me. “Your stepdad really is a jackass.”

I laughed and shrugged. “Unfortunately, he treats my mom pretty well, so I can’t kick his ass like I want to.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Really? Because he seems like the controlling type.”

“Oh, believe me, he is. But compared to how her life was before, living with him is like a fairy tale.”

“Why? What was it like before?”

“Difficult.” I leaned my body upward to settle my weight on my elbows and watched her closely for her reaction. “My dad was in jail a lot, so she had to worry about all the other stuff, like bills and taking care of me while she finished her nursing degree.”

Taylor didn’t ask me what he did time for like I thought she would. I couldn’t have told her even if she did ask. I never knew why he hopped in and out of jail so much. It was probably for minor misdemeanors instead of something major, since he was never gone for too long. At least not until that last time nearly four years ago, when Mom finally had enough and divorced him. It wasn’t long before Brandon swooped in from the sidelines to take advantage of her.

Still, Taylor wasn’t reacting like people usually do when they found out about my dad. Pity. Disgust. Or even awe from a couple of girls who thought I was a broken boy who needed to be taken home and fixed. In fact, Taylor barely reacted at all. Her eyelashes fluttered a bit, but that was it.

“Where is he now?”

Clasping my hands beneath my head, I stared up at the ceiling. “I haven’t heard from him in a while. But I think he’s in Florida. Or at least that’s what my mom says.”

The edge of my bed dipped a little as she sat next to me. “I don’t get it. It’s just—you looked surprised when I said my dad was the jerk. But it sounds like your dad isn’t that great, either. But you’re not mad at him? At all?”

Mad? I had plenty of reasons to be mad, but I wasn’t. Not at all.

It was stupid, but even though he was a horrible husband, he was a great dad. He took me to ball games and motor races. He listened to me ramble into the night about cartoons on TV or comic books that I read at the store. He even brought me to the aquarium for the first time when I was ten, and back every few months when he saw how much I loved it.

It’s hard to be pissed at someone when all of your best memories are of him. With him. Even if he did leave us. And didn’t bother fighting for us at all.

Okay, maybe I was a little mad.

I stared up at the plastic stars on the ceiling. My plastic stars. Dad bought them and stuck them along my doorway and ceiling moldings. When Mom married Brandon, I took them with me, even though they were hard as hell to pry off. Nor did they want to stick to the ceiling of my new room. But I needed them. I may be an unwelcome guest in this house, but at least the room would feel like home to me. They finally stuck, with the help of a portable hot-glue gun. And it gave me a sense of satisfaction to ruin Brandon’s precious house.

“Evan?” I snapped back to the present when Taylor touched my shoulder. For a second, I had forgotten she was even there. “Sorry if I’m a little annoying.”

I grasped her hand and pulled her until she flopped down on her back beside me. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not your fault you’re nosy.”

She shoved at me but didn’t pull away. We lay there side by side in silence. It was a comfortable silence. Our arms were inches apart. If I stretched out my hand, I could probably touch hers. I didn’t, though. I didn’t want to somehow ruin the moment.

“It’s simple,” I finally said. “He’s my dad. The only one I’ll ever have.”

“Huh. I guess we think differently, then.” Her voice was quiet and flat.

I knew I should leave it alone, but I wasn’t going to. “Why did you lie about your dad leaving?”

Her hand rose toward the ceiling, and she used her index finger to trace connecting stars into invisible shapes only she could see. “I didn’t. He did leave us. I just left out the part about who he left with.”