I made it back to my bedroom, slowly closing the door behind me and leaning against it. Everything was the same as it had been two weeks ago; I was alone, and there were only a few more months until graduation. I had no one to leave behind who would miss me that much, and nothing but passing my classes and getting the hell out of this town mattered.
With a shaky breath, I wiped away the tears from my cheeks for the last time that day before walking over to my dresser and grabbing an old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
Evan Drake was no longer worth anything to me, much less my tears.
I looked up when I thought I heard footsteps making their way toward me, and I ripped my ear buds out, holding my soapy hands out in front of me.
“No!” I exclaimed. “The floor’s wet, and your boots are dirty!”
My dad looked down at me, his eyebrows raised and his mouth parted in something I was assuming was shock.
I was on my hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the hell out of the floor because working on homework hadn’t done anything but make everything worse. The cycle that had started last night when I had tried to concentrate on the human physiology paper only worsened, and I’d come downstairs to get a drink.
I noticed that the floor was filthy—along with the rest of the house—and had abandoned my homework to clean it. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing, and I’d eventually grabbed my iPod to drown out the annoying sound. I didn’t check the answering machine for fear that I wouldn’t be strong enough to not listen to the messages that may or may not have been there.
“Uh, Anna . . . what are you doing?”
“I’m cleaning. What does it look like I’m doing?” I snapped.
“Why?” he asked slowly.
“Well, if you haven’t noticed, the floor was dirty, and it needed to be cleaned. I’m going to vacuum the living room when I’m done here so I hope that you don’t have any shows you want to watch.”
“Anna, it’s Saturday.”
“I don’t know the stupid schedules!”
“No, that’s not . . . why are you cleaning the floor on a Saturday afternoon?”
“I’m grounded,” I snapped again. “What else would you propose I do?”
“Well . . . watch television?”
“Like there’s anything I’d be interested in.”
“Well then, how about you go talk to Evan?”
My eyes narrowed, and my heart thumped painfully in my chest.
“Why would I do that?” I asked through my teeth.
“Because he says he’s been standing outside for the past three hours.”
My eyes stung, and I grabbed my ear buds again, sticking them back in my ears and falling forward on my hands. “He can stand out there all night if he wants. I thought I wasn’t supposed to be alone with him anyway.”
“Well . . . you’re not technically alone with him so . . .” I jumped when he tugged an ear bud out, and I glared at him as he squatted on my clean floor with his dirty boots as I’d specifically asked him not to do. “He doesn’t look so hot.”
“I don’t care.”
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I spat. “And nothing will ever be going on ever again. He can stand out there until bright and early Monday morning; I don’t care.”
“You were angry because I wouldn’t let you be alone with him, and now that I’m allowing it, you want nothing to do with him?”
“Yes.”
“Is this some teenage rebellion thing?”
“No, Dad, it’s not. Evan and I are over. Plain and fucking simple.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Get off my floor.”
“Go talk to Evan.”
“Why does it matter to you now? You wouldn’t listen to me the other day, and now you won’t leave me the hell alone when it comes to him? Would you make up your mind, please?”
“Did you get the flower and the disc?”
I glared at him again, the edges of my vision tinted red.
“Yes,” I said through my teeth. “Where’d you find them?”
“On the front step this morning when I left. Was it from him?”
“I’m not sure.” I stuck my nose in the air and grabbed the sponge from where I’d left it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes, I really do.”
“I hope you can live with regrets, then.”
“I’ve got plenty of regrets, Dad,” I said, furiously rubbing at a scuffmark that had been imbedded into the floor for as long as I’d been alive.
“You’re willing to add another one to that list then?”
“Why should it matter?”
“My greatest regret was not telling your mother more often how much I loved her. We’d gotten into a pretty big fight that night. That’s why she was out driving around so late. Couldn’t stand the sight of me, she’d said.” I looked up at him, my jaw aching from how hard I had my teeth clenched together.
“I never thought that those words would be the last I’d ever say to her. I can’t change that now, but maybe if I’d just . . .” He sighed, and my heart broke a little more. I didn’t know that he’d been holding on to this guilt for so long.
“We were fighting over my golf clubs. It was such a foolish, trivial thing. She just wanted me to put them in the closet. I didn’t know what the big deal was. I could’ve prevented her from leaving the house that night if I’d only put them away like she’d asked.”
“Dad, this is nothing like that.”
“I met your mother in high school, and she was one of the two best things that had ever happened to me. You were the other.” He nodded toward the windows facing the front yard. “Go talk to him. The floor won’t go anywhere.”
I’d managed to briefly forget what had sparked this conversation in the first place, but felt the anger flare up once more when Evan was
