I step out of the small store and scan the parking lot for my mom’s dilapidated station wagon. When I don’t spot it right away, I let out a sigh and plop down on the sidewalk with the small sack of groceries I managed to buy with the money I earned on small jobs I picked up after school.
My stomach rumbles. Rebelliously deciding if Mom can’t be here to pick me up on time like she said she would, well, I can dip into the supply of jerky without her permission.
Food, money—hell, love—has been stingy since we got word that Dad was killed in a boating accident on the Bering Sea. But if I’m honest, if it wasn’t for the money he brought in, he wasn’t much for supplying much anyway. Definitely not the kind of man I want to be. I gnaw on the jerky while faded memories of a burly man who gratefully ignored me after I started to get older and bigger flit through my mind.
She’s not much better, but I guess we’re all the other has now. Swallowing, I scan the parking lot again, trying to find the dilapidated car we sleep in as often as not. At least it’s something to protect us from the weather that’s edging into brutal at night.
Just then, a family passes by as they head into the market. The boy, I’d guess he’s about my age, slows. “Everything cool?”
I tip my head back and meet the wildest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. “Yeah, man. Thanks. Just waiting on my mom.”
The smile he gives me makes him look like a slightly deranged serial killer. When I tell him so, he laughs hard before heading into the warm store. I debate following him inside to get warm again, but I can’t stand the pitying looks I got from the cashier.
One day, there will be no more pity. Not from anyone.
I wake up in a sweat, despite the air-conditioning pumping cool air into my room. “Not again,” I whisper aloud, scrubbing my hands over my face.
Some people have reoccurring nightmares when they’re stressed. Me? My mind replays one of two memories to punish me for all my misdeeds: the first time I saw Jed Smith on the day I was abandoned by my mother or the night my ego ruined my future with his sister. Instead of having the strength to stick to my plan of using the night I won the title belt to begin wooing Maris, I let my dick do the thinking when I was asked about how I felt my disturbing past impacted the outcome of the fight during the post-fight interview. I was reduced to that teenage boy in the parking lot immediately after winning what I thought was something that would finally prove I had turned my life around.
That night caused me to do something so stupid, so unforgivable, it often makes me wonder if I could go back in time and hand it all back, including the belt, would I?
My past is no excuse anymore. Back then, I’m not sure I had a full grip of the magnitude of what I was losing; otherwise, I wouldn’t have stopped until I made Maris listen to me. If not then, then anytime in the sixteen years since that night. And I, despite having just won a huge sporting championship, should have walked away. Even though that reporter opened the door for all of my inner fear to worm insidiously into my mind, I made the rest of the choices. The question just reminded me blatantly why I shouldn’t be with Maris, so I set out to demonstrate to her clearly the worst about me in vivid detail. And I wounded us both permanently in the process.
Now, I barely hold on to my pride to not beg her for a chance to explain it all any and every time we interact. When Jed was still alive, the chance to hear about her, how she was doing, came more frequently. I could live with my mistakes. Now, more often than not, it’s by pure coincidence I hear about her, and not knowing about her haunts me.
I wince, remembering her voice snapping, “Jesus, will you shut the hell up, Nick? God, you can be such a jackass,” when I last laid eyes on her last summer through a FaceTime call one of my best friends had set up so we could talk face-to-face.