Decadent

Chapter Four
Homecoming

Danny
This time she didn’t even come home. I sat on her bed, waiting for her to come home so I could tuck her in. I waited for her to crawl into my arms and keep her safe from nightmares.
But she didn’t come.
It was that guy. The guy that kept her out late, that made her less reliant on me. The guy who made me feel less important to her.
She doesn’t need me anymore.
Faye
It’s not like I meant this to happen, it just did.
Mom called me and said that she was on another business meeting, or in reality she was in some guys bed. I laughed in irony.
“What’s funny?” Alec asks next to me.
I roll over in his bed and face him. “Me.”
He waited, as usual.
“My father,” I began my sob story, “Use to say that he had business meetings or trips when he actually meant that he was sleeping with his co-worker. My mom began to call home, and say the same thing, that she was on a business meeting when I knew she was in some mans bed.”
His expression was hard, his eyes intense. “I fail to see what is funny.”
“Well I got mad at her for calling me tonight again lying to me again, when I’m in a guy’s bed.”
He sits up. “It’s not remotely the same.”
I grin. “I know, but I still find it ironic.”
He pauses for a moment. I watch him debate whether or not he wants to get on with it or drop it. He opens his mouth, apparently feeling courageous. “Is that why you were drinking?”
I look away, roll over onto my side so I don’t have to look at his eyes. His words are so judgmental, but his voice is so full of concern, it confuses me.
“Yes.” I say.
I hear him lay down next to me.
I feel his arm wrap around me.
I smell him next to me.
I close my eyes and I see rain.
I feel real.
“I’m glad you're here,” he says, “That you're safe.”
And I feel safe, even though this is all so weird and so fast. It took years to build this kind of trust with Danny. With Alec, it is as though we don’t have the time to build trust, or that we are both impatient. And so, because of impatience, we dive in, putting each other’s trust into one another’s hands.
“Are you afraid?” He whispers.
It throws me off, it’s like he read my mind. “Afraid of what?” I wonder aloud.
“Of me.”
“Why would I be?”
I feel him shrug. “I dunno.”
I wait. For impatient people, we sure know how to wait for each other to say what they need to say.
“It’s just,” he breathes, “I am afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Being close to anyone, trusting anyone,” he says.
I nod.
I understand.
My father beat me.
I turn in his arms, so that we are facing each other. “But you can trust me,” I say.
His eyes grow distant. “I trusted her.”
“And I trusted him.”
His eyes shift back to reality. “You’re right.”
He pulled me closer, so close we couldn’t see in each other’s eyes. My face was buried into his chest, his chin rested on top of my head. And we stayed like that. Counting how many times our chests rose and fell with air.

“You were out all night with him,” Danny whispers, “Weren’t you?”
We’re sitting at IHOP, eating pancakes.
Guilty, I nod.
He shoves another pancake in his mouth and takes forever and a day to chew and swallow while he gets his thoughts together. I watched him fight with himself, never know how much he relied on me. I didn’t think I was worth anything to him.
“Faye, you have to come home to me at night,” he whispers, not wanting to hear his own vulnerability.
I want the whole truth out of him. “Why, Danny?”
He stares at his orange juice like it’s a magic caldron filled with all the right answers.
I wait. Something I learned from Alec in our short time together.
“I have to tuck you in bed and hold you through your nightmares,” he breathes.
I look down at my plate. “I didn’t know I still had nightmares.”
“Every night,” he tells me, “You always wake up, and I rub your back till you fall back asleep.”
It bothers me that I don’t remember this intimacy that I share with Danny every night. The guilt falls on me and smothers me till I believe I will suffocate.
“Faye?”
He is impatient.
“I’m so sorry, Danny,” I apologize, “I didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
I look down and blink back the hot tears that are forming in my eyes. “I didn’t know that I mattered to you.”
I wait for him to say something, but instead I hear him stuff another mouthful of pancake in his mouth.
And so I wait for him to say something after he swallows, but he says nothing.
More silence.
It’s maddening.
We pay the bill and I take him home, wait in the car for him to get out. He sits there too, debating.
“Faye?”
“Yes, Danny?”
“Do you love me?” He whispers.
I look hard out the windshield. “Of course.”
The words mean nothing. We told each other that we loved each other when we were ten, when we had no idea of the weight of the words.
He knows this too because he says, “No, I mean really love me. Do you want to be with me, have a house and grow old together?”
“I want my ring pop first,” I say, in attempts to lighten the mood.
I hear the clamp of his teeth, something he does when he’s angry. “Forget it then.”
And then he’s gone.
I don’t watch him walk up the steps.
I cover my ears as he slams the door shut.
I feel the weight of those words on me now, and I feel like suffocating again. I lean forward and wrap my arms around me. I feel myself shaking, feel the movement as my chest rises and falls rapidly as I try to hold onto the air.
But it’s escaping.
There’s no control.

