Blink (Billy Hargrove x OC)

#22 Homeward

We all load into the Ferrari, I sit in the front with Billy and the girls sit in the back.

"What's this?" Max holds up the skateboard that was sitting in the floor of the car. Then turning to me, she asks "do you skate?"

I shake my head no with a little smile and mouth the word.

"It's for you, silly. We got it in California." Says Billy.

"No way." Max looks over the board. "This is so cool! Thanks Billy!"

Billy and I exchange a smile.

"Yeah, yeah, was the least I could do after disappearing on you. Now put a seatbelt on for crying out loud!"

Billy pulls away from the store. I look out the window, at all the little buildings and later the houses, trying to burn them into my memory.

Max looks kind of downcast.

"What's wrong?" I hear Eleven asks.

"I don't want to go home." She says.

"Your parents, they miss you." Says El.

Max scoffs and looks at the window.

"Maxine." Billy starts driving. He looks at his sister through the mirror.

I turn around to face the backseat.

"What?"

"My biggest regret was not telling anyone. Not telling you about what he was doing to me. I thought I was protecting you."

"Protecting me? Billy you don't know the hell I've been living in." Max tears up again.

"We're going to help you honey, but you need to tell El what you've been keeping from her." I say to Max.

Max pouts, and I feel my heart breaking.

"Friends...don't...lie." Says El.

Max sighs. "I'm sorry El. It's just I had to. I didn't want anyone to worry about me."

Silence.

Then Max starts talking.

"After Billy left, Neil started getting more and more angry. He drank all the time, he always smelled like beer. He would break things, yell at me and my mom all the time and say bad things about Billy. The day before I saw you for the first time" Max motions to me with her head. "Neil called Billy a sorry excuse for a son. Neil said we were better of without Billy and he was nothing but a worthless waste of space anyways when he was alive."

Billy hangs his head a little and I put my hand on top of his where it rests on the gearshift.

For once, Billy drives slowly.

"I told Neil to stop talking about you like that, and he punched me in the face, hard. It hurt so bad, I didn't know what to do so I just ran and locked myself in my room." Max is crying now. "He said I was turning out just like my brother and that I was being disrespectful and didn't know my place..."

El is crying now too. "He, hit you?"

Max nods. "And that wasn't the last time either. I can't seem to do right by him lately, and he hits mom too. I can hear them yelling at night and I can't sleep."

Billy growls and hits the steering wheel angrily which makes everyone in the car jump a little.

El's eyes are wide as saucers.

"I don't care if he's my father I'm going to take him." Billy says.

"Not unless you need to B." I tell him.