Run Away With Me Read online

  The condom broke during one of our more aerobic sessions and we’d both spent the next three weeks terrified out of our minds. I’d never been so happy for Wendy to get her goddamn period. It ended up being nothing, but for the first time in my life, I realized that being with me could have real consequences for Wendy. Bad consequences. Consequences that could wreck her life forever.

  If Wendy had my baby, she’d be stuck with me for life. Her family, who clung to the belief she was a virtuous little virgin, would disown her. The town would shun her. She’d end up dropping out of school, marrying me, living in the junkyard, working some horrible, minimum wage job, and raising the next generation of failure on welfare. I couldn’t let that happen to her. I wouldn’t let that happen to her.

  She was also just too damn delicate to survive a life of poverty. Wendy had been born with dangerous allergies. Peanuts and penicillin were the two that were the two worst, but she also had sensitivities to cats, wool, pollen, dust, and a thousand other daily things. She’d been to the hospital dozens of times in her life. Without good, consistent medical care and a controlled, clean environment—things I’d never be able to afford for her—she could literally die.

  I had to go.

  “I’m sorry Wendy,” I told her. “I wish I could stay.”

  For once in my life, I was going to do the right thing. I was going to get the hell out of her way before she got stuck with me (and/or my hell spawn) forever. It was out of character, but I thought I could do it. After all these years, maybe the tiniest sliver of Wendy’s goodness had finally rubbed off on me.

  “Once you go, you’ll forget about me.” Wendy’s voice sounded hopeless, but she had never been more wrong. She was burned into every cell of my body. Her name was literally burned, well inked actually, into my left bicep forever.

  Wendy had been my first and only love. My only friend. She was only girl I’d ever kissed, touched, or loved. We lost our virginity to each other and the thought of ever sharing sex with someone else felt cheap and pointless by comparison. I didn’t even see other women. It was like they didn’t exist. The idea that I could ever forget her was ridiculous.

  “I’m hoping you forget about me,” I told her.

  “Why would you hope something so awful?”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “I think you need to stop pretending that you’re doing this for me.” The uncharacteristic bitterness in her voice made my blood run cold.

  Wendy pulled away from me. Her blue eyes had hardened the way they sometimes did when she was really angry. It took a lot to make Wendy mad. She was the kindest, most generous, and most empathetic person I knew. But even her patience and understanding had limits. I’d run afoul of them plenty of times over the years, like when I dropped out of school, or refused to take the GED test. This time, however, her anger had reached a completely different level.

  I needed to convince her that me leaving was a positive thing. I’d failed to persuade her that it was in her interest, even though that was true. That left me with only my selfishness. I could use that.

  “You’re right Wendy.” I tried to match her bitter tone. “I want to go. I hate this town. I hate the racist, judgmental, holier-than-thou people here. I hate the ignorant, backward assholes that look down on anything even remotely different. I hate that nothing here ever changes. It doesn’t get better or worse. It just stays the same, generation after generation. My family has lived right here on these ten acres of trash for a hundred years. An entire fucking century of poverty. I have to get out.”

  The truth was more complicated than just that, but Lord knows I wasn’t a complicated guy. I wasn’t smart enough for all that. I’d just make it simple, instead. And in doing so, I’d convince Wendy she wanted me gone.

  Wendy blinked. “I knew this wasn’t all about me.”

  It was at least ninety-nine percent about her but if the one percent was what would convince her…

  “Why would I want to stay, Wendy? I can never belong here. You’ve got options, but I don’t. All I have is this.” I waved a hand at the sprawling junkyard around us: ten acres of twisted metal, bloodied carpet, and broken glass. Behind us stood the peeling white shotgun shack my mom raised me in.

  Mom had died a year earlier when her liver finally gave out. She wasn’t eligible for a transplant because she wouldn’t quit drinking long enough to even go to the doctor. She said that liquor was cheaper than chemo and it didn’t hurt as much. I didn’t blame her anymore—not for her addiction, and not for giving up completely when she learned about the cancer. Life had dealt her one blow too many. She was barely fifty years old.

