Mom peeled me off her, grasped my shoulders and said those last words. Words that have haunted me since. Your father is a man worth forgiving.
I lower my head and scrub my hands over my face. I don’t know how to forgive him, Mom. Not if he hurt you. I don’t know how to forgive him for disrespecting the memory and love I had for you by bringing a parade of trash through our house. He kicked and spit on every good memory I had, and if you left me on purpose, then you destroyed anything that was good in me to begin with and I’m not sure I can forgive you for that.
“I miss her,” Dad says. “Every damn day.”
“Then why did you do it?” I demand. “If you loved her, why did you bring those women to her house? To my house? To our home?”
Dad grimaces and the fading rays of the sun hit the red in his hair. Mom loved his hair, saying they should have another child—a girl—so they could have one with hair like his.
“I wanted to forget the pain,” he says like he’s broken. “I wanted someone to erase the hurt, but the sad part was, they never did. Not one of them did.”
“Until now?” The pain leaks out of my voice before I can stop it.
There’s hurt in his eyes and I’m not sure why. Because he’s still in love with my mother, because he’s fallen in love with someone else, or a combination of both, I don’t know and after what’s taken place between us it’s hard to find a reason to care. But fuck me, I do. I do care about my father. He’s all the blood family I have left.
“Can we put away the shit that’s between us?” Dad asks. “For tonight. I promise our problems will be there in the morning, just like they have been since your mom died.”
I nod, and when I straighten, Dad hugs me high. Hands off my patch and he’s careful of my arm. It’s fast and strong and I hug him just as quick and with the same amount of emotion.
Dad keeps a hand on my neck as we walk in, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he had wiped his eyes. The door shuts behind us and Dad calls out, “Let’s eat!”
Breanna
THE DEFINITION OF AWKWARD: riding home with a girl who knows my boyfriend better than I do and yet we have absolutely nothing to talk about on the twenty-minute drive.
Violet is pretty. Fire-red hair, a bit taller than me. She has this bohemian look I’ve envied since middle school. Why it works with her—the ton of bracelets on her wrist, the whimsical way she can wear a pair of ripped jeans and a tank top with gemstones in a way I can’t pull off—is because she has the I-don’t-care-if-I’m-not-going-the-same-way-as-the-world outlook.
Pathetic thing? I just now realize it’s not the clothes she’s wearing that make me envious, but the attitude. I wish I could be in every aspect of my life what Razor says I am—I wish I could be fearless about telling Kyle that his pictures have no power over me, but in this area, I’m drowning in defeat.
“Can I ask you something?” I probe.
Her car is old, possibly older than me and her combined. The windows of this overly large bucket of metal are rolled down because either the car was built without air-conditioning or the system is broken. Because of the age, either is feasible.
“Sure. It’ll beat the hell out of ignoring each other.”
“It’s personal.”
“You saw my mother’s bra on a wall. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”
I choke and she smirks. It’s true. When Rebecca and I raced past the main room, I spotted bras hanging on the walls of the clubhouse. “Is your bra on the wall?”
Violet breaks out into a full grin. “No. I’ve never decided to donate one, and even if I did, I’m not sure they’d accept it. As much as I try to push them away, they still consider me a child of the Terror, which means each man in that club tries to act like my father. It would creep them out if their ‘daughter’s’ bra was on display.”
“So those bras...” I drop off.
“Are a contribution to the cause—whatever that means. There’re different stories of how and when the first bra went up, but since then when women come to party, they see the rainbow of colors and want to add theirs to the mix. It’s become a thing. A thing I don’t get, but a thing.”
Violet glances over at me and her hair blows wildly in the wind. “I would love to have been in your head for thirty seconds when you saw it. What horrible story did you invent for how the bras got there?”
Honestly, none. When I first darted by, I was too sick at the thought of getting caught, and the second time, I was still numb from Razor declaring me done with the code.
“Half the stories about the Terror aren’t true,” she says. “Some of them are, but most of the real bad ones aren’t. I still don’t think you should hang with the Terror, but that’s not my decision to make.”
“You didn’t have to bring me today.”
“True.” She hesitates. “I hurt someone recently because I was too dead set on making them think the Terror are evil. Call this my penance.”
“Do you still think they’re evil?”
“As sure as I am that Satan’s real, and in case you’re wondering, he is. I still think you should run and never look back, but you’re a big girl and can make your own choices.”
I digest that and decide to switch the subject. “That’s cool—that they look out for you.”
Her smile falters. “My dad died. I’m not interested in anyone replacing him.”