Chapter 22
Mercedes
I spent the weekend lounging on the couch with a neverending bowl of popcorn. I firmly believed that binge watching TV was as necessary to human life as air and water. I lost myself in mindless comedies, and of course, a stream of chick flicks.
Monday morning, the house was empty. My mom took my dad to his treatments early, and he wouldn’t be done until the afternoon. So I went back to watching TV with a bowl of cereal. The money I made would help him through his treatments. It wouldn’t cover everything, but we’d make do. It occurred to me that had my father not been sick, I would’ve had it made.
If I had that extra money laying around, I could’ve had a nice car and a place of my own, something that I could make a home. It was strange the way that life worked out. I spent years doing nothing but studying and coming home, thinking that I was building something for myself. Instead, I was still stuck sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room.
I was trying to distract myself from what was really on my mind. Jake’s confession about his childhood lurked in the corner of my brain. Even though I refused to look at it, it wouldn’t be ignored, and it wouldn’t go away. I had no choice but to face it head on.
Jake was in pain. The wounds inflicted on him by that filthy old bitch had never healed. It was the kind of thing that could haunt a person for the rest of their life.
I’d heard about women who were violated like that when they were younger. They’d go from one man to another. Every night a different guy. Some would fall for abusive men that didn’t love them.
When it happened to a guy, they acted differently. They were detached, even cold sometimes, but their sex drive was insatiable. The worst part was the guilt that plagued them. They couldn’t control themselves, so they thought it was their fault. Sex was dirty, wrong—a sin. That self-blame ate at people.
I couldn’t possibly understand what Jake was going through; I was just an observer looking in, but he was hurting. That much was for sure. Somebody destroyed his life, and he still hadn’t recovered. It wasn’t fair. He could’ve been married with little kids running around the house with a good, beautiful woman sleeping next to him.
I could see his life the way it should’ve been. They’d all travel together. There’d be camping and hiking trips, nights in the city, summers in France, Spain, and Italy. Jake was jaded to all of those things now. He didn’t have anyone to share them with, and it hurt him. To be robbed of the ability to love, to have a family, and watch his kids grow up—he was missing out on life. It made me feel terrible.
I took my bowl back up to the kitchen and set it down in the sink. I was still wearing my pajamas. I hadn’t even showered. Maybe this was getting to me a little more than it should. I walked into my room, pulled out a fresh pair of clothes, and
took a long shower.
When I got out, I checked my phone. I had six missed calls from Tony. He was the last person I wanted to talk to, but he was a necessary evil to get to Jake.
“What do you want?” I texted him.
He called right away.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Yo, what you texting me for? I need you to come down here, stat.”
“Uh, all right.” I wiped the fog off the bathroom mirror. “Can’t you just talk to me on the phone?”
He hung up.
I wanted to punch the mirror. Just the little things that he did were enough to throw me off. I dried my hair, added a bit of makeup, and chose a nice pair of jeans. I didn’t want to show any skin.
He was sitting on the front porch when I pulled up into the gravel drive.
He hopped off the porch and swaggered up to the driver’s side with a blunt behind his ear. He motioned for me to follow him inside the house, where he had a hip hop song playing at full blast. He turned to say something to me when I walked in, but all I could see were his hands moving up and down. I pointed at the pile of cords and amplifier he had set up at the front of the room, and he walked back to turn the music off.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I wiped a pile of tobacco off the couch behind me and sat down. “What’s going on?”
“I just thought I’d a check in, ma, shit.” He pulled a chair away from the card table set up in the living room, and it shifted the stack of cardboard boxes on top. The top box tipped over and fell onto the chair, sending the box below it flying. Stacks of cash flew out of both of them.
He turned back, wide-eyed, and pulled up his pants before he ducked down to pick the money up. His pants fell back down, and I caught a whiff of old, rotten jock. I had to cover my nose.
“What are you looking at?” he asked and shoveled the cash into an overturned box.
“Nothing.” I turned away.
“You keep your mouth shut; you got that?” He set a chair in front of me and sat down on it backward.