Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) (20 page)

“Huh?” he asked.

“How many times has Carly watched some sleazebag girl hit on you after a show?”

“Oh.” Burke said stupidly.

“Yeah. How many times have you two gotten into fights over it?”

“Well, shit,” Burke muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess I
am
a cockdonkey.”

Burke had just had a real breakthrough, but before I could comment further on this momentous occasion, a high pitched electric squeal filled the room. I pressed my hands over my ears and whipped around trying to find the source of the awful racket.

Carly was front and center on the stage again. The rest of the band had taken their places behind her. I hadn’t even noticed that they disappeared.

“Excuse me, everyone,” Carly said into the microphone. “If you’ll just humor me for a minute, I think I need to teach my boyfriend a lesson.”

The crowd let out a whoop, and Carly smiled mischievously. She nodded at the boys on the stage behind her, and the room was once again filled with the music of the Dirty Crows. They didn’t sound as polished as they usually did and were clearly winging it. But they sounded pretty good, all things considered. I mean, I couldn’t imagine that they had ever picked their way through a Pink song before now.

Carly’s eyes never left Burke as she sang about the delicate line between love and hate. Her eyes were on fire as she belted out bitter lines about wanting to slap his whole face and wrapping her hands around his neck. But her expression softened the longer she sang, and she all but melted when she declared that this thing between them must be true love. Pretty soon they were going to need to get a room.

I looked over at Adam, who was no stranger to love and hate, and wondered if he still had any trouble distinguishing between the two. Long before he had loved me, he’d hated me. Who could blame him? Even though he swore that he no longer harbored any of those old feelings, I couldn’t help but wonder if it ever nagged at him the way my regrets nagged at me.

He must have felt my eyes on him. He turned and looked at me thoughtfully. He shook his head ever so slightly before returning his gaze to the stage. ‘
Don’t think too much about it,’
he would say if he knew what I was thinking.

I would try.

Carly, shaking her ass on the stage, and spewing her love/hate all over Burke was a great distraction. Adam had always said that their relationship was a rocky one. But aside from the one time they had gotten into it at The Shelter after some bimbo had leeched onto Carly, it had been pretty smooth sailing the past few months. It was easy to understand, though, with Burke’s hotheaded nature and Carly’s stubbornness, how they could find themselves in trouble more often than not.

However, it didn’t look like they were in trouble now. As Burke watched her deliver the last few lines of the song, he pushed his way toward the front of the stage. The music faded away, and Carly walked to the edge and leapt off into his arms. They wrapped themselves around each other and without so much as a sideways glance in our direction, he carried her toward the front door.

“Looks like he’s going to need help packing up his shit tonight,” Adam said, shaking his head. Dirk, Barnacle, and Brian were already tearing things down on the stage. Adam started in their direction and then turned back to me.

He cleared the space he’d just put between us in three steps and stopped just inches from me. His eyes flashed dark. “You wonder when it’s going to get easier for us, but it’s not easy for anybody, Allie. Everyone has their shit. It’s different shit for different people, but it’s still all shit. Being able to deal with it ... that’s where greatness lies. And we’re great.”

He was right. I wanted easy, but there was no easy. I wanted greatness, but all my doubts and insecurities were holding us back.

“We are great,” I said to his retreating back.

It was time to stop dwelling on the past … and make us greater.

CHAPTER 11

Adam

I leaned back in the hard plastic chair and tried to blend into the scenery while the girls finished catching up. It had been weeks since they had seen each other, and Allie had nearly burst at the seams when Lizzie had walked into the room.

They had covered a lot of territory this afternoon. Lizzie was doing fine in school. Her clothes were still fitting (though she was definitely bigger than the last time I’d seen her). She had to share a room with five other girls. It took some coaxing, but she had finally admitted that one of her roommates was giving her some shit for being ‘a 14-year-old statistic’ and that she was reasonably certain that the girl had stolen a pair of her shoes. Even though Lizzie said she’d taken care of it, I made a mental note to talk to the director of the center. I wasn’t going to put up with Lizzie being bullied, and I certainly wasn’t going to allow her to be pregnant
and
barefoot.

