Sunspots and Raindrops

“That’s so cute it makes me want to vomit.” Charlie gushes as she and I moseyed toward the Chinese restaurant. We had agreed to order takeout so that we could return to the sanctity of her house to mow down.

We were both starving and I was especially ravenous since I was still slightly hung over even a day after the party.

“Thanks,” I mumble in gratitude to her. Brendon had officially asked me to be his girlfriend that morning and I didn’t know what to think. And that certainly wasn’t a bad thing.

There just seemed to be too much good going around at once. I was acing all of my classes at that time which was always rewarding since I was in some pretty high honors classes for a junior. Despite the fight my mom and I had, she was still acting like herself (which was reassuring because I knew that behind the scenes, she was acting like anything but).

But above all of this, there was Brendon, that adoring and adorable boy next door. Had I known that he was the kind of boy that he was, I would not have put off getting to know him those first two days I’d moved to Vegas. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was the common denominator in every happy situation that I’d had as of late.

We were getting back into Charlie’s car when my phone buzzed. I flipped it open to see a new text from Brendon.

Your fortune cookie is going to say ‘look behind you’.

I had told him that morning that I was going out to lunch with Charlie. I smiled at the small screen and quickly texted him back.

That will only be okay if you’re behind me.

Send.

When I looked up, Charlie was looking at me with a cheesy grin on her face.

“Don’t say anything.” I say, pointing at her accusingly, but she didn’t have to say anything. Pure bliss was about to bubble out of every pore of my body anyway.

“I won’t say anything. But goddammit, you two are just so adorable!” she flailed and then started her little green machine, revving it to life with a dull roar.

We plugged away back to her house and walked inside. I hadn’t been inside of her house before (I’d only given her a ride home from school a few times), but the interior of her house was gorgeous. And in her room, guitars and one ukulele lined the walls. She had a keyboard by her computer, a television sitting on a desk, and her closet doors had corkboard on them which were covered with little notes of scribbles.

Her room was perfect and it suited her to a fault.

We sat on her bed and ate our Chinese food in peace, only speaking to one another a few times between bites. And then, when we opened our fortune cookies, we both read them aloud before laughing and trading to read each other’s.

She always taped them on the face of her guitar.

“So does this mean you’re going to homecoming with Brendon?” She asks with an excited grin.

I stopped chewing the fortune cookie in my mouth and thought. I hadn’t realized that homecoming was just two weeks away and the day before my seventeenth birthday.

“I guess so,” I gave a shrug. “He hasn’t asked me. I don’t even know if he’s going.”

“Well, it’s his senior year!” Charlie exclaimed, flopping her arms.

“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to go to some corny dance.” I reasoned, popping a clump of rice in my mouth.

She pursed her lips into a line and then gave a wicked smirk. “Maybe he wants you all to himself that night.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

“You’re insane.” I say, my face reddening like a beet, and I tossed a pillow at her head as we laughed and finished off our meal.

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When I got back to my house around four in the evening, I was pleased to see that Brendon’s bedroom light was on, meaning that he was home too. As I walked in through the front door, I wondered what my plans would be for the evening.

I hadn’t been assigned any homework for that weekend since the end of the first quarter was coming up and finals would be soon. All of the books I had been itching to read were already read and I had yet to find time to return to the library and check out more.

Of course I wanted to talk to Brendon and it didn’t matter how. Talking on the phone, sending text messages, instant messaging, using our marker boards, or even just meeting by the fence in front of our houses. It didn’t matter to me because I was always wanting to talk to him.

The only thing was that I didn’t know if he always wanted to be talking to me, which is an incredibly cliché thing to think, I realized. But he was a senior in high school and I only assumed that he was busy with all of his classes. I mean, I anticipated being swamped constantly next year.

But visiting Brendon at college would probably give me a break here and there.

So, since I wasn’t about to distract Brendon until he was ready to distract me, I didn’t go up to my bedroom and instead walked into the kitchen. However, the moment I crossed the threshold, I wished I’d gone upstairs.

There stood my mom in the littlest black dress she owned. She had modest heels on and her wallet was tucked under her arm. She was looking out the window.

I only stood and stared at her until she turned and saw me there.

“Hey, honey,” she was already trying to butter me up with terms of endearment. She knew that I was put off by the scene before my eyes. And it wasn’t because she was incredibly dressed up and looking like a movie star straight off the red carpet.

It was the fact that she was all dressed up and waiting nervously for Thomas to show up.

“Going somewhere?” I asked as if I didn’t already know.

“Yeah,” she answered and I knew she was fishing around in her head for an excuse or some sort of reasoning to keep from making me storm upstairs and slam the door in her face. “Thomas invited me out for dinner and a movie tonight.”

“Sounds like a date,” I said bitingly.

My mom sighed at me and she struck that typical exhausted mother pose. One hip out, arms dangling by her sides, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. I’d seen it millions of times before that moment and I knew that I’d seen it a million times after that.

“Sonny, just give him a chance,” she tried to reason with me but I wasn’t having any of it as I set my purse down on the kitchen table. “He’s really a sweet guy.”

“Yeah? Well, not sweet enough to back off of a fresh widow and her grieving daughter.”

That one stung, I could tell by the way my mom blinked and looked down for a few long moments.

“You seem to be doing fine with your new friend from next door,” My mom replied and I could tell that she was trying to guilt trip me.

