Page 137 of Jaded

It’s not the place that’s changed, I realize. It’s me. I’m not the same kid I was the last time I came here. And I don’t know what to make of that.

Don’t know what to think or how to feel when I turn onto our old street. The houses are thesame, the fucking same, and it’s like stepping into an old life. One I wanted so desperately to leave behind forever.

And there it is. At the end of the street, slightly on the left. Behind a sagging oak tree.

The old blue Victorian.

The house I grew up in. The house where, once upon a time, I had a mother and a father, a brother, a future. Dreams.

The house where all those, one by one, let me down. Broke. Left me. And I learned how to live without them. Each and every one.

Once, I called this place home.

Before I started repoing and Brenda opened her own salon and we finally got Syd out of there. Of course, a year after we moved out, Dad drunkenly wrapped his old Ford Ranger around a tree and Jesse inherited the house—but he never offered either of us a place to stay.

And yet, here I am. Back.

For Syd—the same reason I left. Because Dad without Jesse around, Dad with a new baby in the house, Dad with his broken hockey stardom and his alcohol habits, was a nightmare I couldn’t escape.

Until all of asudden, he wasgone. In a way I didn’t know how to process.

I pull the car into the gravel driveway.

Park.

My boots crunch on the rock as I climb the slight incline to the door. I hesitate, uncertain whether I should knock or simply let myself in.

Fuck it.

I walk in.

A wave of stale, musty air hits me as I step into the small but mostly vacant living room. Nobody’s lived here since Brenda and I moved out, and it feels . . . empty. Soulless. No decor or rugs, no photos. Just two couches, a table between them, and an armchair. Empty, a void, like the hole in my chest.

I’ve no idea why Jess never sold the place.

“Nattie!” Jesse lounges in the corner of the couch against the far wall. His signature grin unfurls across his face, and I wonder what he sees. Does he even recognize me, after all the years he’s missed?

“Jess.” I let the door clack closed behind me.

God, he looks so much like the young Jesse I once admired—nay, adored. The one I tried so hard to emulate: that grin, the way he talked and walked, his clothes, his fancy colognes. Everything about him was the epitome of cool, and not just because Jess was the guy who got the girls, who everyone loved, the guy who was going places.

I adored him because he was mybrother.

Because, once upon a long time ago, he saw the forgotten kid that nobody else saw, and said,hey, you wanna learn guitar?

Because it was him, not Dad, who taught me how to hold a hockey stick, how to skate, the proper order to put on pads.

My chestachesat the memories.

“Come to join the talk?” Jess leans forward, drawing my attention from the past—to Syd, perched on the armchair in the corner.

“I’m not here for you.” My words slip through my teeth in an icy spill as my gaze refocuses on Syd. My daughter. The one I’ve worked for—toget out of this house, away from this depressing, dead-end life—every single fucking day for the past seventeen years.

“Syd.” My voice is a croak. She looks so wrong, perched on that familiar chair in this old familiar room. I turn back to Jess. “Why is my daughter here?”

“We’ve got so many good ideas for the tourney.” Jess stands, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s right beside me. Like we never stopped being brothers. Like he never walked out, left me and Brenda to the wrath of Rey Taylor. Turned his back on this whole damned town.

I step back to put space between us.

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