The facility itself wasn’t terrible. It was clean enough and much nicer than Lizzie’s apartment, but there was something sterile about it. It was a children’s ‘home,’ but there was nothing homey about it. When I walked out of there in a few minutes, I probably wouldn’t even be able to describe the room where I’d just spent the last two hours.

I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. Getting Allie to leave was going to be a challenge. She was going to have a hard time leaving Lizzie behind.

Honestly, I wasn’t too happy about the idea either.

Alexis

“I wish we didn’t have to go,” I said, standing.

Lizzie wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. It wasn’t so hard that it made me worry about leaving her, but it was long enough that I knew she was sad to see us go. “I know,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m just so glad you came today though. I haven’t had any visitors though my grandma called a couple of times.”

She turned and reached for Adam next. He stuffed his phone in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled her against him. He ruffled her hair and smashed her face into his shirt in the process. “Stop,” she giggled. “You’re smashing my face into ... who is that?”

Adam looked at her deadpan. “Are you kidding? That’s Bill Murray.”

“You heart Bill Murray?” she asked. “Is he like a politician or something?”

He looked at her incredulously. “No he’s an actor, you goof. Caddyshack? Ghostbusters?” He snapped his fingers before continuing, “I know. Charlie’s Angels.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said absently. “ I think I saw that once.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “You kill me. Your generation is missing out. All you know is stupid movies with shit actors. You’re a part of the Teen Beach Movie generation.”

Lizzie erupted in laughter. “Adam!” I said, cocking my head in disapproval.

“It’s okay,” Lizzie said giggling. “He’s right. It’s total shit, and I love it,” she said, arching her eyebrows devilishly.

“Lizzie!” I said, looking around to see if anyone was going to yell at us for cussing up a storm in the children’s shelter. However, we were now alone in the room. All the other visitors had already left.

“The better question is, how do you know that Teen Beach Movie is shit, Adam?” she said, giggling and poking him in the stomach.

“Research,” he said. “For school.”

“You lie,” she said.

“Okay, I was flipping around the other day, and it was on, okay? It was awful so I stopped to check it out.” He looked sheepish. “All right ... fine ... a few of the songs were kind of catchy.”

We both looked at him with our mouths agape.

While we remained flabbergasted at his admission, he took on a severe expression. “Listen, Lizard. I’m being serious now. While you’re here, don’t take any shit from anyone, okay? Stand up for yourself, but don’t get yourself into trouble. I mean, don’t get into any fights. Not in your ... um ... condition.” He looked nervously over her head.

Nothing seemed to make Adam nervous ... except Lizzie’s ‘condition.’

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Promise.”

“Good,” he said, ruffling her hair one last time before starting to pull away from her.

She didn’t let him go. Instead, she seemed to squeeze him a little tighter. “One more thing, Adam,” she said quietly into his shirt. “I need to thank you. Mom called me the other day and told me what you did.”

He pulled away from her again, but didn’t let her go completely. Gripping both of her arms, he looked earnestly at her. “It was nothing, Lizzie. She needs help, and you need her to get better. She does care about you. Now she needs to get clean so she can take better care of you.”

“I know. That’s what she said, too. Thank you.”

I was still lost in thought, wondering what they were talking about when she turned back to me. I hugged her again and could feel the hard baby bump pressing into my hip. I couldn’t help myself. I pulled away and put both hands on either side of her bulging tummy. “Take care,” I said. “You’ll be out of here in a few weeks.”

“I hope not,” she giggled.

“No. Not you. You stay right where you are and cook some more,” I said, rubbing her tummy. I pointed a finger at Lizzie. “I meant,
you
.
You’ll
be out of here in a few weeks.”

I could feel Adam’s eyes on me, but I didn’t dare meet them. If I did, he might see how I felt about this baby. Although, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. I didn’t even know how I felt about it. Maybe I should let him help me figure it out. That didn’t seem like a great plan either though.

