humiliation all sucker-punching each other for the chance to get to beat the shit out of my already mutilated ego.
“I feel like no one listens to a thing I have to say.” I tried to start things neutrally, to say what I needed to without making things worse, but my mother was in rare form.
“No one listens to you? No one listens to poor Landry? I feel like all I ever do is listen to you whine and cry about how hard things are! And I’m done with it! I’m done! Done, done, done, done. You want out? Leave. Please, be my guest and leave. If you think you can do better on your own, please, go ahead and try.”
My mother’s hands death-gripped the steering wheel. Her words knifed at my already beaten-to-a-pulp conscience.
“Fine.” I knew, in that moment, that I was doing something insanely, totally stupid. I knew I’d regret it. I knew I was being completely childish and was letting the whole stupid, crazy night take me by the throat and shake me around, but I didn’t care. “Fine. I will. I know I’ve been a huge pain in the ass. Now you won’t have to worry about it anymore. Or me. Or whatever. I’m fucking done.”
Before my mother could yell at me for swearing or tell me what a lousy ass I was being or talk me out of my latest temper tantrum, I slid out of the car, slammed the door shut, and jogged to my friend Tyler’s house and crashed semi-permanently.
A few weeks later my inheritance was released.
I left New Jersey and hadn’t looked back until Paisley’s call.
The snow crunches under the tires of Paisley’s Accord as she pulls into the driveway of my parents’ house, a few yards from where Mom and I sat that night she bailed me out of jail and I bailed out of my family’s life for months on end.
It looks the same. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is the longest I’ve gone without seeing it, and I just sort of thought it’d look a little different. The Snoopy Christmas scene is lit up in the front yard, the snowflakes made out of white lights are staked into the walkway, and the creepy-ass Santa face is staring at me through the octagon shaped window in the second story. It’s the same as it always was.
But the feel is different.
Because I’m not welcome.
There aren’t any lights on inside the house from what I can tell. That’s not really odd, because it’s late as hell. Paisley turns to look at me as she tosses the car keys into her purse and senses what I’m thinking: this was a bad idea.
The entire night was a bad fucking idea.
I’d like a do-over.
I’d like to rewind and go home with the cute girl from the bar, instead of having gone to my apartment where I fucked things up with Mila. I’d like to have ignored Paisley’s call and not gotten on that damn train and kissed Toni.
I want to be passed out in my messy apartment after a satisfying but unemotional lay and not staring up at that freakish St. Nick in the window of my parents’ house with thoughts of Mila and Toni and the stupid mess I made of everything past and present bludgeoning my brain.
“Don’t worry, if they’re awake, I’ll tell them that I begged you to come.” Paisley’s big green eyes are pleading with me not to run away like the scumbag I am.
I rub the back of my neck and close my eyes. I’m that that kind of tired that, once my eyelids are closed, I feel everything start to spin in the blackness. If I weren’t so exhausted, I’d probably high-tail it back to the train station right now.
“Could we, like, go inside?” Paisley rubs her hands together and blows into them.
The temperature in the car has gone from toasty warm to nearly-freezing-my-nuts off in the two minutes since she turned the engine off.
“You go ahead. I’m going to take a walk.”
“Landry, it’s freezing out.”
“I’ll be fine.” I zip my jacket up to my neck and pull the hood on.
“Are you kidding? That’s not even a real coat.” She flicks one of the strings of my hood with her finger and purses her lips like she used to just before she threw a huge temper tantrum when we were kids. She’s outgrown the tantrums. Too bad I never outgrew dodging every problem that ever darted