Racing Down Sunset Boulevard

Chapter 26

Nate's POV

I was back in my childhood home, which didn't say much. I'd spent the first 10 years of my life in a lowly neighbourhood, surrounded by bleak houses and bland, carbon-copy people. I'd never quite understood why my mom, the daughter of a decently well-off accountant two towns over, had decided to elope one day with a stoic man with a gravelly voice and a dead-end job in a car garage. But then, maybe I never knew the whole story. We rarely do. And maybe it doesn't matter.

I resented my mom for the coldness she treated my grandfather with, the man who would always greet me with a warm smile and chocolate whenever my mom was too busy to take care of me and sent me over; even on his funeral, she shed no tears. But then, if it wouldn't have been for her, I wouldn't have known Gage. He was the son of my mother's childhood best friend, which allowed for our own tentative friendship despite class differences.

Every time he saw us together, my dad watched from a shadowed corner, as one would through a one-way mirror, eyeing one thing or another: Gage's new sneakers, his smartwatch, the gold cross around his neck which was a gift from his late grandma. Light fingers, son, he'd say, giving me an expectant look. I never disappointed.

On the days my father did show emotion, he was rarely kind without expecting something in return. It was always late at night, when the house was quiet, that he walked into my room, slowly but deliberately, stepping on every creaking floorboard in my tiny room. It seemed that he did it on purpose, aware that I wasn't actually asleep, although by the time I was 5 or 6 I could fake it so well my own mom wouldn't notice. It was always on nights when my mom was on the night shift at the hospital, because then she wouldn't hear my whimpers.

"Come now, Nate, you're a grown boy now, don't you cry for something so silly," it had become almost like a ritual. Him, providing empty reassurances as he rolled on top of me. Sometimes I'd struggle, and while he liked a good fight, the older I got, the harder it was for him to restrain me.

"You stupid boy," he'd say, one hand pinning me down while the other slapped me, over and over. "You're nothing. You're no one"

Over time, things got better. Pay checks began coming in more regularly, and dad got a job in a bigger repair job uptown. Slowly, we moved out of that neighbourhood, leaving behind the retched house and those retched people. His visits became less frequent, and by the time I was 15, they stopped completely. But the memories carried.

Now the room was spinning, and I lay in the last stall, back pressed against the cool tile and head resting on the toilet bowl's rim. I could still hear him; despite that I hadn't spoken to him since mom divorced him when I was seventeen. His hands are on my shoulders, and I'm sitting up, too quickly, trying to get rid of them, of him.

"Shut up," I whisper it, but the bathroom's big and it echoes, and it sounds like a mantra, repeated over and over again by different versions of me. I cursed myself for believing I could outrun him, and pop two pills in my mouth, swallowing them dry. I wait for a couple moments, then pop one more.

Slowly, he leaves, but the smell of his cologne is still heavy in my nose, on my tongue, in the very air. "This isn't real," I stared into my own eyes in the mirror, green like mom's, and try for a smile. I try and try again, before it looks genuine. Then, I am frowning, I am concerned, I am furious or frightened. I am whatever I need to be. I smile and go back to Ari. It was time to take her home. I needed to meet up with Declan again.

xxxx

Kaylah's POV