We said our final goodbyes, and my heart split in two. I hated leaving her behind. She said it wasn’t bad, but I hated the situation enough for the both of us. She didn’t deserve to be living in a children’s shelter, and she didn’t deserve to be sharing a room with a bullying shoe thief. It was just a few weeks until Thanksgiving though, and hopefully her mom would break her out afterwards.

Adam didn’t say much as we walked toward the subway station. His hands were dug into the pockets of his jacket. I was in my own little world, too, wondering what the hell he and Lizzie had been talking about. It was obvious that he’d done something for her mom. And equally obvious that I was the only one not being let in on the secret.

It wasn’t until we were on the train that I asked the question that had been nagging me. “What were you guys talking about back there?”

Adam reached up with one arm and gripped the overhead bar as the train started to move again. His t-shirt rode up just a bit under his open jacket, and I caught a flash of the hard abs underneath. I’d really been slacking off in the gym, but he hadn’t. Geez. The distraction almost made me lose my train of thought.

“What do you mean? The stuff about Lizzie’s Mom?” he said, reminding me.

“Yeah. She thanked you. What did you do?”

“I’m sure you’ve got it figured out,” he said. “I just found her and talked her into getting some help. For Lizzie’s sake.”

How does one ‘find’ someone in a city of 8 million? She had been missing for days. “How did you find her? It’s not like you guys hang out in the same places.”

“I got a picture of her from Lizzie’s apartment, and I walked around asking questions. You flash a little money around that neighborhood and people will talk.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“And when you found her, what then?” I asked, as we rounded a curve. Adam raised his other arm to also grip the overhead bar. The sliver of exposed skin grew, boggling my mind a little bit more. If he was doing this on purpose ... to get me to stop asking questions ... it was almost working. Almost. “What did you say to her?”

 Adam sighed and looked out the windows of the train. There was nothing but darkness out there, but that didn’t stop him from studying it. “I told her what a great kid she has and that she needed to get her act together before she completely fucked Lizzie up. I gave her a little incentive to get clean, that’s all, and I helped her get set up.”

My heart swelled. Adam had hunted Amber down and then helped put her into rehab. “When did you do this?”

“Ahhhh, I found her the night you were at your waxing thing at Dawn’s. She turned herself in the next day.”

Something rattled around in my brain. Oh.
Oh.
I’d come in late that night. He’d been at school, ‘working on a project.’ I had been worried that he was spending time with that viper, Carissa. Wow. Had I ever been wrong? If he had just told me, I would’ve known not to worry at all.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep it from me?” My words sounded more accusatory than I’d intended, but they were questions I wanted answers to. In the last 48 hours, I’d found out that he knew about Brittany and had been the one to convince Amber to check herself into rehab.

“I wasn’t keeping it from
you
,” he shot back. “It’s not about
you
.”

His words stung like a slap to the face, and the assault wasn’t over. “I didn’t want anyone to know because I didn’t want Lizzie to find out. If she thought that her mom came to her senses on her own, that was fine by me.”

“
You
don’t understand what it’s like to be where Lizzie is right now.
I do.
I’ve walked in her shoes. I know what it’s like to come home from school every day and find your mom passed out on the couch. I know what it’s like to find her face down in the backyard in her own puke. I know what it’s like to shove a grown ass woman who should be making you dinner in the shower because you need to clean her up before your dad gets home. And I know what it’s like to come home and find her gone ... and to pray to God that she finds her way home.”

“You promise that you’ll clean up the vomit and make the baby dinner without complaining if she’ll just come back. Then when she comes back, you keep those promises, but it’s never enough. You wake up each day thinking that it will be better, but it never is. It’s the same shit on a different day. And not only does it not get better. Each day actually gets worse and you wonder what it is that she has to fucking escape from anyway. Because you’re just kids and you’re hers and she should want to be with you. But she’s not. She’s missing it all.”