“Yeah, Brendon is great,” I say and it was the truth. Brendon was the first great thing I’d had in my life since my dad passed away.

“I’m not getting on your case about him.”

At this point, I couldn’t tell what case she was trying to prove.

“And you don’t have to get on my case about him. He’s sweet to me. He treats me with respect and sticks up for me and listens to me even when I know he doesn’t want to hear it.” And it was all so easy to say to her. It rolled off my tongue like water off of a duck.

My mom could tell that there was no argument for her. “Well, I’m glad that you get the option of being happy,” she slammed her wallet down on the table and then took an earring out. “I wish I had the same rights.”

And then, she went upstairs and she was the one slamming her bedroom door on me.

I stood in the kitchen with a knot in my gut and a conscience nagging in the back of my brain. I’d been too harsh on her, I’d decided, but there was no point in apologizing now. At this point, she’d already started crying and had ruined her makeup and any motivation to go out looking stunning tonight was out of her mind.

I know this because I was exactly the same way.

I put on a kettle of water and turned on the stove, pulling out some teabags and then pulling out a chair at the table to wait for the water to boil.

Not ten minutes after sitting down, there was a knock at the doorbell. I didn’t have to look out the window or the peephole in the door to know exactly who it was.

When I opened there door, there stood Thomas.

“Oh, hey Sonny,” he says and I could tell that my answering the door and taken him off guard. “Is your mother ready to go?” he was leaning to look around me like she’d be waiting behind me like an excited freshman that was asked to go to prom with a senior.

“Actually, she’s going to have to cancel on you tonight,” I say in a very matter-of-fact tone. “She’s not feeling well due to her husband’s passing and she’s decided to go to bed early.”

Thomas was beyond puzzled. “Uh, alright, I guess I’ll just call her and let her know that I’ll stop by tomo--…”

“That won’t be necessary, Thomas,” I say, interrupting him as he tried to crane his neck to look up the stairs toward the bedroom doors. “I think the best option at this point is for you two to stop seeing each other.”

Thomas’ eyebrows rose and he looked at me, stunned. “Really?”

“Yes.” I say complacently. I turned at the sound of my mom fumbling around in her room. “I think it’s for the best,” I say, still gazing up the stairs, willing her to stay in her room until Thomas left the premises. “I’ll be sure to break it to her eas--…”

I didn’t realize what was happening until Thomas’ large fingers were circling my throat. He almost pulled me across the threshold of the front door to hold me close to his face, his eyes meeting mine. They held fire and I could tell that I had pushed one too many of his buttons.

I tried to swallow, but it got stuck in my esophagus and I ended up choking a little.

“Now you listen to me,” he says in a whisper but the edge was sharp and constricted like he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. “Your mom likes me. And I like her. And we were going to have a good time tonight if it weren’t for you,” I glared up at the man through slightly watering eyes, digging my nails into his forearms viciously, but he didn’t seem like he even noticed. “Now I’m a deputy at the station and I have connections at the school, so you really don’t want me as an enemy.”

I scoffed and couldn’t stop from looking at the ceiling briefly. “Like you could do anything to me,”

His fingers constricted slightly and my breathing wheezed. “Don’t tempt me.”

And that’s when I realized how serious he actually looked. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm or threat on his face. He would be true to his word if I didn’t conform to his wishes.

He released me and I stumbled back away from him. I raised a hand to my windpipe and massaged it. It smarted and my eyes started watering again. I backed away from him carefully. With each step I made toward the stairs, he made one more into the house. Finally, the door slammed closed and he hollered, “Anybody home?”

His voice sounded angelic.

Satan in a fucking Sunday hat.

My mom’s bedroom door opened and she bolted out to look over the railing down at Thomas. He smiled up at her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m here to pick you up for our date.” Thomas says with a smile.

My mom laughed slightly and then walked down the stairs. “Oh, but I already washed my makeup off and everything.” she mumbles sadly.

“Oh, that’s okay. You go get ready again and take your time. I’m in no rush.” Thomas cast me a warning stare. ‘Try to intervene, I dare you,’ the jeer screamed at me.

Defeated, I walked up the stairs and to my bedroom, closing the door quietly. The tears in my eyes felt hot as they ran down my face and I could do nothing but pace my bedroom though I made sure not to stomp for fear of Thomas coming up those stairs to tell me to cool it.

And that’s when I realized, with a cold dread that drizzled down my spine like ice water, that I was afraid of Thomas. He was a big man—he probably stood at about six foot five inches—and he had been a wrestler in his days of high school, so he was solid.

I had never been afraid of anybody in my life. I’d never had my heart torn out by any boys in Chicago, so I wasn’t afraid of Cupid’s arrow. My dad had never laid a hand on me in any way shape or form and he didn’t leave my mother and me hanging of his own accord, so I wasn’t afraid of men in general. There was no reason to be afraid of anything at any point in my life until then.

And the fact that the one thing that had finally earned my fear was a man that was trying to replace my own father only angered and terrified me that much more.

And there it was. That dull thud against my window pane. I turned and looked across the way to see Brendon sitting in his window with his marker board. It had that huge smiley face on it that you make with a semicolon and the capital letter ‘D’.

In any other circumstance, I would’ve smiled at the sight.

I pushed my window open and the bright smile on Brendon’s face vanished instantly.

“Do you want to come over?” I whimpered.