Page 13 of Heartache & Playdates
The left corner of his mouth pulled up in a grin as he poured me another drink and set it in front of me. “Liquid courage?”
“Yep. Liquid courage.” I took a sip and told myself that after I finished this drink I was definitely going into the reunion.
Yep. Right after one more drink.
5
MADDOX
Three hours.That’s how long I’d been waiting for her to arrive.
She’s not coming. The realization sunk in slowly, then all at once. Disappointment enveloped me like fog rolling in from the bay. It surrounded me and clouded everything I saw.
I’d zoned out on what Craig Dixon, Marcus Reinhold, and Chris Porter had been talking about an hour ago. They were all drunk and reminiscing about the good ol’ days. The best part of high school for me was Peyton. And since she wasn’t going to be here, there was no reason for me to be either.
I stood and set the beer I had been nursing down on the table.
“Good catching up,” I lied as I walked away.
My eyes were pointed down as I stared at the ground. I wanted to make a clean getaway. Irish goodbyes had always been my style, even with people I liked. This was a room of people I didn’t even know.
High school hadn’t been a social experience for me. It had been a means to an end. I’d known that the best chance of getting emancipated from the state was to have a diploma and a full-ride scholarship to an Ivy League school.
That had been my goal, and when I set my mind to something, I have blinders on.
The only “family” I’d had was Alex and Nick. Nick aged out of the system and Alex had left high school at sixteen when he found out he was going to be a dad. They had both started their lives and I was still in that fucking group home.
In the span of a few months, I went from rooming with my brothers, to being alone. It took me exactly one week to realize that there was no way I could survive four more years in the system. I came up with a game plan. I would graduate early and get emancipated. I would figure out how to make money to hire a lawyer, even though I was too young to get a work permit and couldn’t do anything seriously illegal that would threaten my chances at reaching my two goals.
So that’s what I did. From the moment I woke up in the morning until I went to bed at night, I was working toward my goal. The year between Alex and Nick moving out of the group home and meeting Peyton was the loneliest and most focused in my life.
Nothing distracted me from my goals, untilshewalked into Mrs. Zolinski’s class. I watched her the entire class but didn’t speak to her until lunch.
I officially met her three hours and five minutes after the first time I saw her. She was sitting at a table in the cafeteria all alone. I walked in, saw her and also noted the sharks circling. Mark Campton, captain of the varsity basketball team, Jarod Lee who rode the fine line between being an athletic and academic standout and had just been crowned Homecoming King, and Chris Porter all had her in their sights.
The trio of Cro-Magnon idiots were all drooling as they walked straight toward her. I picked up the pace and the four of us all converged at the table at the same time, so I sat down and said, “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
She turned her head, surprised, “I didn’t.”
I winked at her and said, “Yes, you did.”
She smiled and that was it. From that day on, we were inseparable. We spent every waking moment we could together. Our first kiss was a week later. We kept things PG for a month before we moved to PG-13. Another month before things got R rated. And an additional four weeks before we got to NC-17 territory. But we never got X-rated until the last night we spent together.
For six months we’d done everything but actually have sex. Then we did, and she was gone. For a kid who already had abandonment issues, it had seriously fucked me up.
“Maddox!” I heard my name and seriously considered ignoring it.
“Maddox Cruz! Where are you going?” Melinda Baxtor, who had organized this multi-year reunion rushed to my side. “We haven’t announced Reunion King and Queen yet.”
What the fuck was Reunion King and Queen? I’d been named Prom King, but I hadn’t attended prom since my date disappeared two weeks before the dance.
My phone rang in my pocket, and I saw that it was Lizzy calling.
“I have to take this. Business. I’ll be right back.” I lied. I had no plans of returning to the reunion.
“Oh, of course,” she nodded in understanding.
One of the perks of being the CEO of a billion-dollar business was that people never questioned the validity of you having to take a call or go to a meeting. It was how I’d been able to escape more than one uncomfortable playdate, much to the chagrin of my baby mama Lizzy who apparently wanted me married off and reproducing.
