was fucking infuriating. Least of all because I wanted to not care. I wanted to call her a bitch, say I didn’t give a shit what she did with her life, and actually mean it.
Lost in my rage-filled thoughts, I nearly shot past Aunt Hannah’s house before slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop.
Gripping the steering wheel so hard I felt as if it might snap in half, I forced a few deep breaths down my throat. When that didn’t fucking work, I growled and got out of the car. Maybe blowing some shit up on a big screen would distract me.
I barreled into the house and slumped onto the couch, but instead of reaching for the remote, I found myself just clenching my fists repeatedly, thinking about how fucking helpless she’d looked passed out in my bed all night.
“Hey.”
I shot to my feet at my aunt’s casual greeting, every muscle in my body tense.
“Whoa.” Her eyes widened in surprise, her OJ halfway to her mouth as she leaned against the wall. “Sorry to interrupt your intense scowling session there. You all right?”
“Shit.” I ran my hands through my hair for about the millionth time in the past twenty-four hours. I was going to go bald at this rate. “Sorry. I . . . you just startled me. I’m fine.” I forced a smile that felt fake to its core and lowered myself back to the couch. “I thought you were spending the day with Robbie.”
“He got called into work, so I came home.” She made her way over to sit down, took a sip of her juice, and looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I tried, and failed, to keep the irritation out of my tone.
“We had a deal, Hendrix. You come to me if you’re in any kind of trouble. You’re clearly not fine. Start talking, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I argued childishly.
“Then act like it and tell me what’s going on.”
Damn her and her logic. “Look, I’m not in any kind of trouble, OK? I promise. I’m sticking to our deal.”
“Yeah, well, the deal included emotional and existential trouble, so . . .” She gestured for me to start talking.
I gave her a withering look. “I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“Should’ve read the fine print.” She took another sip of OJ. “Spill.”
Her banter was a good distraction for about two minutes, but the restless, tight feeling in my body just wouldn’t leave. Maybe talking about it would help. And my aunt was literally the only person I felt I could trust right now.
“I don’t really know where to start.”
“How about at the end?”
I laughed despite myself. “Usually people say start at the beginning.”
“Yeah, but fuck them. Tell me where you just came from. Obviously it has something to do with this. Then we can work backward.”
How the hell was I supposed to tell her I’d just come from dropping off a drugged girl at the seediest bar in the state? Hannah was cool, but even she wasn’t that cool. Not to mention this wasn’t technically even my problem.
“I . . . look . . . it’s not really my story to tell. When I said I wasn’t in trouble, I wasn’t lying.”
“But someone else is?”
“Not yet, but she will be if she keeps going like she is. But the fucked-up thing is that when you asked that, my first instinct was to say, ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’”
“Are you romantically involved with this girl?”
I snorted. “Trust me, there’s been no romance.” There’d been heat, sexual release, a pull damn near impossible to resist, plenty of hurtful words, but no romance . . .
“OK, so then why do you care so much?”
“I don’t know!” I pulled at my hair again. “That’s a big part of the problem. I wanted to just come here, keep my head down, get good grades, and finish high school before figuring out how to make my life mean something after what I did. I didn’t even want to make friends. I don’t want anything to do with this. But every time I see her . . . doing some stupid shit, I just want to shake her. I see that desperate, caged-animal look in her eyes, and I know exactly how she feels, even if I don’t really know her at all. Because I used to feel like that. I used to have that look in my eyes.”