Tales from the Intermediate (gxg)

Chapter 18

The temperature in the backseat of the car seemed to rise by ten degrees as the space grew quieter. The sound of the movie and the sound of people talking in their cars with the windows rolled down drowned out, and all Farren and Charlie focused on was each other.

"You're still the same in some ways," Charlie added, and Farren's hopes dwindled downwards.

"What do you mean?" Farren asked carefully, horrified of what Charlie was going to say. The urge to talk about their past had been lingering in the air ever since Charlie saw Farren moving back in across the street, and now the moment was finally upon them.

"You're still annoyingly perfect," Charlie said.

Perfect. Farren had chased it for years, and when she caught it, she hated it. Perfect, her father always urged her to be. Be perfect at school. Be perfect in your looks. Be perfect at sports. Be perfect in college. Be perfect in law. She had to be perfect to have love.

"I'm not," Farren croaked, her eyes finally leaving Charlie to glance at the floor of the car. "I'm really not, Charlie." She shook her head as Charlie watched a ghost pass over the blonde's face.

"No one's perfect, I get that," Charlie quickly added, not wanting to upset her. "But in all social aspects of the word, you are. You're perfectly beautiful. You're perfect at talking to people. You're so good at school. For fuck's sake, you're nearly done with law school already. You already have a job lined up. You were always like that in high school, too. No standard was unattainable for you."

"You don't understand, Charlie," Farren said, feeling her chest starting to tighten. "You just don't."

Charlie stayed quiet for a moment. There were more than a few things different about Farren, and one of them was that she was hiding something. Charlie was not dumb. Charlie was smart. She'd seen it in Farren's thoughtful, quiet moments. She'd seen it when she had passed by the bathroom at the hotel and saw Farren staring blankly into the mirror. Something was going on, and Farren was alone in all of it.

"Make me understand," Charlie whispered, which drew Farren's eyes back to her. Those soft green eyes were so full of vulnerability that Charlie felt that if she reached out and touched her, she would collapse. "I've never been able to understand you, but I want to. Help me understand."

Farren's teeth bit her lower lip so hard that she tasted metal. She never had a close friend. She never had someone to talk to. Everything in her life was bottled up inside that concrete body of hers. No one truly knew Farren, not her parents, no one. It was on the tip of her tongue, all her secrets, all her passions, all her fears. It was only Charlie's hand gently taking hers that made them come out.

"My father is dying."

Charlie wasn't sure was she was expecting, but it was not that. "Oh..." she murmured. She always hated hearing stuff like that because she never knew what to say. "I'm sorry—"

"Don't be," Farren cut her off, squeezing her hand and holding it tight, causing Charlie's heart to beat faster. "Cancer. Cancer in the lungs. All those years of smoking expensive cigars finally got to him." Farren was finally opening up, and Charlie was listening. "Not to mention the alcoholic dementia. Mom hasn't even spoken to him since the divorce, and my brother's too wrapped up with his work in New York. So it landed on me to move back home to take care of it—him. Everyone else hates him—I do, too. Even now, in his old age, in his wheelchair with his oxygen tank. I hate him." Her grip on Charlie's hand tightened and then eased. "I didn't want to come back to Mulberry. I fucking hate that place. I fucking hated high school, as shocking as it may be to you. Being back in that town is hell in its own, but being back to him... He was never a father. He was a bank account and the tall, cold figure in family photos. He only loved me when I won a game or got all A's or went to law school. And when I realized I was gay... I still haven't told him. He talks about how I should marry this son of a guy he knows, or this other son of another guy, how I should hurry up and have kids so I can continue the family line, because God knows my brother inherited his drinking problem and can't keep a woman for the life of him. He drove my mother to madness, and he almost drove me to it until I got out. But now I'm back—was back, before all this. There's so many ghosts in Mulberry, and I'm one of them. The ghost of the bitch I was in high school. I never forgot about it. Once I moved to college, I lost all my so-called best friends from high school and had plenty of lonely nights to reflect on all of it. I was horrible, Charlie. I was horrible to you and Dani and Matt, but especially to you. And I don't even know why. I wish I could give you a reason. I wish I could take it all back and not give you such grief. You did nothing to deserve what I did to you, I promise you that. I was just bad, just a bad egg, forged in the fire of my ruthless fucking father. Then a few months ago, I decided I didn't want to be the mold he was making out of me for my entire life. I... I dropped out of law school. I quit that internship, and I dropped out. I was doing good until I had to come back, and I saw you again, and I saw Dani... God, I had almost been able to forget what he did to her parents."