I Love You Just the Way You Are (Book 1- Rock Canyon Series)

Chapter 6 - Kellan

Chapter 6 – Kellan

I spent the final day before school started as I had spent most of August; football practice, lifting weights, and thinking about Maddie. The only thing different about this day was that my dad had texted me in the morning asking if we could get some burgers and talk. For reasons I didn't understand, I didn't make up a story about why I couldn't go. I texted him back and told him to pick me up from practice. The moment I clicked send I regretted it.

My dad had left us when I was 8. In hindsight that was a good thing for me and my mom. But when you're an eight-year-old boy and your dad packs his bags, his liquor-infused breath telling you that he's leaving and never coming back, it feels like you're going to die. And when the piece of shit does bother to show up in your life four or five times a year at random, only to pick at you and tell you that you're not good enough? You learn to make yourself believe that you don't care anymore.

He would make it to a few games, see me at Christmas, and maybe we would hang out a couple of times in between. He would tell me he cared but I had long since stopped buying that lie. All he cared about was running women and getting drunk.

"I'm a long-haul trucker, Kellan, it's how I make a living. You can't blame me for not being around more. It hasn't been an easy life," I could hear him telling me when I was 10. At a time when I would have killed to have a father there for me, to play catch, to tell me what it meant when I looked at a girl and felt a warmth spreading across my chest.

By the time I was 12 I had begrudgingly come to accept that he wasn't going to be there for me. Which, ironically, made it all the harder when he was. I heard the exhaust pipes from ten houses away before I saw the old red Chevy pull up. I faked a smile as I climbed into his truck. He turned down the radio and smiled around the cigarette perched on the end of his lips.

"Hey boy, you ready for the season? Baker tells me there will be scouts from all the major schools here to watch you, including USC. Sent me a link with a writeup about you on some college sports website." 

Dad and Coach had played together at North Rock Canyon when they were my age, and there wasn't a time when we hung out that he didn't mention the old glory days. "Don't forget your old man when you hit the big time! You can share some of those college girls with me," he said with a big laugh.

Sure, dad, I'll remember you like you remembered me, I thought, as a bottle of Jack smacked me in the ankles when dad floored it. I kicked it back.

"Yeah, we're ready," I said, looking out the windshield and ignoring his comment about the college girls. "We won states last year, but we've lost a few guys on defense. It's going to be harder this season, but I think we can repeat."

I could smell dad's breath as it filled the cabin. I guess hanging out with your kid for a few hours required multiple shots of liquor beforehand. I wanted to roll down the window but thought twice of it. He'd inevitably make some comment and then I'd have to be on the defensive for the rest of the night.

"So where are we eating? Out at Martin's like usual?" I asked him.

Dad glanced at me sideways, a smirk appearing across his mouth. "Yeah, something wrong with that?"

"No, that's cool. I like their burgers. I was just asking," I said, nodding a few times and trying to play off the fact that I was already hurt, and I hadn't been in his truck for more than five minutes.

Dinner was fine enough. Martin's was a truck stop north of Phoenix on Interstate-17. It smelled of grease and under-showered men, but the food was good. The sounds of laughter and country music filled the place, and I had to admit that if I had bright spots in my childhood, this place was one of them.

Dad couldn't keep his eyes off the young waitresses' ass but that wasn't anything new. I couldn't really be a hypocrite because that's how I was with the girls at my school. But watching him gave me a new insight about myself. I felt disgusted thinking that there wasn't much difference in how we treated women. I was certain that I didn't want to be Jack Davis, a failed college athlete turned drop-out, turned sleazebag, with a woman in every state.

On the way back home, he asked me between long drags of his cigarette if I wanted to come back to his place with him for a while. I told him it sounded good, but I had to be up early for the first day of school. He laughed and slapped my arm, a little bit of ash falling into my lap as he made some stupid joke about how he wouldn't be able to learn with all those barely dressed girls running around.

After he dropped me off, I ran to the shower, trying to wash more than tobacco smoke off my skin. As I scrubbed my body from head to toe, I thought about all the times I had acted just like my dad. Saying sweet nothings to some girl to get into her pants. Making jokes about getting laid with Tyrell or one of the other boys, with no consideration for how the girl might enjoy being valued for more than just her body.

I sank to the floor of the shower, sobbing. I had been so many firsts for so many girls. I held my hand over my chest, feeling like I was going to throw up. I had never valued a girl for more than the pleasure she could provide me. I was my fucking dad and there was no running from it.

I put a washcloth over my head so that the water didn't pelt me directly in the eyes. I wanted desperately to change. I would do anything not to become the dick that my dad was. And, for some reason, that made me think of Maddie.

It started to make sense why she rejected me. She was smarter than any girl I had ever met. I mean, I didn't really have any evidence to back that statement up, but she seemed like one of those straight-A honors girls. The type of girl that was smart enough not to get tangled up with a guy like me.

I leaned back from the spray. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the shower wall. Thinking of her was painful in its own way, but it was the right kind of pain. It was the kind of pain that urged me to keep going, to keep trying. I let the hot tears fall slowly down my cheeks, not bothering to wipe them away. I pretended that they were cleansing me. Cleansing me of my unthinking, uncaring, toxic behavior.

I beat my fists against my sides when I realized that Maddie might have been interested in me if she thought I wanted more than sex. She might have been more interested in me if... well... I wasn't me in the first place.

I sighed. Feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to help. Nor was dwelling on the past. I shifted my thoughts to the manga book idea I had fleshed out over the past week. Maddie was the main character: a superheroine on a skateboard. I knew what I wanted to do with her as a character, the types of scenes and triumphs I wanted to watch her experience. I wanted to make it and give it to her. I wanted her to see that I cared. I planned to begin the book tonight, but I couldn't come up with what she would be fighting against... other than me.

A big part of me wanted to let the idea go because it felt weird. It was already strange that I had been drawing nothing but her since June. If I showed up in a month or two after not speaking with her and handed her the book, what would she even think? Why the hell would I spend time on making something like that about a girl who wanted nothing to do with me and would just reject me again?

The answer pounded like violent surf across my mind. It was simple and direct and impossible to ignore. 

It was true - she might not want anything to do with me.

I couldn't change that.

But you know what I also couldn't change?

That I wanted everything to do with her.