Page 28 of Bad at Love
Fourteen is an awful age to lose anybody, let alone your mother, who at the time, was my best friend. In some ways, she still is. I talk to her often, usually right before I go to sleep, or when I’m working the hives. If I see something beautiful, like a sunset or perfectly built comb on the hive frames, something I know she’d appreciate, I tell her about it. It’s more my heart speaking out to her than anything I’m thinking, but the feeling is still there. It’s communication on another level, something I callheartspeak.
I was close with my father too, before the accident. I knew he drank too much, but the image I had back then of someone having a “problem” was the deadbeat drunk, the one who would hit his family or run down the street in their underwear with a bottle of whisky in hand or lose their jobs. My father was always able to keep his drinking under control. He managed to have a great job as a financial consultant. Sure, some days he would work late in the city (our house was in the hills of Ramona, about a forty-minute drive from San Diego) and he’d come home in the middle of the night, but…it was just life. I didn’t know any better. My parents were great to me, theyseemedhappy, therefore I was happy.
But eventually the lies caught up to us. We went to myfather’s Christmas party, and he drove my mother and I home drunk. We went off the windy highway that takes you through the hills.
I still can’t remember all the details of the crash and I don’t want to. I remember the swerve, the headlights on a tree, the car tilting down at an unnatural angle, the glass shattering. When I woke up, I was in the hospital with a broken arm, collarbone, concussion. My mother was dead. My father was arrested for drinking and driving.
The house was sold, my mother’s hives destroyed. I had to move in with my Aunt Margaret in Irvine, who was already a single mother to her two young kids. I had to go to a new high school. I became even more withdrawn than before. I had no friends. The only thing I had, the only thing that distracted me, was studying, so I threw myself into school.
Then, after I graduated from university, my father was out of prison and I began the tenuous task of repairing my relationship with him. I still love him because he’s my father, but I basically have to take care of him now. Rehab never seems to work for long and he’s a full-fledged alcoholic, drinking himself to death before getting sober and doing it all over again, an unending cycle.
Sometimes I have that horrible, shameful, terrible thought that I want him to die. Sometimes I’m so full of rage at him for driving drunk, for killing my mother, for nearly killing me, that I don’t know what to do with myself. It eats me up inside. It makes me hate myself just as much as I hate him.
But I don’t hate him because I love him. I hate the world.
I stare at myself in my mirror, leaning over the sink, myfingers clenching the porcelain edges. I have to remind myself to breathe, to not let these thoughts wrap me up.
Think about Laz. Put on your makeup and think about Laz. Concentrate on him, on tonight.
It seems to work. I wash my face and start putting on my makeup, carefully, slowly. I have a lot of makeup, but I don’t wear much of it. There’s no point when you’re wearing a beekeeper hat a lot of the time and I usually don’t have the time to play with it. But for tonight, for Laz’s sake, I decide to make the effort.
Only it’s not really for Laz’s sake, is it?
It’s for Carl McNaughty.
I burst out laughing at the thought, causing my mascara to smear under my eyes. I quickly wipe off the excess with a cotton swab.
Honestly, I can’t believe this is actually happening. Like, what are we really going to learn about each other? How can I believe that it’s some stranger, some random Tinder date, and not my good friend? What can Laz possibly tell me about how I am on a date?
I know it’s not going to work. That it’s completely silly and pointless. Maybe he knows it too. I think I just want an excuse to go out, to be with him and be something different to him for once.
Careful, a small voice pops up in my head.This is all to help you with other guys, not with him. Your friend is just doing you a favor.
I take in a deep breath and steel myself.
A favor, a favor, a favor.
Actually, I’m doing him a favor, too. I think.
When I’ve finished with my makeup, blown out my frizzy hair into sleek strands, and slipped on a pair of skinny jeans and a low-cut empire waist lacy top, I’m ready.
Except when I hear the side gate open and I know it’s him, I’m reduced to a fluttery mess. I give myself the once over in the mirror, satisfied that the bronzy smoky eye makeup is making my blue eyes pop like never before. I’m even wearing heels, three-inch stilettos that make me carry my thick thighs and butt better.
The knock at my door makes me jump.
I try to walk as calmly as possible over to it, heading down the two steps that separate the bedroom area from the living room and front door.
My heel slips out from under me.
There’s a second where I’m thinking,you can regain your balance!
But then I’m tumbling to the floor.
Splat.
“Ow,” I mumble, face against the faux hardwood. I do a quick once over in my head, checking every bone and muscle for injury before I start to hoist myself up.
Thank god Laz didn’t see that.