At school Alec sits in front of me with two slices of cherry pie and a can of whipped cream.
I smile as he puts a mountain of whipped cream on my slice. It almost makes me feel better about yesterday. I almost tell Alec about my meltdown in front of Danny’s house, but I decide to leave that out. It’s not that I don’t trust him, it’s that I don’t want him to worry about me, it seems like he would make a big deal out of that sort of thing.
“He’ll come around,” Alec assures me, “He’s your best friend, and he will forgive you if he loves you.”
I am silent.
“I am curious though, if you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you tell him that you loved him? I thought that you did.” He says. And it doesn’t feel like he is prying.
I can’t tell him that I had made Danny jealous by spending time with Alec, that would make Alec want to stop spending time with me. So I left that part out too, which if I had told him, would give him his answer to his current question. I was having feelings for him. Feelings that were different from the ones that I had with Danny, yet the same. I felt security with both; but with Alec everything was new and exciting which was both exhilarating and terrifying. With Danny I felt safe and at home, nothing was new.
And then there was the fact that I didn’t believe that Danny would love me. It was only a fantasy that I wished would happen to me, nothing that I thought would be possible. And it frightens me to think that if I do fall for him, if I do take that step with him, that he will betray me as well.
“I…” I began, “It’s hard to explain.”
And he waited.
“I don’t trust myself to be enough for him,” I say.
I watch Alec’s eyes narrow, his anger visible in his eyes.
“Why do you have such crap self-esteem?”
I’m taken back.
“What?”
“Or why is it that girls never think they are good enough? Why do they put so much pressure on themselves?”
I take a bite of the pie, not knowing how to answer that.
“I don’t know,” I say.
He laughs. “And that is why females are the weaker sex.”
I take the can of whipped cream and shoot some onto his head. I watch with laughter as he glares at me. I wipe some cream that’s on the nozzle and lick it.
He bursts out laughing and takes it from me, and we have a war with it in the school lawn.
Instead of picking up Danny at the front of the school, he tells me that he’ll catch the bus home. His words were venomous when he said it.
And so I drive alone to my house; I’m surprised to see my mother’s red neon in the drive way. I drive in and park before I get out and see why my mom is home so early.
Before I have a chance to walk in, I hear her yelling and another voice, male’s, trying to soothe her.
“You just expect her to take you back!” She yells.
I press my ear to the door.
“Eleanor, I never meant to hurt you,” he says in a tender voice.
“I know that, and I forgive you. You are my husband…”
“And I am her father,” he points out.
My father.
“She won’t see it that way,” she says, almost defeated.
There’s a pause, then he says, “I’m sure I can persuade her.”
I snatch my head away from the door.
He’s come back. He’s come back and he’s going to hurt me like he did before. Visions of that night come crashing in my head, but I close my eyes and press my hands to my ears so I can block them out.
I open the door, and sure enough, he’s sitting in the chair that we leave pulled out for him every day. It was waiting for him to come home, and now he has.
He looks at me. He looks the same: same brown hair that is gelled out of his face, in a business man fashion, same dark suit that is perfectly ironed, and his arrogant expression chiseled into his face, never leaving no matter how much it’s been through.
“Why, Faye, you look the same,” he says, but his eyes lie. I know he sees the loss of weight I have suffered, the bags under my eyes from nightmares. I know he sees the fear in my eyes, he can feel a change in me.
“Go to Hell,” I say and turn and leave the room.
I walk into my room and slam the door. I sit on my bed and feel my stomach rising and falling again. I throw my head back and fall backwards on the bed, gripping my stomach with both hands, trying to make it hold the air in…but it keeps moving…
“Maybe I should go talk to her, tell her the same story I told you,” he says.
NO!
“I don’t think so,” My mother saves me; “I think she needs to process this on her own first.”
“But I’m her father!” He yells.
His anger hasn’t changed. He doesn’t want to talk to me, he wants to beat me, he wants to yell at me, to tear me down so he feels whole.
I refuse to let myself think of that.
I claw and my skin now, it feels like I can’t stay in my own skin now, feels like I’ll float away.
I focus on the ceiling fan and soon everything slows. The gasping, the movement all stop. I can breathe again. It was longer this time than when I was in front of Danny’s house.
I hear a knock on my door.
I don’t answer.
“Faye, your father…”
He’s not my father.
“…and I are going out for awhile so you can have some time by yourself,” my mother says.
Like I’ve had some time by myself for the past months.
I wait till I hear the door shut before I sit up, and then wait for the car to leave the driveway before I get up and sit on the porch.