  My mom was my last living relative, aside from a much older half-sister my mom had given up for adoption well before I was even a thought. She lived in Kansas and pretended like we didn’t exist. I couldn’t blame her for that either. I wouldn’t want to be related to me if I could help it. My grandma died when I was twelve. My dad might actually still be alive, but I didn’t count him as kin. That neglectful, violent asshole could burn in hell as soon as the meth finally killed him. I didn’t care if he was still breathing; Satan would get him soon enough. Personally, I couldn’t wait.

  “You’ve got me,” Wendy sniffled, bringing me back to the conversation. “We can go together.”

  “You know that wouldn’t work. I’m not good enough for you. Look at where you are. This is where I’m from.” I’d never understood why she wasn’t repulsed by me, though, up until that moment, I’d been grateful for it.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she told me. “I don’t care about where you’re from. I only care about where you’re going.”

  There was no way to salvage the conversation. I turned away. “I’m sorry Wendy. My mind is made up.”

  1

  Wendy

  “I’m gonna’ go and grab another pitcher,” I told my new friends.

  “You’re not working here tonight Wendy!” Kate said to me, laughing and shaking her head. Her long brown hair danced around her face. “You know you don’t have to get it every time, right?”

  I shrugged at her. “It’s really no bother.” Even though I wasn’t working, I didn’t mind grabbing the pitcher of beer. It was sitting right there on the bar. Our waitress just hadn’t had a chance to bring it over yet. It would make life easier for her. This was a busy night.

  “You can’t stop her,” Ward told his sister as I walked off toward the bar. Ward was my boss and also my friend. “She’s like the energizer bunny. Trust me, I’ve tried to get her to stop working, but it’s like she doesn’t know how.”

  I just wanted to do a good job. It was my first time working anywhere and I was really hoping that it would be a permanent step forward in my life. Not that working as a bartender and waitress at the Lone Star Lounge was my life’s dream or anything, but it was nice to have my own money and be independent from my parents. They’d wanted me to move home right after I graduated from the University of Texas, but my grandpa Willie helped me get a job at the bar and convinced them to let me stay for a while. It had been a huge deal to get them to accept me transferring to UT and coming to Austin. Now that I was finally here in the big city, I didn’t want to leave.

  I loved my new life. My new friends were really nice, too. Willie may have convinced Ward, Cole, and Lucas to look after me as a personal favor to him, but I hadn’t ever expected them to welcome me into their circle of friends or treat me as an equal. I was becoming good friends with Ward’s wife Emma and Cole’s girlfriend Kate, too. Both were super smart, super successful, and super nice women. I hadn’t met Lucas’ new girlfriend Rae yet, but I was looking forward to it. Even though I wasn’t as far along in my life as my new friends, and I sometimes worried they hung out with me partially out of pity, I really enjoyed hanging out with them. They never made me feel bad for being younger or less sophisticated than them. For the first time in my life, I felt like a real, functional adult with real, functional adult friends. The idea of
going home to my boring, small hometown and the people I’d left there was sounding less and less appealing every day.

  I grabbed the pitcher off the bar with a smile on my face. Here in Austin, I could enjoy a beer out in public with my friends without worrying that my parents would hear about it and be angry with me. They didn’t like the idea of me drinking, especially in a bar. I doubted they would like my new friends either, even though they were nice. My parents thought they knew what was best for me, and all of it was in my hometown. The problem was that I no longer felt like I belonged there.

  I was headed back to the table when I saw someone who didn’t belong standing next to my friends. At first, I thought I was seeing things. I took another shaky step forward. And then another. The man didn’t disappear. I swallowed hard. I blinked my eyes super hard. I shook my head. I tried to wake myself from what could only be a hallucination. I did everything but pinch myself. Could he really be here?

  Jason.

