“So you do know her?” he asks.
I yank out a chair across from him. But I don’t sit. Instead, I drape my arms over the back of it and look at my friend.
My world is imploding. A night that meant so much to me so long ago is now relevant—no, entwined—with a girl I just met that I probably really like if I let myself think about it. And I was starting to let myself think about it, I think.
“Do you remember the day my dad got arrested?” I ask.
A shadow falls on Matt’s face as he nods. “Yes.”
I close my eyes as I remember the rage in my dad’s eyes. The way he held my mom like she was a rag doll. How she screamed at me to leave him alone, but I knew that if I did, not only would the cycle of abuse continue but also one of us would end up dead. And it wouldn’t be him.
He gripped my throat. Spit in my face. Explained, in detail, what a disappointment I was to the Etling name. As I listened to his venom and felt the pain of his hits, both verbal and physical, I knew I had to do something. And when he finally let me go with a promise to continue our discussion later, after he had one with my mother, he locked me out of the house.
In my truck a few minutes later from a couple of streets away, I called the police and told them where they’d find a domestic dispute and enough cocaine to lock my dad up for the rest of his life.
“I thought he was going to kill me that night,” I say. “There was something different about him. It was evil. Just inhuman, honestly.” I take a huge swallow of air. “I’m the one that called on him.”
The words taste bitter on my tongue. Still, a weight is lifted from my shoulders as I expel the truth to someone for the very first time.
My chest shakes as I drag in uneven breaths.
I called the police on my own father.
I look up at Matt warily. His eyes grow wide as he absorbs this information.
“Penn, man, I had no idea. That must’ve been hard as hell.”
That’s one way to put it.
“Not my favorite memory in the world,” I say. “But after I did it, I drove out to the lake. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you come over?”
“It’s hard to go to someone’s house that has a decent family when yours is as fucked up as mine was. It makes you feel like there’s something wrong with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Penn. You are not your parents.”
I shake my head. “I know that. But I couldn’t put on a face for you and Dane.”
He wants to offer me his sympathy. There’s a reminder coming that everything worked out and my mom died having had a little peace and that I turned out okay. But he keeps it all held back. I’m glad for it.
“I was sitting out there,” I say. “It was Fourth of July weekend. I watched the fireworks and pretended my grandpa was there because he’d understand. I realized he was trying to prepare me for this for years, and I just . . . I felt so fucking alone. I didn’t think anyone would understand.” My lips turn upward. “And then this girl came out of nowhere.”
Matt’s face transforms into shock when he sees where I’m going with this.
“I still don’t know how she found me. No one ever comes down that path, but she did. She had hair the color of coal and the thickest black eyeliner. Her lips were stained like she’d been biting them all day.” I chuckle at the thought of Avery looking like that now. “She was also in the same mood as me.”
“It was Avery?”
“It was Abby,” I say, lifting a brow. “We hung out that night. Talked about our shitty lives and how much our DNA might affect us, whether we had a shot at being normal people or not. And we had sex and she left and all I remember specifically about her was that her name was Abby and she had a pair of dice tattooed on her rib cage. A ‘fuck you’ to her parents, she said.” I tip back the rest of Matt’s beer. “Before she left, she wished me luck and told me, ‘Roll with it.’ I never saw her again.”
Talking about this night with Avery in mind feels too hard to believe. But it’s true. I know it in my gut. It explains so much. Why I was drawn to her in the first place. Why I kept thinking I knew her. Why I felt a connection or some crazy shit with her from day one.