Page 24 of Bring You Back

I don’t know where I’m going—my reason for being here made null byhimandher, but I keep walking. There’s chatter all around me. Sound bites of music escape the open doors of the shops as people come and go, a medley of vastly different tastes. The Ferris wheel looms up ahead, the crashing of bumper cars and the screams of their drivers lash the air, the scent of hotdogs and pizza and seafood fills my nose. A kid passes me on a bike. The only wheels allowed on the boardwalk, but there’s a speed limit, and they have to stay to the side. Back when I had a skateboard attached to my feet, I couldn’t ride through here. I don’t miss it. For that reason, and because the skaters around here are a bunch of assholes. They have a rivalry with anyone who claims a different board. Like a surfboard, for instance. Banks and I hung out with them on principle. But when I switched from wheels to water, I didn’t just abandon one of my real friends, as he’s calling my change of hobby, I abandoned them all. Now they hate me on principle.

Assholes.

I come upon a guy with a guitar strumming what sounds like some shit I would’ve listened to when I was ten, and I feel inside my pockets for some cash to drop until I realize this guy isn’t playing for cash and I don’t have any on me andthis is shit I would’ve listened to when I was ten.

The last time I can recall carrying spare cash was in a similar situation. With Camille.

The guy then was playing originals and some drunk kid dropped him a shoelace. A fucking shoelace. Camille couldn’t stop laughing and suggested we get him a shoe to go with it. Before we dropped him a few bucks of our own.

I’ll add that the guy was wearing flip flops.

I glare atthisguy for dredging up the memory as I pass him and he laughs at me, probably thinking I don’t like his choice of music. That’s accurate, too.

There are memories all over this town. Of her. Of us. And I’ve been good at blocking them out until a day ago.

I end up on a bench across from Hold My Scoop Ice Cream Shop. I don’t know how long I sit here before a hand holding a Styrofoam bowl of ice cream appears under my nose. My eyes start a lazy trail up to meet Reyna’s. She gives me a small smile, waving the bowl out like a peace offering. It should be me trying to make peace. It should be me apologizing.

Either way, peace is peace, so I take the bowl and she sits next to me.

“I’ve got about five more minutes,” she tells me. She’s on break.

I bite into my treat and she pins me with a concerned stare. I wait for her to find my thoughts. This time, I want her to.

“Is that brain freeze or thought overload?”

I laugh, then smile at her. “Guess.”

She squints one eye at the sun with pursed lips, feigning thinking. “Both. Our ice cream isprettycold”—she teases before her eyes drop to the ice cream—“and you’ve had an eventful couple days.”

It’s not these couple days that I’m on right now. My thoughts are further back.

“Why would my dad stay with my mom after what she did?” I ask her, and yet no one in particular, while acknowledging to myself that it’s pointless to try to stop thinking of Brent as my father. Unfortunately, he is the definition. And I know this is a question I should be asking him. But when I even entertain the idea, I just picture his mouth spouting more lies.

“Love?”

I don’t even address that. Love is simple for Reyna. For me, it’s complicated, often unattainable, and not always enough.

“Would you?” I ask her.

“No,” she says before having second thoughts. “I don’t know. If a kid’s involved and I loved the kid, I probably would.”

That was me. The kid involved. I should commend the man for loving a child that wasn’t his. I should. But he’ll have one who is his soon enough. And I can’t compete with that.

“Kids need good parents,” Reyna continues.

I’m quiet now, spooning vanilla covered M&M’s into my mouth, and she keeps trying.

“He was a great dad.”

I release a mirthless laugh. “Until he didn’t want to be.”

“Did he say that?”

I jam the spoon into the ice cream. “He doesn’t have tosayit, Reyna. Where is he?” My hands circle the space around us to signify that he’s not here, and the spoon tips over the side. I swipe it up before it falls and jam it back in. “Not here,” I emphasize, my voice building in volume, drawing stares. “Not with me and my mom. He’s over there with the whore of Bellsby.”

She flinches at the insult, a word that’s never left my mouth before. I’ve been saying a lot of things that have never left my mouth before, so why stop now? On a good day, I would’ve called Tiffany a homewrecker, but I don’t have many good days anymore.

“Julian. . .”

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