Danny
My phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Danny?” Its Faye, and I can hear the edge to her voice.
“What is it, hon?” I ask
“Can you come over?” She asks.
I get off the bed and walk out the door. “I’m on my way.”
I hit “end” and get in the car. I pull out of the driveway and make the very familiar drive to her house. I should just move in with her. It scares me when she’s by herself.
When I pull up to her house, she’s sitting on the porch steps She looks up with her mascara smeared down her cheeks. I get out and turn to her, she meets me half way and I pull her in my arms. Just like in the movies.
“He’s back,” she says.
And my heart stops cold and I feel like I could have died right there in her arms. I couldn’t let him back into her life. My Faye was in danger again.
I wouldn’t allow it.
“My mom wants me to forgive him,” she continued.
“Shh,” I say, there was only so much I could take at one time. I hold her tighter, as if I could protect her that way.
“I can’t…” she broke off with a sob.
“Faye, I’ll protect you. We’re older now, I won’t let him touch you,” I promise.
She sniffles and buries her face in my shoulder.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask.
She nods.
I take her hand and we take off running. It was something we always did. When we were kids we would run all day bare foot in the summer. We would race and play tag all day. And then when we got older we competed. Faye was on the track team, and I was a cross country runner. We had a theory, that if we ran, then no one could catch us.
We ran down the dirt road and all the way to the lake. We ran onto the deck and caught our breath.
“I can’t do what she wants,” she says softly, “That man destroyed me. I can’t let him back in. I can’t forgive him like she wants.”
I look at her. Watch the war go on in her eyes.
“What do you want?” I whisper, hoping to bring her out of her depressing trance.
She smiles mischievously, to conceal her pain.
She walks behind me and whispered in my ear, “I wanna fly.”
“Wha—?”
Faye takes her jacket off and shoes then flings herself off the dock, her arms stretched out like a pair of wings.
I shake my head, but take my shoes off and jump in as well. Faye’s smile is so big, it turns into a laugh. It’s a bittersweet moment. It always feels like her happiness is limited, like she can never fully be happy.
“Do you remember the ‘Notebook’?” she asks.
I chuckle. “How could I forget? You made me watch it five million times with you.”
But deep down, it was my favorite move to watch with her.
She narrows her eyes. “You know you loved it”, she says, and then laughs, “You even cried at the end!”
I feel my face flush. “I can’t help that it’s sad,” I say lamely.
Faye swims over to me and smiles wistfully. “Do you think I can be a bird? So I can fly away from here?”
I wish she was. I wish we both had wings. We could fly away.
“I remember when I told you I’d take you away from here, do you remember?”
She nods. “Yes, right after we graduate.”
Of course there was a part of the plan where we would elope to a beach in California.
“I promise, I still will,” I say, staring in her eyes, “If you still want me to.”
She looks down at our hands, somehow they were tangled.
“Things have changed, Danny,” she whispers.
It’s a sting to hear her say that. But I know she’s just scared, she’s scared to commit with me, thinking that I’ll betray her like her father. And now her mother too.
“Things always do,” I say, but I know she is talking about Alec. I know she has feelings. But that’s all the more reason to fight for her. He’s all wrong, he could harm her. No, he would harm her.
“No,” she spoke clearly, “We’ve changed. We aren’t little kids anymore, Danny.”
I shake my head, not wanting to believe her. I refuse to consider her words.
I love her, and she’s breaking my heart for him.
She has to choose to be away from him. She has to choose to be with me.
“You're still Faye, and I’m still Danny.”
She is still staring at our hands, scared to deal with more than she could handle. She can’t handle this pain now. She has so much on her plate already.
“Faye look at me,” I say, I have to see her expression.
“Even if things change around us, we haven’t,” I say, speaking each work slowly so she understands.
She looks up at me with her wide and innocuous blue eyes.

