Nova 05 Ruin Me (6 page)

“Hey, maybe I’m planning on mixing it up,” I retort, swatting his arm. “Perhaps I’ve decided to become adventurous today and live life on the wild side.”

He glances at me as the lady through the intercom asks what she can get him. We’re so close our lips almost brush, but he doesn’t lean away. He elevates his brows, challenging me. “Alright, Miss Adventurous, what’ll you have?”

I think about kissing him, planting a big, wet kiss right on his mouth. Three years ago I would have. Three years ago I was Miss Adventurous.

But not anymore. I’ve become Miss Routine.

I end up ordering a Vanilla Cappuccino with an extra shot, just like I always do. When I lean back in my seat, Jax looks mildly disappointed, but doesn’t comment. Instead, he traces a finger down the brim of my nose.

“So, what’s on the agenda for this weekend?”

“Well, I can only go out for about two hours,” I tell him as he pulls up to the window. “I have work and stuff.”

He mulls something over as he hands the cashier a ten. “What other stuff?”

“Just stuff.” Mom stuff, like doctor appointments and making sure she’s taken care of.

“Could you maybe get some time off from work? I want to spend a little more time with you this weekend.”

“More time to do what? I mean we only need like two hours for us to,” I gesture between the two of us and shimmy my hips, “make bow-chicka-bow-wow.”

He chuckles under his breath. “You know, the really amusing thing is that you make the joke and make yourself blush.” He grazes his finger along the corner of my eye, causing me to shiver. “But I don’t just want to make bow-chicka-bow-wow this weekend.”

My brows knit. “What else would we do?” School’s out, so studying isn’t an option. Back in the day when we were just friends, we used to go to movies and dinner but now I worry it’d end up being a date.

“I was thinking we could take a road trip,” he mutters then coughs into his hand.

“What?” I figure I heard him wrong. I had to have heard him wrong.

He clears his throat. “I want you to take a road trip with me.”

“
Now
.”

“Well, after your last class gets out today.” He reaches out the window, takes the coffees from the cashier, and then he hands me the cup marked cappuccino.

“Jax, I can’t do that.” I swallow a drink of the coffee but instantly regret it as the steamy liquid scalds my tongue.

“You can’t say no yet.” He places his coffee into the cup holder. “Not when you haven’t heard where we’re going and why.”

“I don’t need to hear why. I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Work…” I start to list things off, but realize, with school ending, the only other responsibility I have is my mother. And while it’s a huge responsibility, Jax doesn’t know about it.

“You have a ton of vacation time, right?” He shoves the shifter into first gear and drives forward.

“I’m saving that up for a family vacation,” I lie, feeling like a class A jerk. But telling Jax about my mother means letting him enter the madness of my world.

“To scatter your father’s ashes with your mom? In the Teton’s, right?” When I nod, a faint smile touches his lips. “Well, what if I said, during our road trip, we’d be right by the Tetons?”

I scrunch up my nose. Crap. Why did I ever give him that information about my father?

 “Your mother could even come too if she wants,” he says, though he sounds unenthusiastic about the idea.

“Why are you even going on a road trip right now?” I ask as I put the coffee between my legs and flip down the visor to block out the blinding sunlight.

His jaw tightens as he merges the car onto the road. “It’s my mom.”

“I thought you said she was okay?”

“No, I said everything was okay, meaning I have a plan.”

“You omitted the truth.” I rummage around in my bag for my sunglasses.

“I did it for a reason.” The gears grind as he shifts into second gear.

“What reason?” I find my sunglasses and slip them on.

“Because I needed time to come up with a plan to convince you to come with me.”

“On a two thousand mile road trip to Wyoming?” My eyes are wide and my jaw is hanging open. He has to be joking. Then again, I’ve been noticing lately that he’s started seeking more in our relationship.

