Homewrecker

36 - 𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓵𝓸𝓱

Apparently, according to Jason after he went back to the car and pulled out a bottle of water—which was heavy and weighted in my hand when he gave it to me, taking me seconds to realize that the bottle was made of thick glass instead of plastic—he picked up the phone when Indie called the landline about an hour earlier.

Amy and David were in their room, either already asleep or getting ready for bed, and he and Kimberly left to pick me up without telling them. Kimberly looked as if she were still in her pajamas, a cotton tank top with drawstring shorts, her black hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head, glasses with muted pink frames I didn't remember her wearing before perched on her nose. Jason was still dressed, in the pair of khaki shorts and t-shirt he was wearing before, his Apple watch glowing in the dark as he moved his hands. Ice clinked against the glass as I drank.

"How much did you have to drink, Bronwyn?" Kimberly asked, crouching down in front of me.

I held up three fingers around the glass, the condensation making it slippery in my hands, so it nearly fell against the porch steps, but Indie caught it, swearing under her breath. "Beers," she elaborated.

"What are you even doing here?" Jason asked, glancing over to the house behind me, the front screen door letting the scent of cigarette and marijuana smoke drift out onto the porch steps, muffled laughter from the backyard accompanying the crackling flames of a burgeoning campfire. There were emptied bottles on the porch railing, left abandoned, and cigarettes stubbed against the wood. "We thought Indie drove you to work."

"I wanted to go home," I murmured, tracing lines down the condensation on the glass bottle instead of meeting their gazes, not wanting to see what I would find.

"And," Indie continued, "we ended up at some random guy's house instead so she could hang out with Kingston Castaneda."

Kimberly frowned. "Who is Kingston Castaneda?"

"My neighbor."

"Her crush. He works for a deli factory packaging bologna and the one who gave Bronwyn all the beers."

I shot her a withering look. "Why don't you tell them my social security number while you're at it?"

"Were the beers opened, or in cups?" Kimberly asked, sounding so concerned that it was almost laughable that someone, even a stranger, could think of that of Kingston Castaneda.

"No. I opened them myself. He's not that kind of guy, okay? I'm just drunk." Stupid drunk, I added in my head, because obviously the wires for bravery and stupidity had gotten cross somewhere between the second and third beer. It was why my hair was tangled and my bra was holding on by the first clasp. "I'll be fine. You can go."

There were only a couple of functioning streetlights on the block, but even in the dim lighting, it looked as if Jason rolled his eyes before slipping his hands out of his pockets. "Yeah. Right, okay," he said, reaching out and grasping one of my elbows, bringing me up from the front steps. The concrete felt unsteady underneath my shoes, the branches of the trees moving even though I didn't feel a breeze. "Come on."

I tried to pull my arm out of his grasp, but it felt heavier than I remembered it being. "I don't want to go back there. This—here, Shiloh, it's my home. I want to stay home."

He seemed undeterred. "Yeah, well, you can't live on this guy's porch."

"Well, it's better than Shelridge. I mean, I'm not a Soliday. I'm a Larson. I'm a Bronwyn."

The gravel crunched underneath our footsteps as we approached their car, a Chrysler with black gleaming paint so it almost blended in with the night skies and the dark pavement of the streets, and he leaned me against the driver's side door as he opened one of the doors to the backseat. Even from where I stood, it smelled like a new car. Pristine leather seats were visible through the tinted windows.

"Okay," Jason said, turning to me. "What does that have to do with anything? No one is asking you to change who you are. We just want you to accept who we are."

I felt my eyes narrowing as he spoke, incredulous but also somewhat confused that this was coming from him, at the earnest gaze meeting my befuddled one, like this was the truth when I knew that it couldn't be. The Solidays weren't concerned with acceptance, at least not from me, anyway. Maybe the public that watched them on their television sets at home, maybe the other politicians David worked with, or the connections they called friends but not me.

I was raised in a trailer home with a drug addict of a single mother, got confused regularly with the ice dispenser on their smart refrigerator, and was currently leaning against his car, smudging the spotless glass because I was wobbling on my feet because I was drunk. A moment earlier, I was about to have drunken, unprotected sex with my older neighbor. Even I was starting to wonder how much my opinion really meant anymore.

I didn't know what about me mattered anymore. It all felt like it belonged to someone else.

"Okay," he said, grasping his hands around my arms again and gingerly leading me to the backseat of his Chrysler, nudging me onto the leather seats. He brought the seatbelt around my shoulders and clicked it into place at my side, carefully pulling out the strands of my hair that caught underneath it near my collarbone. "Let's get you home."

I was about to tell him that what he called home, wasn't my home. My home was broken and torn apart into pieces of drywall, plywood, and ripped up carpeting. Scattered across town, too many to grasp and piece back together. His home was a lake-house in an affluent community. Together and whole and in one place.

But, before I could, Kimberly reached over from the passenger seat and handed me the bottle of water back, the condensation that made it so slippery before now wiped away, and then a paper bag with it. Jason closed the back door, asking if Indie needed a ride somewhere and she shook her head, waving to me and mouthing text me, okay. I watched as she stepped off the front porch, pulling her keys out from her back pocket, and headed for her car parked alongside the curb further up the street. I leaned back against the headrest, about to close my eyes, when someone opened the screen door. A part of me hoped it would be Kingston, a part of me was glad that it wasn't.

But that quickly faded away when I realized that the person leaving the house, letting the door slam behind him, was Jude Carney. My mother's boyfriend. He was wearing a Buffalo Bills shirt that was a little too tight on him, jeans that had been worn pale around the knees with frayed hems around his weather sneakers, and he was leaving the party, but I hadn't seen him there before. And he didn't see me now as he used his key fob to unlock his car parked against the curb on the opposite side of the street.

I lifted a hand to wave to him, even though I was confused and didn't know why he would be there—everyone I had seen at the party was older than me, but definitely still decades younger than him, and I didn't think he knew anyone that Kingston knew—but Jude walked right past the car as Jason started it, without even a glance at my hand.

I blamed it on the tinted windows, how Jude would never think I would be in a car like this, even if he did know that I was staying with the Solidays, and then I blamed the unsettling feeling I had on the beer and questionable buffalo wings on the drive back to Shelridge.