Faye
When I get home from school, no one is home.
I walk to my room and sit on the bed, taking my shoes off and laying back. I block out all thoughts and think about rain.
But then I hear his heavy boots on the floor, creaking to my bedroom. I get up to hide under the bed when the door opens.
I jump back on my bed.
“I want to talk to you,” he says, leaning against the wall.
I glare at him. “I don’t want to talk to you.” I’m surprise at the strength of my voice and the courage I have.
He sighs, “Yeah I know.”
I motion for him to leave.
But he stays anyway. “Look,” his voice more forceful than before, “I’m your father and you will not treat me this way!”
“You left us!” I yelled, “For some blonde whore!”
It takes him all his strength not to hit me, I can see it in his eyes.
“You will not talk like that, especially to me,” he growls.
I don’t say anything.
“Tonight we are going to sit at the dinner table and eat as a family,” he says, “And this attitude of yours will stop, is that understood?”
I nod.
I remember the first time Danny found out about my dad. It was July and steaming. My father came home early and I took off running. Danny followed me under the house and we waited till he left before we ran to the lake, our secret spot. I knew that he was waiting for an explanation, so I took off my jacket. All I had underneath was a thin camisole.
“Oh God,” he breathed, putting his hand on my back.
I flinched.
“Danny, that’s just…” I began, but I couldn’t think of an excuse.
“Faye, who did this to you?” He whispered, sounding so heartbroken.
“Danny…” I breathed.
Danny pulled me carefully in his arms and swayed back and forth, something he always did to calm me down.
“It’s your dad isn’t it?” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was harsh and angry now.
I shrugged.
I felt his chest heave, his jaw set.
“That’s not good enough.”
“I was scared,” I whispered.
He inhaled and exhaled deeply. He laced his fingers through my hair and whispered soothingly in my ear.
“Everything is okay now,” he said, mostly to himself. It was as if he knew the whole time; that I was hurt the whole time.
I’m running, down the road and on the familiar path me and Danny took to get to our lake, I want to be with him. I stop on the dock, but I don’t want him to see what I’m about to do.
I pull my dad’s pistol out of my hoddie’s pocket and place it to the side of my head.
I wonder if I should rethink this, if I should put down the gun and think about it. But that’s the thing about suicide: it’s a spur of the moment action.
I put my finger on the trigger and closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry Danny,” I say.
“Hey,” a soft voice said from behind me.
My eyes flew open.
“It’s me, Alec,” he says in a low voice.
“Go away,” I say harshly.
I hear him sigh. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I ask, “It’s not like we know each other. It’s not like my death will impact you.”
“I just can’t leave. If I leave without trying to stop you, then it will be as if I killed you,” he says, then whispers, “ ‘Thou shall not kill’.”
“What’s your problem?” I snap.
He ignores my comment. “Give me the gun, Faye,” he says sternly.
“Why?” I yell.
“Because you can’t do this,” he tells me.
I load the gun to make my point.
“Because you don’t want to do this”, he tries.
“How do you know?” I whisper, he should leave. He’s making me rethink this. And that’s not how this is supposed to go.
He is close now and speaks low in my ear, “Because you would have done it by now, regardless of what I had to say. If you were so keen on killing yourself you would have pulled the trigger a long time ago.”
I turn around and drop the gun. Alec pulls me in his arms and holds me tightly, like he had actually watched me die.
“Faye talk to me,” he says.
I shake my head.
He’s not patient with me now. “No, now!”
And then I begin to cry. Cry for my fight with Danny, for my father coming back, for my mother siding with him, for breaking Danny’s heart…
“My father,” I say.
And that’s all I need to say; Alec is a smart guy. He pulls me closer and so do I.