He cracks his knuckles against the steering wheel then grazes his thumb over a black and silver, diamond-studded ring he sometimes wears. “Look, I know what you’re thinking, but before you start listing all the reasons why you can’t go just hear me out.” He pauses, giving me a chance to protest. Even though I want to, the plea in his tone keeps my lips fastened. “I need to go back and at least try to find my mom. The cops aren’t going to do anything—no one will—and I really need you there with me. Just as friends. In case I lose my shit or something… because, being back there,” he swallows hard, “it’s going to be hard.”

Jax has told me enough about his past that I understand. But going with him on this trip feels dangerously intimate.

“I get where you’re coming from. I really do. I couldn’t imagine not knowing where my mother was…” I bite on my fingernails. “But I don’t think I should be the one to go with you. Avery would be a way better choice.”

“Avery isn’t ready to go back there.” His grip tightens around the shifter, his knuckles whitening. “Honestly, I’m not sure I am, either.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who can go check up on your mom? Like your aunt?”

“I called her the morning after I got the voicemail. She doesn’t want anything to do with this.” He slows down the Jeep to turn into the parking lot of the college, then parks near the front and pushes the shifter into neutral, leaving the engine idling. “I know this is a lot, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help. And the Teton’s are really close to my hometown. We could swing up there and scatter your father’s ashes.”

A lump wells in my throat at the idea of standing with Jax on the mountain as I say a final goodbye to my father. The real kicker is how easy I can envision him there with me. But then what? After it’s all over, we’d return here, and I’d have to go back to my hectic life.

“Please don’t ask me to do this,” I whisper, grasping the door handle.

He swallows hard at the crack in my voice. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t pressure you like this.” His smile is fake and his eyes radiate pain.

I don’t relax at all as I open the door and hop out of the car. I start to shut the door, but pause. “Are you still going?”

He sucks in a gradual breath while staring at the trees in front of the car. The sunlight reflects in his hazel eyes and highlights the pain in them. “I have to; otherwise, I’ll never stop worrying about her.”

“Are you leaving right now?”

He nods, his gaze gliding to mine. He looks so vulnerable that I just want to hug him. “I’m heading home to pack, and then I’m hitting the road.”

“You’re going to take someone else with you, though, right?” The idea of him doing this alone makes me want to cry.

“Sure.” He’s lying.

I want to help him, but instead I close the door and watch him drive away, picturing him all alone in that car heading to a place that’s always caused him pain.

As the car vanishes out of sight, the image of him shifts to me at eighteen years old, handling funeral arrangements by myself. Taking my mother to doctor appointments. Handling the will. Bills. How my life crumbled. How I lost most of my friends. How my boyfriend broke up with me, said my life was too complicated for him.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Clara,” Mack told me two weeks after the funeral, right when bills and responsibilities had really started to pile up. “Our lives are too different now. You’re always so busy and you have a ton of responsibilities.”

“I’ll make time for you.” I felt like I was being strangled, as if the last piece of my world was about to be ripped out from underneath me.

He scratched uncomfortably at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I just don’t see this working out. All those plans that we had to travel are gone. Well, for you anyway... I can still go.”

Looking back at that moment, I’d felt such hatred for him. But at the time, I couldn’t process my feelings because I was too terrified of being alone. I had just lost my father. My mother was only mentally half there. My sister had bailed out. I had no one.

“But I thought you loved me?” It was what he told me when I lost my virginity to him: ‘Clara, I love you, so, so much.’  Maybe I’d been naïve to believe him.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a shrug.

Tears had stung in my eyes and I loathed myself for being so weak. After just watching my dad die, the pain of a breakup should have seemed insignificant. But all I kept thinking was:
alone, alone, alone
. “I know I’ve been kind of distant lately, but I just need some time to get stuff together.”

“Clara, this isn’t a problem that’s just going to go away.” He looked at me with pity. “If I stayed with you, it’d mostly be because I felt sorry for you. We’d eventually end up ruining each other.”

“Please, don’t leave me… If you love me you’ll stay,” I pathetically begged, clutching onto him.

He gave me a kiss on the cheek and his lips achingly burned my skin. “I’ll see you around okay.” Then he walked away, leaving me alone with responsibilities I wasn’t ready for, but had to deal with.

