Adam’s house was several miles from the beach. I was glad for that, because I was getting sick of looking at the ocean and dusting sand out of my shoes.
I missed home. As much as I wanted to be with Bray, I missed the summer river parties and the southern lakes. I missed my mom’s fried chicken on Friday nights. I missed hanging out in a friend’s backyard with a beer and listening to the crickets and frogs with their strangely calming melodious racket during long summer nights. And the fireflies. Always the fireflies. But what I missed the most was my quiet life, the one where I went to work every day and came home to my own apartment and could kick back and watch television. I didn’t have to worry about anything except maybe Mitchell. But he was fixable. This situation, I knew, wasn’t.
As I sat on the back porch of Adam’s house in Panama City, listening to Tate get upset while on that phone call, I pictured being home. I wondered—every single day, in fact—what life would’ve been like if that night at the river had never happened. I thought of Bray and how she came back into my life, and how everything was so perfect, the way I had always imagined it. A part of me couldn’t help but blame her for how everything ended up… destroyed. I felt guilty for thinking that way, not only because it was half my fault, but because I didn’t want to feel that way about her at all. I loved her so much. But I had begun to feel a lot of anger and resentment toward her, too. I… OK, I started to realize that Bray, despite all that I loved about her, was ruining her life and selfishly taking me down with her. And my tolerance for forgiveness was beginning to fade.
It was my fault as much as it was hers, but I had tried on several occasions to talk some sense into her. I tried to get her to go back. I knew I never should’ve let her leave in the first place. But I was weak in that moment, standing next to Jana’s body with Bray next to me shattered and lost and afraid and in so much pain. It was a f**king mistake to run with her. I know. I f**king know it more than anyone. But I couldn’t take back what I had done. All I could do was try to fix it along the way. But Bray fought me at every turn and for that I began to feel resentment.
“Listen, man,” Tate said into his cell phone pressed to his ear. “I’ll get it, all right? No—No, just hear me out. I’ll bring it myself. I can leave first thing in the morning after the bank opens and I can be in Corpus Christi by tomorrow night. Yeah. This is my cell phone number. Don’t call Caleb about anything. No, just let me deal with it.” He began to nod heavily as if wanting the call be over with already. “I know, man. Do me a favor and don’t deal with him anymore.” A few more nods and broken sentences and he hung up. I saw his teeth grinding as the cell phone disappeared in his fist. I thought he was going to smash it on the concrete beam holding up the porch roof, but he calmed himself at the last second.
“I know it’s none of my business, Tate, but why are you still covering for him? Sounds like some serious shit.”
He sat down heavily in the empty wrought-iron chair. The cell phone clanked against the matching table as he tossed it carelessly on top. He ran both hands over the top of his head and let out a long, aggravated breath.
“And why are you covering for her?”
His question shocked me motionless. I don’t think anything moved other than my eyes for a long while. It wasn’t the manner in which he said it—there wasn’t any bitterness to his tone—but that he said it at all. Because he knew more about me and Bray than I assumed he did.
“Maybe I’m out of line,” Tate went on, “or I have no idea what I’m talking about, but in my opinion”—he pointed at me—“I think you’d do anything for that girl.”
“I guess I would,” I admitted.
“The question is, how far would you go?”
I looked away and thought about it. Then I turned back and said, “Probably as far as you’d go for your brother.”
Tate nodded, slouched down a little in the chair with his long legs splayed out in front of him, his fingers locked over his stomach. “Then you just answered your own question. Why are you two running, anyway?”
“Who said we’re running from anything?”
Tate smiled faintly and shook his head. “It’s kind of obvious. Even though your car and your shit was stolen—which, by the way, you never got the police involved in—I haven’t seen either one of you try to call anyone back in Indiana. No Hey Mom, we’re doin’ great, or Yeah, bro, we’ve been partying with this masochist pothead and his ass**le brother, but we’re still alive.” He laughed and then shook his finger at me. “You’re not homeless—you’re both too groomed and healthy for that. What did you do, Elias? Or rather, what did she do?”
I looked away from his eyes and began staring at a porch light on the other side of the street.
Tate raised his back from the chair and leaned over, letting his hands dangle between his knees. “No disrespect, but your girlfriend, fiancée, whatever, she’s a loose cannon. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great girl from what I know about her. But she seems unstable.”
I wanted to punch him, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I knew what he was saying wasn’t far off the mark. So I sucked it up and left it alone.
He leaned back in the chair again and locked his hands behind his head. “I guess sometimes good people do bad things, almost always in the name of love.” He laughed lightly. “But after all is said and done, is what we do really ‘bad’ or just necessary?”
Tate surprised me the more I got to know him. I wondered how he got where he was when he had such a strong hold on his own life despite all the partying he did, but then I realized that he and I weren’t really so different.
“It’s all right if you two don’t want to go to Texas,” he said. “It’s probably better that you don’t, anyway. Maybe Adam will let you stay here until I get back.”
Then suddenly he added as if an afterthought, “Well, whatever you’re covering up for her, by now you’re probably in as much trouble as she is.”
What just happened? I thought as I stared right through Tate. Just minutes ago I was full of resentment and had started to envision my next conversation with Bray. I was going to lay down the law and tell her that I was going home and she was going with me if I had to drag her back kicking and screaming. But out of nowhere, the resentment was gone. I now realized Tate was in a similar situation with Caleb, and I wasn’t so alone in my plight. I wasn’t the only guy running around doing stupid things for a person that he happened to love. Maybe I took Tate’s words and subconsciously twisted them into advice, because deep down I was struggling to find justification for what I had done and what I continued to do.