Weeks tick by like seconds when I’m with Carter.
School went by faster, the soccer games seemed to disappear when I blink although that could also be the adrenaline from the game but either way, they went by so quickly that by the time I was done blinking, we’d already won and the game was over.
Two weeks had passed since the getaway to the cabin. Two weeks of kissing and holding hands and receiving jealous looks from the girls that I passed in the hallway. Two weeks of Carter and I couldn’t have been happier. The argument that I had with my mother had faded into the back of my mind and I hadn’t thought about my father much lately either. Although Carter would occasionally bring it up, I’d quickly change the subject and move on to something else.
I’d felt like I was floating in a moment of pure happiness. The soccer team was undefeated, I had amazing friends and an amazing boyfriend. I was completely happy, 100%. Which was why I didn’t want to think about either one of my parents because I didn’t want to burst my bubble. I knew that it’d burst eventually but I wasn’t ready for that yet.
“So homecoming is coming up,” I told Carter as we were laying in his bed. I was sitting in front of him with my back resting against his front with my laptop in front of me so that I could do my homework and Carter was playing some video game with his arms wrapping around my midsection and the controller was resting against my belly.
“So it is,” He chuckled.
“I haven’t decided if I want to go or not,” I told him. “Would you want to go?”
“Yeah, I think it could be fun,” Carter decided. “I mean, it’s my last chance and all, and the after party is always pretty fun. Which, we don’t have to go to of course because I know that you’re not into the party scene. But yeah, we should go.”
“Alright,” I decided, still typing on my laptop. It was a Saturday and Carter had teased me about doing homework on a Saturday evening but it was a long essay and it was due on Monday in my English class so I had to work on it a little bit each day so that I wasn’t cramming it all on Sunday night. “We’ll go then. I only have a week to buy a dress though, maybe Sophie and Paige will go with me tomorrow.”
“If you need money, my dad will pay for it,” He said to me.
“No, I have some money,” I assure him. “I don’t need to take your dad’s money.”
“Let him pay for it,” Carter insisted. “That way, you can spend your money on things that you wouldn’t want him to know about.”
“What things would I want to buy without Tom’s knowledge?” I wondered but then he kissed my neck and I knew what he was talking about.
He paused his game. “I have a few ideas.”
“I’m going to kill Sophie for putting that idea in your head,” I sighed, giving up on writing anymore of my essay anytime soon. I couldn’t focus on anything except for Carter and how he was kissing my neck and how good it felt.
“What idea?” He murmured against my skin.
“The lingerie stuff,” I reminded him that thanks to Sophie, I’d been wearing lacy underwear the first time that we’d had sex.
“Trust me, babe,” Carter mumbled into my ear, his voice dark and husky and it makes my breath stick in my throat. “The idea of you in lingerie would be in my head with or without Sophie’s help.”
I was about to turn around so that we could properly start making out when his door opened and Carter lifted his lips from my neck. I tried not to glare at Andy, who was standing in the doorway of Carter’s room with a Cheshire grin on his face.
“Sorry to interrupt,” He said. “But we’re going out to dinner so you have to get dressed and meet us downstairs in ten minutes.”
“Why are we going out to dinner?” Carter wondered as I saved my work and then shut my laptop to climb off of Carter’s bed- our moment was sufficiently ruined.
“You aren’t,” Andy told his brother. “Just Maddie.”
“What’s going on?” I asked curiously because it seemed fishy that I was going to a dinner that Carter wasn’t invited to. Something was up.
“Nothing, you may not ask questions,” He said. “Just go get dressed.”
He disappeared out the door and I turned to Carter who just shrugged. I shrugged back, kissed him goodbye, and then I left the room to go get dressed because although I knew that something was up, I was curious to see what that something was.
“I’ll let you know,” I assured my boyfriend before disappearing into my room.
I met Andy, Tommy, and Will downstairs and then they were just acting like everything was normal as we all drove to the restaurant.
“So, why wasn’t Carter invited?” I asked them and then they all looked at each other, as if trying to will one of the others to think of something to say. “What is going on?”
“Nothing,” Will laughed as if my question was just absolutely ridiculous. “We just need to talk to you about Carter. We can’t exactly talk to you about Carter with Carter right here with us, now would we?”
“Why do you want to talk about Carter?” I wondered with raised eyebrows. Tommy, who was driving, parked the car in front of the restaurant and we all got out, going into the building and then getting sat at a round six-person table. “And why are we at such a big table when there’s only four of us?”
“Why are you asking so many questions?” Andy asked me.
“Because something is up,” I said with a pointed look.
“Nothing is up, really,” Tommy assured me, which put at ease a little more because Tommy was always the level headed one, so I didn’t think that he’d lie to me about anything.
