Pieces Of You by Jay McLean
3
Holden
“I’m proud of you,”Mom says, sitting opposite me at the kitchen table while we try to fake some form of normalcy over our bowls of cereal. I can’t even remember the last time we sat down for breakfast together, but it’s important to her, so I’m trying—which is all I could promise her. She’s either going through some form of a mid-life crisis, or everything that happened over the past few years is catching up to her. From the divorce and the relocation to the death of someone she considered a second father to the downfall of my best friend—a girl who my mother wishes were her child.
I get it. It’s a lot to take in, and besides my grandparents, there aren’t many people in her life. When my parents split, Mom moved us to Tennessee, where her parents were, and Dad stayed in North Carolina to continue running the family business. She has no real friends. No real life. I’m all she has. So, I sit, and I smile, and I watch her eyes cloud with tears as she looks over at me and says, “I can’t believe I have a high school senior.”
I want to roll my eyes. I don’t. Instead, I plaster on a smile. “It’s crazy, right?”
“It seems like only yesterday I pushed you out of my vagina and held your conehead, alien body for the first time.”
A chuckle bubbles out of me. This is the mom I know—the one who raised me. “That’s not gross at all, Ma,” I murmur.
Her lips kick up at the corners as she pushes her bowl to the side, replacing it with the felt mat displaying the half-completed jigsaw puzzle we’d started a few weeks ago. I can’t remember a time in my life when puzzle pieces didn’t take over a section of the kitchen table. It had always been our thing—Mom and me. When I was a kid, it was our after-dinner activity, and when Mia wasn’t around, or Dad was busy working, we’d settle at the table with a hot chocolate each and spend hours focused on hundreds of pieces of tiny cardboard shapes.
My eyes catch on a completely blue piece, and I move it to the part of the puzzle where it’s nothing but the sky. It connects perfectly, and I smile when Mom says, “I hate that you can find them so fast.”
“It’s not a competition.”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Says the most competitive boy I know.”
I shrug, down the rest of my cereal, and get up to dump the bowl in the sink. “I have to go. Coach set up a morning weights session.” I drop a kiss on the top of her head. “Maybe you’re just getting old, Ma. You should get your eyes checked.”
Gasping, she holds a hand to her chest in mock horror. “I’m thirty-four, you smartass.” When she stands, I can’t help but look away. Even beneath her robe, it’s clear how much weight she’s lost over the past couple of months. Her cheeks are hollow, dark circles are under her eyes. She’s tired and worn, and maybe even a little broken. I’d never seen her like this. Even during and after the divorce, she’d been a pillar of strength. Not just for herself but everyone around her. I hate this version of her. And the problem… the thing I’ll never admit to anyone but myself… I don’t think I have the strength to fix us both. “I told your dad I’d get a photo of you on your first day,” she tells me, grabbing a sheet of paper off the kitchen counter. It’s one of those lame first-day signs kids in elementary school hold up so their doting parents can share it all over social media for friends and family to coo over.
I hold back another eye roll, force another smile. “Sure.”
After collecting my shit, I stand on the front porch, the stupid sign held out in front of me, and wait not-so-patiently for Mom to take all the pictures she thinks she needs. She sends them to Dad, and after I promise to call him, she waves from the front yard while I reverse out of the driveway, the speakers in my truck already sounding with a ringtone.
Dad answers the call after a few rings with a single word: “Son.”
“Dad.”
“Ma’s still making you take those pictures, huh?”
I shrug, even though he can’t see me. “It makes her happy,” I mumble.
Dad’s silent for a beat. “She sure could use a little happiness right now.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know how to. My dad is a good man, was a great husband, and is a phenomenal father. The divorce didn’t come from the usual reasons: constant arguing, financial problems, or infidelity. There was, however, another man.
A man I hate.
“How are you, son?” Dad asks after seconds of my silence.
“Good,” I lie. “How’s the farm?”
“Great.” He’s lying, too. I spent most of the summer at the farm going through the numbers, and there’s not a single piece of evidence that things are good. He must sense what I’m thinking because he adds, “You just worry about taking care of your mother and getting through your senior year, okay?”
I heave out a sigh, let my shoulders drop with the burden of his and everyone else’s expectations. “Yes, sir.”
* * *
There’sno denying that I’ve always had a pretty decent life. Even with my parents’ divorce and moving out of state, it didn’t affect me as much as it probably should have. Back home, we lived too far away from any schools that made the commute worthwhile, so I was home-schooled my entire life—right until high school when we up and moved. My best friend, Mia, was my only classmate, and my mom was our teacher. From sunrise to sundown, wherever I was, Mia was, too.
I never would’ve thought that my moving away would break her more than it broke me.