  He didn’t look the same as when I last saw him in person. Instead, he looked a lot more like the rich, famous, extravagant rockstar I saw on TV. His nice haircut, expensive-looking leather jacket, designer clothes, and fancy shoes made me feel poorly dressed in my white, polka dotted cotton dress from Target and borrowed shoes. He may as well have been a stranger to me.

  But of course, he wasn’t a stranger. Not completely. The long, lean lines of his impressive muscles were familiar to me. His height, just exactly the right height to rest his chin atop my head, was familiar as well. His classically handsome, strong-jawed face was unchanged. And his incredible, warm brown eyes were just exactly the same as I remembered, even though he wasn’t looking at me. I used my curiosity to screw my courage to the sticking point and completed my journey across the floor with the pitcher. I had to know if it was really him or if I’d just totally lost my mind.

  “Jason, what are you doing here?” I asked him. I heard disbelief in my own voice. Half of me expected him to vanish in the blink of an eye. But no matter how many times I squeezed my eyelids together, he was still standing there when I opened them again.

  Jason smiled an easy smile at me. It was the same smile I’d seen so many times before. Almost. He’d had his teeth straightened and whitened since when we were together. They looked incredible now. Now, you’d never know that he’d never been to a dentist as a kid.

  “Hi Wendy,” he said confidently. His once-thick accent was almost totally gone. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  My jaw was slack. I couldn’t believe this was how and where I saw him again. After eight years, this made no sense to me. I’d convinced myself a long time ago that we’d never speak again. I’d convinced myself that I didn’t care. The plastic pitcher slipped free from my grasp. I gasped and reached for it, but it was too late to catch it again.

  The pitcher of beer seemed like it fell in slow motion. I’d never dropped anything in the bar before, but it just had to be an entire, full pitcher, in front of all my friends and coworkers, and my ex-boyfriend. I cringed internally, even before it hit the ground. The beer exploded out from the plastic container, soaking Jason and me from the knees down. His nice shoes were probably going to be ruined. Mine were borrowed from Emma, and they were probably trashed as well.

  But I almost didn’t care about the damage or being covered in cold beer. I almost didn’t even notice it. Because as the pitcher was falling, Jason had reached out and grabbed my hands in his. Our fingers had twined around each other’s like they had a mind of their own. I stared at our joined fingers in confusion and shock. His callused hands were so familiar to me too. These were hands that had grown up doing work, and no amount of money could erase all the little scars and calluses of his past. Jason’s hands had held me through so many firsts—pleasurable and painful—during my life.

  His hands felt good and warm and right on mine. My body felt light and unreal, like it had when he’d first touched me when we were teenagers. My face felt like it was burning hot. I must be blushing like an idiot. This was all too much. I yanked my fingers out of Jason’s.

  “You shouldn’t be here Jason.” My voice was a frightened, sad little whisper. I felt like I was seeing a ghost. He’d left me in the dust a long time ago. Eight years felt like a lifetime to me. It wasn’t fair for him to just show up out of nowhere and act like he was happy to see me. How dare he smile at me? It wasn’t fair for him to smile at me again like nothing had changed.

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve told me that exact thing,” he told me, remembering something else with a wry smile. Likely the time he’d snuck into my bedroom when we were teenagers. “It probably won’t be the last, either.”

  “Does everyone know the freakin’ rockstar but me?” Ward grumbled from the table. I suddenly remembered that we had an audience. My blush, although I felt it was already on its maximum setting, somehow got even deeper. The only thing deeper than my blush at that moment was my confusion.

  I looked over at my friends with my mouth hanging open. They knew Jason? How? What were the chances that they would be personally acquainted with one of the world’s most famous and successful bands? How had that never come up before? I knew it had only been a few weeks, but that’s something you share. Somehow, all their faces were just as confused as mine. All except for Lucas.