“So, like I said, we have to talk about Carter,” Andy reminded me. “Because you two seem to be getting really close.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a nod. “What is there to talk about though?”
“It’s just that we want to make sure that you’re not going to hurt him, and that he’s not going to hurt you,” Will said to me. “Because we’re not sure how permanent your stay here is and when your mom comes back, you’re probably going back to Indiana, right?”
“Sure, I guess so, but she’s going to be gone for a while. Like, at least until the summer,” I said to them, not telling them about the fight that she’d had with Gerard and if that fight led to a breakup, she’d probably come up way earlier than planned. “So we have time.”
“Right, but Carter doesn’t date a lot,” Andy added.
I gave him a strange look, not seeing the relevance to that. “He dated Rikki right before I got here.”
“Yeah, and look at how that turned out,” Will piped. The waiter came to the table and we ordered our drinks before he left again.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you saying that you think that I’m going to cheat on him?”
“No,” He sighed. “I’m just saying that you guys should just be careful. We care about both of you- Carter because we have to and you because you’re pretty cool.”
I was weirded out by their sudden interest in my relationship with Carter, but I didn’t question it anymore because it was clear that no matter how much I asked, I was not going to get a straight answer. “We’ll be fine. Thanks for the concern.”
After the waiter came back and took our order, I noticed Andy checking his phone for the time and gave him a look but I didn’t ask about it. “So, how are you and Sophie?”
“We’re good,” He nodded even though I already knew that. I actually knew a lot more about Andy and Sophie’s relationship than I’d like to know thanks to Sophie and her tendency to over share.
“Are you going to homecoming?”
“Yeah,” He sighed. “I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”
“I’d imagine that you didn’t,” I chuckled, imagining Sophie demanding Andy to go to homecoming with her and telling him that yes, he had to wear a nice suit.
“Are you going?” Will wondered.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve decided that I’m going to go. It’s Carter’s last homecoming so we’re going to go.”
“I thought I had my last homecoming last year too,” Andy mumbled. “And that obviously didn’t turn out the way I had planned.”
“Not a fan of the dances?” I wondered.
He shrugged. “They’re alright, I guess.”
“He’s bitter because he got dumped during his junior homecoming,” Tommy told me and then Andy glared at him.
“I did not get dumped, I dumped her,” Andy defended.
“Yeah, because she was making out with her English teacher in the janitor’s closet,” Will laughed as if that was a funny thing but to me, it seemed really traumatizing. I wasn’t sure why they thought that was amusing.
“That’s awful,” I said. “She was hooking up with her teacher?”
“Oh yeah. It was this huge scandal too, once they got caught,” Tommy explained.
“I didn’t turn them in though,” Andy said, like that’d make a difference. “They got caught when she was fellating him under his desk and the principal walked in.”
“That’s so gross,” I shuddered.
Just then, a man walked up to the table and smiled at us. At first, I’d assumed he was a waiter but when Tommy, Andy, and Will stood up to greet him, I realized that the boys actually knew him. Following the trend, I stood up as well although I had no idea what was going on.
“I’m glad that you could make it,” Andy said, shaking the man’s hand first. “Maddie, this is one of our dad’s co-workers, he’s in town so we invited him to join us for dinner.”
He greeted Tommy and Will as well and then he shook my hand, which I figured was the polite thing to do before we all sat back down. The man that they had failed to name sat beside me in the empty chair there. He wore a business suit and he had dark brown yet graying hair, looking about Tom’s age.
“So, Maddie, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from these boys,” The man said to me and I became even more weirded out. I had a bad feeling about this whole thing.
“Really?” I asked.
“Definitely,” He glanced at me and I looked away. “What have you guys been up to?”
“Andy has a girlfriend now, did Dad tell you about that?” Tommy said, motioning toward Andy as the waiter brought our food to the table and the man ordered something for himself.
“That’s surprising,” The man said. “For how long?”
“A while now,” Andy replied. “Her name is Sophie. Carter actually has a girlfriend now too. He’s been dating Maddie for the past few weeks.”
“Wow. You guys are really growing up,” The man sighed. “So, Maddie, I heard that you play soccer. Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, trying to be polite but also still extremely confused by this whole thing. I could tell that something was going on here that I didn’t know about but I couldn’t figure out what it was. “I’ve been playing for a while.”
“She’s really good too,” Will added. “The team is undefeated this year.”
“The team is undefeated every year, that isn’t because of me,” I said modestly, taking a bite of my hamburger.
“My daughter plays soccer,” He man said. “She’s a bit younger than you though.”
He looked up at me again and it kind of creeped me out so I looked away, focusing my attention on my hamburger so that I could ignore him. I wondered why he was so invested in me and my soccer career when I’d never met the man before but then, in a sudden wave of common sense, an idea popped into my head. I prayed that I was wrong.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” I told the man, looking up at him and almost pleading him with my eyes for him to tell me that he wasn’t my father. “What was it again?”