Alec
We sit on the dock with our feet in the cool water. She hasn’t said anything yet, and I don’t want to push her.
So I am silenced.
Her damaged soul, even more so with the attempted suicide, staining her soul with black. The demon in me wants her soul, but Alec won’t let it.
I WILL NOT HURT HER!
But I can imagine feeling her soul in me, watch her fall into me, join the others to fill the hollowness in me.
“Alec?” She asks, in her light voice.
I turn to her. “Yes?”
“What was that about ‘Thou shall not kill’? What did you mean?” She asked.
I sighed and looked at the water. “Killing is a sin.”
“Yes, I know that. But why did you say it?”
“Suicide is a sin. And walking away from you would have made me sin as well,” I say, focusing on the water.
She pauses. “Is that what you really think?”
I know she doesn’t understand. She is mortal and she will be forgiven for her sins, I, however, will not because I am a Fallen Angel.
But I can’t tell her this.
But I don’t want to lie to her.
That would be a sin.
“It’s just what I believe,” I say simply, “I am afraid.”
I feel her hand on my cheek; she turns my face so I’m looking at her angelic face.
“Afraid of what, Alec?” She asks me.
“Him,” I answer.
“Him?”
I look up.
And I hear her sigh. “God is a strange person to fear.”
I shake my head; no she doesn’t understand. “I am afraid of what he thinks of me.”
She smiles. “Well you just saved my life, doesn’t that score you one point with the big guy?”
And I have to laugh at that.
She stops laughing though, and her somber expression returns. “Alec, I don’t want to go home.”
I look at her. “Where do you want to go?”
She starts to cry again. “Can you take me to Danny’s house?”
I nod and pick her up, I fear that she is breakable.
She clings to me and rests her head on my shoulder. I am amazed at how she trusts me so much. Little things like this that blows my mind away. Today’s society is so different, so vulgar and dangerous. It amazes me that one decent human girl comes out of it, though it may be because of her pain that she had to suffer.
I strap her into my car and get in the driver’s seat.
We drive off the dirt road and onto the main road again.
“How did you know I was here?” She asks.
I don’t tell her that Eda saw a vision of her with a gun to her head. I don’t say that I nearly had a car accident while I tried to get here in time.
But I won’t lie to her.
“You told me about this place once,” I say, because this is true. She did tell me about the lake her and Danny went to that night when she was at my house. “I was curious,” and I was, eventually I was going to come to the lake and try to soak up its magic.
“Oh,” she says like she is disappointed, like she was hoping I was stalking her or that I was a vampire. She has watched too many movies.
We don’t say anything, but I watch her roll down the window and turn on the radio, grimacing at the lack of her CD.
I follow her instructions and soon we are in front of Danny’s house. He is sitting on the porch, like he was waiting for her.
He looks surprised and hops up and comes running to the car. Faye gets out and he reaches for her and holds her tightly.
He rubs her back and sways while he mumbles things into her ear. She sniffles and turns to me. “Thanks,” She says, then earnestly, “For everything.”
I nod and I know that’s my cue to leave, but I don’t want to leave her. It scares me now, like I can’t trust her by herself.
She’s not alone, she’s with Danny.
I sigh and pull away, knowing that Danny will keep her safe.

When I get home, Eda is waiting for me.
“You saved her,” she says.
I nod and sit at the table, on the opposite side of her.
“He is pleased with you,” she says.
I shake my head. “He doesn’t give a damn about me.”
Eda sighs. “You can’t lose your faith now, Alec.”
I clench my fists. “Why not? Thousands of years of praying and begging have done me nothing!”
She stares at me, almost scared. “Alec I don’t understand? You were the strongest believer.”
I sigh and slouch in my seat. “I just am growing impatient.”
She smiles. “Patience is a virtue.”
I shake my head and stand up, and walk to my room. I plop on my bed and pick up the bible that is opened to the same page every day:
'Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners spoke against him'.
“You shouldn’t read that,” Alyce said, sitting next to me.
I look up from the book. “Why?”
“It makes you sad,” she says.
I shrug. “A lot of things make me sad.”
She nods and lays down next to me. “Like that girl.”
I put the book down. “What do you mean?”
“You are so distant now. More so than before.”
“She scares me,” I admit.
“How?”
I close my eyes. “I feel myself falling for her.”
Alyce laughs. “And that is a bad thing?”
I open my eyes and stare at her. “You know it is.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know about you but I’ve heard that being in love is amazing.”
I smile wistfully. “It is, until you realize that you are damned.”
She frowns.
“That’s why you left Vera, isn’t it?”
I nod. “I had to. I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“But, Alec, you have lived for two hundred years without loving, without being loved. I know it hurts you,” she whispers.
I turn to my side. I don’t want her to see me so weak. “My family is enough to keep me going.”
“I know it is,” she says, “You’re strong. But that’s not what I mean.”
I turn over and look at her. Her long bleached hair, fanned out against the pillows. Her hazel eyes shone back at me. “It’s like tofu, isn’t it? It’s enough to survive, but it doesn’t make you happy. You do enough just to get by.”
“I don’t want to be selfish,” I protest.
“It’s not selfish,” she whispers, “its taking care of yourself.”
“No,” I whisper, “You don’t understand.”
She is quiet. “It won’t be the same.”
I nod. “Yes it is. If I have a child, it will be like me, damned for the parents’ sins.”
She doesn’t say anything.
Because there is nothing to say.

