Page 28 of Gone Tonight
He examined Timmy’s nose and checked my upper arms. Red dots in the shape of fingertips were already forming, precursors to bruises.
The broken look on my dad’s face about killed me. I knew he wastrapped. He was a high-school dropout with no resources. My mother’s family had some money, plus they employed him. If he left her, they’d fire him and hire a lawyer to help her win full custody of us. It wouldn’t be hard since the courts usually favored mothers. I’d heard my mom yell that at my dad before.
Anyway, my dad was raised as a Catholic. He didn’t believe in divorce.
I lied and told him we were fine as Timmy nodded.
My dad said he wanted to take Timmy to McDonald’s for a cone, and Timmy’s face brightened a bit. Dad asked if I was still going out or if I wanted to come with them.
I was so late for my date with James that I doubted he’d still be waiting for me. I didn’t have a way of communicating with him, other than through notes tucked in my locker slats. He’d left one asking me out on the date, and I’d written a single word—yes—on a light-purple sticky note, the prettiest slip of paper I had, and put it in the same slat for him to find. I left it there right after practice, and it was gone the next morning when I arrived at school.
I still had no idea how James slipped in and out of school without me noticing. I felt certain that even in a crowd of hundreds, my eyes would be drawn to him.
I said I wasn’t sure and that I might catch up with them at McDonald’s.
My dad kissed my cheek, then took Timmy’s hand and we walked together to the driveway. My father drove a car in even worse condition than mine. He insisted on giving the better one to me because it had air bags. Even when he wasn’t with us kids, he tried to protect us.
My mother had tried to defeat him in many ways, like by screeching that he was a loser and a terrible husband, and that she never should’ve married him. There was plenty my dad could have said back, especially because I’m pretty sure my mother got pregnant with me to trick my dad into marrying her. She was thirty and he was twenty-five when they met, and it’s not like she was bringing a lot to the table.
But my dad always accepted her wrath without ever once fightingback or even leaving the room. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why.
Now I think I know the truth. By absorbing her verbal blows, he hoped he could prevent her physical ones against us kids.
The front of my high school was lit up by tall outdoor lights, but around the back, the parking lot was almost completely dark. There weren’t any other cars I could see.
James had given up on me.
I didn’t want to go to McDonald’s—or back home. I decided to just drive around for a while, listening to the radio. Maybe I’d go by Pizza Piazzo and leave a note for James.
As I swung my car around, my headlights shone on a black Corvette, tucked into the far corner of the lot.
James was leaning against the rear bumper.
He looked so good in his jeans and white T-shirt, even better than he had in his waiter’s uniform. The sight of him washed away the ugliness of the previous hour.
I parked and walked toward him. I was a mess—I hadn’t even brushed my hair, my mascara was probably smeared, and I wasn’t wearing shoes.
But James was smiling by the time I reached him.
He reached out and, with the gentlest of touches, rubbed his fingertip against my cheekbone.
There was a dot of blood on my face, he said.
It wasn’t mine. It was Timmy’s.
I could have conjured an excuse.
I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe it was the way he listened without interrupting once, or the way nothing I said seemed to shock him. I told him everything.
Before I was even halfway through, he reached out and put his arms around me. It was the opposite of the way my father had restrained me. James drew me to him tenderly so that my head was against his chest and his arms were loose around my body.
When I finally finished, his shirt was damp from my tears.
It wasn’t exactly the way I’d planned to begin our first date. Any other guy would’ve run away without looking back.
But James kept holding me. I closed my eyes and listened to his slow, steady heartbeat.
After a few minutes, he led me to the side of the school. The door was unlocked, which made no sense, until James explained that he’d gotten into the school through an open window by jumping up and grabbing the ledge and pulling himself up with his fingertips.
