Page 56 of Naked Coffee Guy

She looks away, leaving my hand in the air. I pull it back in, feeling the cold return between us.

“I need time to think,” she finally says. She pulls her wrap around her. The look on her face is…defeated. I realize there’s nothing else to say. I may have lost her for good.

“Maren, I…”

She stops me with a hand on my chest. I can feel the warmth of her skin radiating through my shirt. When I look in her eyes, I can see them glistening in the glow of the streetlamp.

I cover her hand with mine and close my eyes. Then I nod.

“Let me drive you home.”

Chapter Twenty

Mac

I wait long enough to see her disappear into her house. I want to wait longer—like forever—until she comes back out and forgives me. But that’s not going to happen. Not now. Maybe not ever. So once the door closes behind her without even a glance back, I pull away and head to Benji’s house.

But I don’t go inside right away.

The truth is, I’m angry. I didn’t ask for any of this, for my parents to die, for all the awful people who used the foster system like currency, or for Benji, who never quite promised me a real home, but allowed me the room for hope regardless.

He had been clear from the start—I was there to be useful and nothing more. He’d give me a home; I’d do whatever he asked.

It wasn’t like he had me do anything illegal. Well, unless you count child labor as illegal. It started with odd jobs, like deliveries and washing his friends’ cars. Then once he could trust I wasn’t going to steal, I began cleaning and landscaping at different homes, always with one of his bodyguards keeping watch. It was how he kept tabs on me.

If I half-assed a job, I answered for it with a switch to my backside, always by him.

It wasn’t the first time I was hit by a guardian. Past homes felt like living in a puppy mill, with as many as fifteen of us taking up every space in the house. They were always run by lazy assholes who thought fostering would give them the paycheck their nine-to-five wouldn’t. What they didn’t anticipate was that we needed to eat, have someplace to sleep, and have clothes that fit our growing bodies. Those of us old enough to sass did plenty of it, even though it resulted in regular beatings. It also led to missed meals, sometimes several days in a row. These assholes told us we were lucky. Our parents didn’t want us, they said—no one wanted us.

The last official foster home I was in, there were four of us sharing a room with a single bunk bed. To be thirteen and having to share a bed with another boy was awkward, especially when I was stuck with Rory, a kid who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I’d end up on the floor just to avoid Rory’s “accidental” touches. But one night, after spending the day mucking the horse barn, I was dog tired and the thought of another night on the floor made me want to punch a hole through the wall.

“It’s your turn on the floor,” I told Rory. But the kid wouldn’t budge. We were matched in size, and I knew I couldn’t force him to do anything without getting the attention of Mr. Perkins, our foster parent. “Fine,” I relented when Rory stood his ground. “Then get to your side of the fucking bed and don’t cross the line over to mine.”

I awoke that night with Rory’s hand on my dick, his body curled around mine from behind. I leapt out of bed, dragging him with me as he struggled against my strength. But I was too mad, the adrenaline tearing through my body as I straddled his body and pummeled his face with my closed fists. The other kids in the room woke to this, and one of them got Mr. Perkins who pulled me off Rory in a fit of rage. By the time I could find my words, Mr. Perkins already had my ass bare while he whipped it with a belt. If he heard my reasons for the fight, he didn’t acknowledge them.

“You ungrateful sack of shit,” Mr. Perkins growled, never letting up, even though I’d given in to the beating. “We give you everything, using every cent we have to care for you worthless boys. This is how you repay us, by bullying the other kids?” Never mind that Mr. Perkins got money for each of us, or that he used it to feed his gambling addiction. Never mind that Mrs. Perkins had her hair and nails done every week and came home every Friday with a new outfit for her Sunday brunch with the girls.

He left my ass riddled with raised purple welts before he marched me outside to get back to mucking the barn. It was two in the morning, but he stood there while I walked barefoot through shit, shoveling manure under the glow of a hanging utility light, and laying down hay until the sun eventually crested the hillside.

It was the last day I ever spent in foster care. That night, exhausted to the bone, my stomach curling in on itself from lack of food, I lay on the floor of the bedroom, listening to the sounds of the night. Rory had kept his distance the rest of the day, but I was not about to get back in that bed. I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life, but my eyes remained wide open. I waited until I heard the soft snores of my bunkmates, then I rolled to my knees, moving one leg in front of the other, as I shuffle-crawled to the door and eased it open.

The door to Mr. Perkins’ room was cracked, probably to listen for any more fighting in our room. But through that open door, I could hear the deep rumble of his snore, followed by the much softer sighs from Mrs. Perkins.

I got to my feet and tiptoed down the hallway, waiting in between steps to see if I was discovered. I reached the living room and then the entry way where all our shoes were lined up on a bench, like it was a friendly schoolhouse and not a house that swindled the system. With cautious hands, I found my shoes and slid them out carefully. I hadn’t grabbed anything else from my room. I realized my mistake as I opened the door and was met by a soft sprinkle of rare California rain.

Something brushed against my shins, and I jumped back banging the doorknob in the process. It was just the cat, who shot out of the house at my sudden move. Mrs. Perkins would be pissed when she found out. I wondered if she’d be madder at her indoor cat found outside in the rain, or the fact that one of their walking paychecks had run away. My bet was on the cat. Fosters were a dime a dozen, and they’d probably have my half of the bed filled by the end of the week.

As far as I could tell, everyone in the house was still asleep. I stood there like I was made of marble, my ears straining to make out every noise in the house and heard nothing that sounded like someone was about to discover me. Satisfied, I looked back at the rain outside. It was getting harder, and I was standing there in my threadbare pajama bottoms that fell a few inches above my ankles and a thin white undershirt. I hadn’t even thought to grab socks. I definitely didn’t have a jacket.

But Mr. Perkins did. It hung there above the shoe rack, underneath the sign that said “Live. Laugh. Love.” It was the coat he used every morning to tend to the animals, and it smelled like it may have never seen the inside of a washing machine. But I grabbed it anyways, slipping the long sleeves over my arms before I tiptoed into the rain, my shoes in hand as I carefully closed the door.

That damn cat followed me as I ran across the field. I stopped halfway through to finally put my shoes on, wiping as much of the mud off my feet before sliding them on while the cat rubbed against my leg.

“Go hunt something while you have the chance,” I grunted, kicking her off me. She responded by swiping at my leg, leaving a red gash in her wake. It wasn’t the worst wound I’d received on that day, but it was enough to make me kick at her again, more forcefully this time. Fuck that cat. Fuck the farm. Fuck Mr. Perkins and fuck every other foster family that treated me like their goddamn slave. Most of all, fuck my caseworker—a tired old lady who should have retired twenty years ago, and who was oblivious to the state of the homes she placed me in.

I was done.

Now I sit here in my car, the memory of that night—and the many nights after—racing through my head while I remain parked in front of Benji’s house. The Perkins never found me. I’m not sure they even looked. I have no idea how they explained me away to my case manager, but I dropped off the radar as easy as twilight slips into dawn. I spent those first few days of freedom searching for ways to survive. I discovered restaurants waste a lot of food in the dumpsters out back. I scoured piles of clothing abandoned outside thrift stores at night. I slept away from streetlights and stayed in the shadows during the day. My only goal was to survive, though it was hard to remember why.

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