I didn’t have time to fall apart, to mend a broken heart, so I vowed to go on alone. Vowed to never trust anyone that much again.

Clara

Jax haunts my thoughts all through the final exam. I think about him when I’m gathering my stuff and heading off campus. On the bus ride home. By the time I walk into the living room of my apartment, I have a Jax worry-induced headache.

I decide to send him a text to check up on him, hoping it might alleviate some of my anxiety.

Me: U doing okay?

Jax: Yeah.

Me: U hit the road yet?

Jax: Heading out of the driveway now. C u in a week :)

I feel even worse and the smiley face at the end of his message makes me feel like a gigantic asshole.

After I put my phone away, I drop my bag onto the sofa. My mother and Nelli are in the kitchen baking brownies. Or Nelli is baking and my mother is licking the batter off the spoon.

“How was your day?” Nelli asks as I trudge into the small, narrow kitchen.

“Fine.” I open the fridge and grab a can of soda.

“Oh no. That doesn’t sound good,” she replies as she butters the pan.

“What do you mean?” I pop the tab on the can. “I said it was fine.”

“In the most depressing tone I’ve ever heard.” She picks up the bowl to dump the batter into the pan.

“What’s wrong?” my mother asks, for a fleeting moment appearing like her old, concerned self. But then she drops the spoon onto the floor and doesn’t bother picking it up as she hoists herself onto the countertop.

“It’s nothing.” When Nelli shoots me a stern look, I sigh. “One of my friends wants me to go on a road trip with him to his hometown in Wyoming so he can check up on his mother. She has a lot of problems with drugs and has gone missing. He wants me to come with him and I feel really bad because I can’t.”

Nelli scrapes the batter from the side of the bowl. “Why can’t you go?”

I give a discreet glance in my mother’s direction. “Because I have other responsibilities.”

Nelli sets the bowl down, picks the baking pan up, and opens the oven. “I can watch her for you, Clara Bear.” She slides the pan into the stove, closes the door, and then sets the timer. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“That’s not your responsibility.”

“It’s as much mine as it is yours.”

“No, it’s not. I’m her daughter.”

She wipes off her hands with a dishtowel. “Honey, why do you think I’m here all the time?”

I shrug. “Because you’re my mom’s sister.”

“That’s true, but that’s not the only reason I come over.” She glances at my mother then leans in and lowers her voice a notch. “Before any of this happened, I made a promise to your parents that, if anything happened to them, I’d take care of you.”

I vaguely recollect reading in the will that Nelli had guardianship if something happened to my parents before my sister and I turned eighteen.

“But I’m not a kid anymore,” I utter quietly. “I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“Yes, you do.” She pinches my cheek like she did when I was a child. “You’re only twenty-one. You’re life’s just getting started.”

“This is my responsibility. I’ve been doing it for three years… Dad asked me to.”

“Honey, we’ve been over this a thousand times. Your father may have asked you to take care of your mom, but it doesn’t mean he wanted you to sacrifice your happiness to do it.”

“I’m happy.”

“No you’re not.”

Deep down, I know she’s right. But it’s difficult to admit aloud.

“I’m not telling you that you have to stop taking care of your mother,” Nelli says. “You can still keep doing it when you get back, but you also need to take a break sometimes. Get out and live a little.” When I remain reluctant, she adds, “Unless that’s not the only reason you don’t want to go.”

“I have work too,” I feed her a lame excuse.

She never buys my bullshit. “I’m sure you have vacation days saved up since you never take time off.”

I have every intention of lying to her. But she gives me a similar look to the one my mother used to give me whenever I was lying, and I end up caving.

“The person who asked me to go on the road trip is a guy I have a very complicated relationship with.”

Her brows elevate as she opens a cupboard to put the sugar away. “How complicated?”

My Aunt Nelli may be cool, but I’m not about to tell her about Jax and me being fuck buddies. “Just normal complicated.”

She acutely eyes me over. “All relationships are. That’s just part of life.”

I restlessly tap my foot against the floor. “I’m not ready to get close to someone. And, even if I wanted to, I don’t have the time. Being in a car with him for that long… something will happen between us. I know it will.”