Faye

When I walk in the door, they are waiting for me at the table. I hesitate, but walk over to the dining room table and take a seat.
“You're late,” he says.
“It’s fine,” she says.
I pretend they aren’t there. They don’t exists; only Alec does. And the feeling of his arms around me.
But I know that it is only because he didn’t want me to pull the trigger.
I feel stupid for holding the gun to my head, and I feel scared. I had no idea that he could have so much power over me. I shouldn’t be driven to the point of suicide by any human.
“How was your day?” She asks.
I shrug.
“Your mother asked a question,” he says.
I glare at him. “I’m not stupid.”
I watch him try to hold in his anger, but there is a point when he will burst and I will be black and blue again.
“Ask your mother how her day was,” he growls.
I stare at him, at the vain that is popping out on his neck.
“How was your day?” I ask, not looking at her.
He smirks.
“Good,” she says.
And then we all are silent again.

I sit in the girls’ bathroom, against the stall door.
I’m holding a razor.
I heard once that the physical pain will draw out the emotional. But I sit there thinking about all the bruises on my back. They brought no peace to me. I still feel the same as I did before, if not worse. He not only physically abuses me, but he talks me down. He makes me feel worse than what I really am. Or am I really nothing? I can’t tell anymore.
My head is so filled of his words.
Over and over.
I remember when I was eleven we were the only two people home one night. My mom had to work late, which left me alone with the devil. He had been drinking that night too, which always made it worse. And then he saw me. This little girl with long brown hair tied into French braids. My mom had braided my hair that morning and tied purple bows on the end.
I was sitting on the couch watching TV, unbraiding my hair and running my hands though my long hair.
“You think you're so pretty,” he hissed, “Don’t you.”
I was naïve then. I didn’t know that he was dangerous.
He walked over to the kitchen and grabbed the scissors from the counter.
I hear some girls walk in the bathroom. I freeze and listen to them.
I bet they are talking about me: the girl who wears long sleeves and pants in the heat. But to my relief, they start talking about different shades of lipstick.
I lean my head back and wait till they leave.
When they do, I walk out and see Alec there. It’s not like I have been avoiding him, it’s just that I really don’t want to have the awkward talk about what happened at the lake. I’m about to leave when he sees me.
“Hey,” he greets.
I smile in return.
“How’s it going,” he asks.
I look at my shoes and I wonder if he is talking about my meltdown, but then I think that maybe he is just trying to make small talk. I look up at him and see that he is still waiting for an answer.
“Fine,” I say.
He rocks back on his heels. “So, want to get some pie?”
I debate about it. I don’t want to sit in a diner where I will be contained and will have to answer whatever question he throws at me. But then again I don’t want to go home, scared that he might be there already. And I very well can’t go to Danny’s house or he’ll ask questions too, only he knows me better and will eventually find out about my little suicide attempt.
“Or not,” he says, detecting my subconscious debate.
I shake my head. “No it’s cool. I could use some banana cream pie.”
He grins. “Me too.”