  The computer programmer-turned-entrepreneur laughed lightly at the stunned expressions on the faces around him. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “I only know him through Victoria,” he explained with a bemused shake of his head. Lucas’ ex-girlfriend, Victoria Priestly, was a successful musician and the singer of a very popular indie band called Edelweiss. She was tall, red-haired and incredibly beautiful and glamorous. She sang like an angel, although the rumor was that her personality was a whole lot less pleasant. Cole and Ward had some stories about her that made her sound pretty darn awful. She’d also been in the tabloids recently kissing and dry-humping Jason all over town.

  I just couldn’t do this. My heart felt like it was going to explode from my chest like the little chestburster creature in that Alien movie Kate showed me last weekend.

  “Um, I gotta’ clean this up,” I stuttered to nobody in particular. “Sorry for dropping the pitcher.”

  I tucked tail like a coward and all but ran toward the closet where we kept the mop.

  2

  Wendy

  The clean-up didn’t take nearly long enough for me to stop feeling confused, embarrassed, and overwhelmed. Clara, our waitress (and my super sweet coworker), refused to let me clean things up myself. She shooed me right back to my friends and insisted on taking over. It was only moments before I had no choice but to return to my table. I sunk back into my chair between Lucas and Jason uncomfortably.

  “I was just telling everybody how I met Jason,” Lucas said to me.

  “Oh yeah?” My voice sounded shy and shaky in my own ears. Even though I was looking at Lucas, I could almost feel Jason sitting next to me and watching my every move. My friends were staring at me too. Everyone was staring at me. It made me feel lightheaded and unreal. This whole evening was beginning to feel like a very weird dream. I just hoped it wouldn’t turn into a nightmare.

  “Yeah,” Lucas was continuing to explain awkwardly, “he did me a real favor.”

  “I was actually paying back a favor Lucas did for me,” Jason interjected. My eyes flipped to his handsome face. His deep voice was as smooth and beautiful as I remembered. Like a creamy, dark chocolate ice cream. Even his speaking voice was gorgeous. “He tipped me off that Victoria was cheating on me, or at least trying to. The least I could do is feed his cats after dumping her.”

  My heart leapt when I heard that he and Victoria were through with their torrid, tacky relationship. It didn’t much matter to my day to day life, and Jason certainty wasn’t mine. But despite not seeing him for years, I couldn’t seem to control how I felt. My heart betrayed me. The truth was, I did still think of Jason as mine. I did take his virginity
, after all. The fact that he took mine at the same time only made me feel more possessive, not less. I didn’t like the idea of Victoria having her hands all over my Jason. If I had my secret druthers, nobody would ever have their hands on him but me.

  “Lucas’ cats? He has cats?” I eventually stuttered into the quiet at the table. I didn’t know Lucas well enough to know about his pets, but I almost smiled as the idea of Jason feeding them sunk in. I knew how much Jason loved cats, or at least, how much he used to love them when we were kids and teenagers.

  I could easily imagine Jason doing Lucas a favor like that. He loved pretty much all animals, actually, even the ones other people thought as pests. He even had a raccoon for a pet for a while, although I wasn’t sad when animal control took him away (he was named Bitey for a reason). As for me, I liked cats quite a bit; they just made me sneeze if I spent too much time around them when there was poor ventilation. Like so much of my world, cats were off-limits pets because of my allergies. I did love dogs something fierce, though.

  “Yes. Lucas has two very nice tabby cats named Moxie and Bob,” Jason told me proudly. His smile was huge, happy, and obviously genuine. “They like me.” His accent was beginning to show through a bit more, and I liked hearing it.

  He was smiling so brightly that I couldn’t help it; I felt the corners of my mouth drawing up in an answering smile. Jason really did love animals. A lot of people would drop off their unwanted kittens and puppies at the junkyard. He always made sure they were cared for and loved on before finding them homes. Oftentimes he ended up keeping them himself, usually to his mother’s annoyance.

  “So,” Lucas said looking from me to Jason with unabashed curiosity, “how do you two know each other anyway?”