She sets the spoon and bowl into the sink and then flips the faucet on to rinse them off. “If that’s all it’s going to take for something to happen between the two of you then my guess is that it’ll happen whether you go on the trip or not.”

I frown. She’s saying my worst fears aloud.

“I’m not telling you that you have to go.” She unties the tie on the apron and hangs it on the handle of a drawer. “But I think you should. You could use a break. You never smile anymore. You used to smile so much. I miss my Little Sunshine Girl.”

So do I.

“And you could scatter your father’s ashes while you’re there.” My mother lowers her feet to the floor as she stands up. “Wyoming is right where the Tetons are.” She’s fully aware of reality at the moment, something that happens occasionally, and it’s almost too painful to witness, because we know at any moment she’s going to slip away from us again.

“Mom, don’t you want to be there when I do that?” I ask as she crosses the limited kitchen space. “To say goodbye.”

“I already said my goodbye at his funeral. Besides, you know I can’t be in a car for that long. Not after the accident.” She places her hand on my cheek and a smile reaches her eyes. My heart squeezes in my chest at the brief glimpse of my mom, the one before the accident. “Your father would want his baby girl to do it. You were always his favorite.” She runs her hand over the top of my head, a gesture she used to do when I was younger when she tucked me in at night. “Be his happy girl again instead of looking so sad all the time.” Moments later, my mother vanishes inside herself again. “Time to watch my favorite show.” Her eyes light up and she practically dances to the recliner.

My heart cracks, and I massage my aching chest. “I’m not sad all the time. Why does everyone keep saying that?”

Nelli gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Go call your work then pack your bags,” she says then joins my mother in the living room.

I collect my bag from the sofa then go to my bedroom. My frown etches deeper as I enter the room barely big enough for my bed and dresser. Feathers are all over the carpet and my comforter. I pick up a trash bin near the foot of the bed and start picking them up with a timer ticking backwards in my mind. Jax said he was leaving when I texted him, which means I only have about ten minutes before he’s out of town and on the road. I’ve already killed at least five minutes in the kitchen. I’m running out of time.

But you shouldn’t even be thinking about going, anyway.

My thoughts bounce back and forth like an out-of-control bouncy ball. Right and wrong. Fear and want. Heartbreak and happiness. God, if my father could see me now, he’d be so disappointed. He used to call me his Little Spitfire, a seize the day, blue-eyed girl. He said he envied my sense of adventure.

I remember the day he gave me the nickname. I was eight-years-old and we’d gone on a family vacation to an amusement park. There was this one monstrous rollercoaster that rose to the sky and dropped to the ground that my mother and sister refused to go on. Me, I bound right up to the ride with my father hurrying after me. We rode it together, screaming our lungs off. Only when we got off did I admit to my father that I’d been terrified of riding it.

“Then why’d you get on it so easily?” he wondered as we walked toward the exit.

I shrugged. “Just because it looked scary, doesn’t mean it didn’t look fun. Besides, if I didn’t go, I’d be standing around with mom and Lizzy and that just seemed super boring.”

He smiled down at me and took my hand. “You know what my Little Spitfire, I envy your sense of adventure. I really do.”

My eyelids shut and lift as I blink from the memory.

“This thing with Jax… it doesn’t have to mean more than what it is,” I whisper to myself as I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Like my mother, I look pretty much the same as I did before the accident, though dark circles permanently reside under my eyes now. “You can just go as his friend and be there for him. You don’t even have to have sex with him. Things could just be like they used to.”

Before I can talk myself out of it again, I pick up my phone and dial Jax’s number. He answers after three rings.

“Hey… what’s up?” He sounds stressed out.

I summon a deep breath. “Turn back around and come get me. I’m going with you.”

“Are you sure?” I can almost hear the smile in his voice and a grin emerges on my own lips.

“Yep, I’m positive,” I reply, hoping I’m not making a mistake.

Hoping when the trip is over, Jax and I will still be… well, whatever we are.