“Mike,” Andy interrupted before the man could speak. “We didn’t say that?”
He was lying, I could tell. Whenever Andy lied, he got a crease on top of his eyebrow- one of the many things that Sophie had pointed out to me about Andy that I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise but in that moment, I noticed. My heart started beating so fast that it made my stomach ache. I hoped that I wouldn’t throw up.
I closed my eyes and told myself to believe Andy. His name was Mike. Not Randy, not my father. Mike.
Oh dear God, I wished that was true.
But I knew. I could just tell. It had been so obvious since the second he showed up at the table but I just wouldn’t let myself see it. I guess I just didn’t want to believe that the guys would try to con me into having some kind of reunion with my father.
“Well, anyway,” The man went on as I chewed on my French fries that now tasted like cardboard and it almost hurt to swallow them, to push them down my constricting throat. “Soccer’s a good sport. How long have you been playing?”
“Since I could walk, my mom kind of pushed me into it,” I mumbled as I tried to swallow another fry but as it slid down my throat, I could tell that it was a mistake. I really was going to throw up. “I’ll be right back.”
I held a hand over my mouth as I stood from the table and ran through the aisle thing between the tables to get to the bathroom in time. Fortunately, there wasn’t anybody in there as I ran into the first stall. I didn’t even have time to lock it before I was bent over the toilet seat, barfing up the half of my dinner that I had already eaten.
When I felt like I was done throwing up, I flushed the toilet and then went to the rows of sinks and turned on the faucet, cupping water in my hands and tossing it into my mouth to get the vomit taste off of my tongue. This couldn’t be happening. That couldn’t be him. After so many years, my whole entire life, of wondering what this man was like, why he left, why he didn’t want me. I’d wondered all of these things many times during my lifetime, I’d thought about how I would react if I ever met him. What I would say to him, what I would do. But when it was actually happening, when all of those hypotheticals were coming true, I couldn’t take it.
I didn’t want them to come true. I didn’t ever want to meet him. I wanted to live my whole life not knowing who he was or who he turned out to be. I wanted to be ignorant toward him, to pretend like he didn’t even exist. And yet, he was sitting there with the Fishers at a dinner table where I was supposed to be.
I didn’t want to go back. I looked around the bathroom but I saw nothing- there were no windows in the bathroom that I could have climbed out of like I was hoping. I couldn’t get to the front door without getting spotted by one of the Fishers. I would have just called Carter to have him pick me up but there was no way that I could get outside without them noticing me. I realized in that moment that this was the real reason why they didn’t invite Carter because he wouldn’t have gone along with tricking me into talking to the man.
“Maddie, are you alright in there?” Will called from the other side of the women’s bathroom door.
“I’m fine,” I called out, trying my best to sound perfectly fine. I turned off the faucet and grabbed a paper towel to dry off my face before I walked out of the bathroom where Will was standing with a concerned look on his face. “Actually, you know I am feeling kind of sick. I’m just going to go sit in the car and wait for you guys to finish eating.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” He said, catching my elbow as I started to walk away. “Just come sit down again and once you eat some more, maybe you’ll feel better.”
“I’ll feel better if you tell me that his name is really Mike,” I told Will, my eyes pleading him to say that he really was a Mike. I was internally begging him to tell me that I was just being paranoid. “Tell me that he isn’t who I think he is.”
He looked around as if he could figure out what to say by looking at the wall behind me or on the ceiling and then he finally looked at me with an apologetic frown. “You weren’t supposed to know until afterwards.”
I felt like I was going to throw up again. It was one thing to be suspicious, it was a completely new thing to have it confirmed. “I’m leaving.”
“Maddie,-“ He started to say but I wasn’t having it. I was pissed. I was terrified.
“We are leaving,” I said with force, deciding that I neither knew how to get back to the house nor did I want to have to walk all the way there. I marched away from Will and then back to the table where I pulled my jacket off of the back of my chair and then repeated myself for the rest of the table to hear. “We’re leaving.”
“Are you feeling alright?” Tommy asked me, his face full of concern.
“I’m fine,” I responded mechanically as I put my jacket on over my t-shirt. “We’re leaving.”
“Maddie, what are you-“ Andy tried to say, but I wasn’t having it. They all lied to me, just to get me here. They conned me into meeting my father and I wasn’t completely sure why, but I didn’t care. It was none of their business, it was not their choice to make if I wanted to see him or not.
“I’ll be waiting in the car,” I interrupted him when nobody made a move to stand up from the table so that we could leave. I didn’t really expect them too anyway.