“Okay, favorite book?” I ask, dipping into my second slice.
He pauses. “Modern or classic? I have a lot of favorite books.”
I grin. He looks like the type that reads. “Classic.”
He takes another bite of pie. “ Of Mice and Men”.
I think about that. I guess I can see it. “And why is that?”
“The mercy killing,” he whispers, “It was very powerful.”
I nod. “And modern?”
He laughs. “Well I love the Harry Potter series.”
I grin. “Who doesn’t?”
He finishes off his pie. “People who don’t like pie.”
I’m glad I decided to come along.
“And what about you; what’s your favorite?”
I look at my pie. “Flowers in the Attic.”
“Why?”
I want to say that I can relate to that harsh environment. I want to tell him that, no I don’t live in an attack, but I do feel isolated and helpless. I feel like I’m missing out on my childhood too.
“It’s creepy,” I say simply.
He gives me a look. “I hope one day you will actually tell me why.”
I stare at him incredulously. I don’t understand how he could know so much about me already.
It’s like that for the next few days. Everyday afterschool we go to the diner and talk about our likes and dislikes. He’s careful not to bring up anything that might upset me. We both are careful.
“So no other men in your life besides Danny?” He asks one day.
I shake my head. “Nope, no one else.”
He rests his head on his hands. “I’m curious, is it because you truly don’t like anyone else, or is it that you are afraid?”
I shrug. “I guess it’s a bit of both. I don’t put myself in positions that will harm me.”
“Or you don’t put trust in anyone who may hurt you,” he corrects me.
I crush my straw into my soda. I haven’t thought about it like that.
“I guess,” I say.
He smiles.
“And no one since Vera?” I ask.
He shakes his head. He told me her name the other day. He said he left her because things were getting bad and he didn’t want to hurt her. His story was vague, but I didn’t want to push him any further that I already had.
“And is that because you truly don’t like anyone else, or is it because you are afraid?
He laughs, but doesn’t say anything. I guess that’s my answer.
He also tells me about his brother and best friend, Elisha.
“He’s a handful,” he tells me, “I have to stay on my toes to keep up with him. But he makes me happy.”
I smile. “Sometimes I wish that I had a brother or sister.”
“You have Danny.”
I frown. “Not recently.”
He sighs. “I think you just need to talk to him. He’ll come around. What did he say when you told him you tried to commit suicide?”
I flinch at that word and look around the diner, hoping no one heard him.
“I didn’t tell him.”
“Why not?” I can see that he is deeply confused. I’ve always told him that I tell Danny everything; that we have been through so much together.
“It would break his heart,” I say. I think about how he broke down in front of me and how much I had broke him because of spending all my time with Alec instead of him.
“It would hurt him more if he knew you were hiding from him,” he tells me.
I know this; I just don’t want to deal with the impact now. I’m far too selfish.

Daniel
I see her sitting on the porch, playing with a lighter.
She looks up and sees me there. Her eyes are wide.
We’re like that for a couple of moments, just staring at each other.
And then she flings herself off of the porch and in the next second she is in my arms. I hold her close and she clings just as tight.
“Danny, I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
“It’s okay,” I tell her.

I take her to my house. Her mother let her, even though her father made a huge deal about it. I take her away from that awful house.
I make her favorite pineapple pizza and we drink grape soda outside on my drive way. She tells me about her father, how he hasn’t changed much. She tells me that her mother is completely blinded by love.
“She only sees what she wants to see,” she tells me.
I take her hand and squeeze it. “We’ll run away.”
She smiles and looks at her pizza. “Danny?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?” She asks, her eyes shift up to meet my own. Her blue eyes are wide with worry, apprehension, and hope.
I smile at her. “I have always loved you, Faye.”
She shakes her head and I frown in confusion. “No, I mean really love me?”
I realize she is asking me what I had asked her the other day and I wonder what kind of answer she is looking for. Should I say yes, the truth, so that she has the courage to tell me? Or should I lie and say no so that she does not feel any remorse for unconsciously breaking my heart?
I look away from her. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment and it’s scary, but I can almost hear the gears in her head spinning.
“What does that mean?” She demands.
Jealousy washes over me quickly. “What is it that you want me to say? Do you want me to say no so that you can be with that guy? How long have you known him? A few weeks? We’ve been together for years!”
She stares at me hard. Then she grabs my face and I feel her lips on mine.
We kissed before, when we were growing up, we were curious. I didn’t want my first kiss to be with anyone else, I knew at a young age that she was all that I wanted. We were twelve and we were standing on the dock of that lake. It was dark out and in the middle of summer.
“I don’t know what to do,” she told me.
I grinned.
I was nervous as hell that I might miss or that we’d bonk our noses together. But none of that happened; I took her face in my hands and pressed my lips to hers.
It was different this time. Before we took our time, trying to understand what this feeling was like. This time it was more intense. It felt like we had a limited amount of time. Her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer to her and I held her just as close.

Faye

I sit on Danny’s bed while he slept on the floor.
And I don’t know what I have done.