I started to walk away but “Mike” was up on his feet and to stop me from leaving, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Maybe you should have a drink of-“
I spun around quicker than he could finish his sentence, violently pushing his hand off of my shoulder. Feeling his grip on my shoulder made me sick. Well, even more sick than I’d already felt. “If you touch me again, I’ll break your jaw,” I snapped at him with the angriest glare I could muster before I turned and left the restaurant, finding Tommy’s car in the parking lot.
I sat in the backseat and put my ear buds in to listen to music from my phone in a pathetic attempt to forget this whole evening. When the Fishers filed into the car, I could hear them talking but it was just a buzz behind my music so I didn’t know what they were saying and they didn’t make a move to take the ear buds from my ears to force me to listen, which was a smart idea on their part.
When we got back to the house I slipped my ear buds into my pocket and hurried into the house but Andy was following me. He followed me through the living room, calling my name the whole time and asking me to stop and wait, please listen, he could explain.
Once I was halfway through the kitchen, Andy had caught up to me and he wrapped his large hand around my thin wrist to get me to stop walking away, which was probably a mistake on his part because I was so mad. I was fueled with rage at what he and his brothers had done. It was my decision to make if I wanted to meet my father. It was mine. But I didn’t want to meet him. I hated him. And Andy took that choice away from me. I spun around and before I could register what I was doing, I felt the sting on my palm and the red mark on his cheek as the sound of the slap echoed through the kitchen, shocking both of us.
I wasn’t sorry though. I clenched my hand into a fist to ease the stinging pain as I said, “You had no right to do that. No right!”
“I know,” He sighed. “But you wouldn’t have agreed to it.”
“Because I didn’t want to do it!” I shrieked hysterically. “That is my decision to make. But just because you didn’t like my decision, you tried to trick me into changing my mind or something? What did you think would happen? That I’d realize how awesome and perfect my dad is and then I’d be okay with it?”
“Look,” Andy said, his voice calm as he spoke. “He’s a really nice guy and he wanted to meet you. We’re really close to Randy and we know that he’s a good guy.”
"I don't give a shit what he is to you, he is nothing to me,” I snapped with tears bubbling in my eyes due to my amount of anger toward Andy, Tommy, and Will. I’d never been angry at them as much as I was angry at them at that moment. “You have no idea what he did.”
“And neither do you,” He countered just as Carter walked into the room but I paid no attention to him. “You should give him a chance.”
“What’s going on?” Carter wondered curiously.
“It’s none of your goddamn business whether I give him a chance or not,” I told Andy, still ignoring Carter because I was just that mad. “And yes, I do have a pretty good idea. He left. I don’t care why or how or what was happening, he left. He left me alone with my mother and you don’t know what that was like. You don’t know how many of my mother’s friends and boyfriends tried to touch me in the dark because he wasn’t there to protect me! He should have protected me! That was his fucking job but he didn’t. He was here, making a new life for himself and forgetting about me altogether while I was afraid in my own skin, praying that he’d come save me or something. So you can cram all of your ‘nice guy’ bullshit right up your ass because I’m not buying it.”
By then, I was sobbing and I hated it. I wanted to be pissed off, I didn’t want to cry.
“We were just trying to help,” Andy said, his voice quiet and wavering now. “I didn’t know any of that stuff.”
“That’s right. You didn’t know. You just thought that you knew what was best for me and that I was making the wrong decision so you had to make it for me. As if it’s any of your business if I want to see that man or not. My life is none of your business, Andy Fisher, so stay the hell out of it,” I snapped at him as I spun on my heels and walked out of the kitchen and then into the living room where Tommy and Will were sitting on the couch and when they saw me walking in, they stood up and started walking toward me.
“Hey,” Will started but I wasn’t in the mood.
“You two can go fuck yourselves,” I mumbled, pushing passed them and then up the stairs and into my room. I assumed that Carter stayed downstairs to get answers out of his brothers because he didn’t follow me upstairs right away. About fifteen minutes after my harsh tirade, though, there was a knock on my door.
By then, I’d sobered up from all of the crying but I was still in a rotten mood.
I wasn’t sure who was on the other side of the door and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t Andy or Will or Tommy so instead of just opening the door, I called out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” Carter responded.
I sighed in relief and then opened the door just a crack before asking, “Are you here to defend them?”
“No, I’m here to see if you’re okay,” He said to me.
I opened the door wider, letting him enter the room before I shut it and locked it again. “You didn’t know what they were planning?”
“No, of course I didn’t. That’s why they didn’t let me go,” He confirmed my suspicions from earlier.
I closed my eyes and then wrapped my arms around his waist, snuggling my face into the crook of his neck and I waited for him to tell me that it’d be okay.
He pulled me closer to him, kissed my forehead, and then he said those words that made me smile just a little bit despite my mood. “Everything will be okay. I promise.”
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Completely unrelated to the chapter, the picture is of Selena Gomez and Emily Osment (Paige and Maddie)