We were both raised on farms. Her grandfather had a dairy farm, and my dad took over Eastwood Nursery. Along with my mom’s “fuck what people think” attitude, I was raised on hard labor that involved heavy machinery and even heavier lifting. So, it’s no real surprise that I got a lot of attention when I first stepped foot in public school freshman year. I was a fourteen-year-old boy in a grown-ass man’s body. It didn’t take long for the girls to notice me. And then the coaches. I’m not all that great at any one sport—unless sex counted as a sport—but I was good enough. I don’t love organized team activities, but I appreciate a good game.
I guess you could say I like challenges.
Physical.
Mental.
As long as I win.
Add that to my height, my size, and here I am: Monday morning, the first day of senior year, doing what I’d grown up doing—lifting heavy shit. Only now, the bags of sods are replaced with barbells, and I’m not on acres and acres of land. I’m in the school’s weight room, one headphone in, ignoring everything else around me. This is my zone, my sanctuary. The one place in this suburban shitshow where I can think my own thoughts, let my pulse pound to its own rhythm.
It’s where I can get lost and feel found, all in a single exhale.
“Two more, and you’re good,” Dean says, spotting me while I finish the last set of reps on the bench press. Besides Mia, Dean’s the only other person I’d consider an actual friend. Sure, I’m always around a ton of people who know my name, and I know theirs, but those relationships are all superficial.
Isn’t that what high school is?
If I needed someone to talk to, to dump what little emotional baggage I have, I’d call Mia.
If I needed bail money because I was pulled over while having inappropriate things done to me, Dean’s my guy.
To most people, Dean’s the quiet, respectful, people-pleaser type, and I… am not. If it weren’t for football, we’d probably never have crossed paths. He keeps me grounded while I get him high. On paper, we don’t make sense. In reality, paper doesn’t mean shit.
“All right, ladies, you’re done for the day!” Coach Griffith yells, and I push myself to the edge of physical pain twice before calling it quits.
Chest and triceps burning, I sit up, towel the sweat off my brow, and look toward Coach, where our teammates are already huddling around him. “I feel like you’ve gotten weaker,” Dean says as we go to join the rest of the team.
I shrug. I didn’t work as much as I usually do over the summer, so yeah, he’s probably right.
Coach eyes us both, glaring because we’re taking our sweet ass time getting to him. He’s already losing his patience with us, and the season hasn’t even started. “You’re all out of shape,” is the first thing he says. “You’ve had all damn summer to get your asses straight and—” he cuts himself off, huffing a frustrated breath. “We might have a shot this year, gentlemen,” he announces, then pointedly glares at my friend beside me. “Especially since Dean’s girl dumped him.”
A united hiss fills the room, and all eyes go to Dean. I don’t know how he’s kept the whole breakup a secret, but good for him. Three weeks ago, he’d called… and called and called and called, and no matter how many times I rejected it, he kept calling.
I was still in North Carolina, trying to keep Mia in one piece, and when I finally felt comfortable enough to pull away for a few minutes, I called him back. He told me that Bethany—the girl he’d been with since middle school—had broken up with him. He was a mess; it was evident in his voice. A part of me wished I could be there for him, but there was no way I was leaving Mia’s side. Or my mom’s. Especially since Mia’s dad was the only one there to take care of her… and I didn’t trust that motherfucker as far as I could spit.
Dean didn’t tell me why he and Bethany broke up, and he still hasn’t. A couple of weeks later, when I got back into town, I took him out and filled his bloodline with enough weed to help him forget. It was the only thing I could think to do. I’d never been in his situation. Never even cared enough for a girl that I thought about her when she wasn’t around. Love… love, at this age, is bullshit. It’s deceitful and vicious and cruel, and it exposes the weakest parts of the strongest people. And I’ve been witness to the destruction love can cause too many fucking times that I want nothing to do with it.
“Well, it’s out now,” I say, adjusting the strap of my gym bag as Dean and I walk toward our lockers. “Honestly, I’m surprised Bethany hasn’t told everyone.”
“I guess it’s not something either of us wanted to announce.” Dean shifts to the side to avoid a rushing student walking with his head down. “She has her reasons. Trust me,” he mumbles, stopping in front of the same lockers we had last year, side by side—the same way you can generally find us when we’re not in class.
“I give it to lunch until every one of these assholes is talking about it.”
“I give it five minutes,” he scoffs.
He opens his locker while I lean against mine. “You still haven’t told me what happened.” Not that I really care. It’s just that Dean and Bethany had that whole picture-perfect, destined for eternity thing going for them. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. My mom had that with Mia’s dad, and the fact that Mia and I aren’t siblings speaks for itself.
“It’s just weird,” I add with a shrug. And it’s not like Bethany and I are friends. At best, we’re acquaintances by association. Personally, I don’t have a problem with her. What she thinks of me, however, is questionable. I’m pretty sure she only tolerates me because I’m friends with her boyfriend.
Ex-boyfriend.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean says through a sigh, his eyebrows raised as he shifts his tired eyes to mine.
“Got it.” I press my lips tight and push off my locker to open it—accidentally bumping into something behind me.
Or someone.
I spin quickly, ready to apologize, but the girl’s words cut me off. “Who the fuck taught you to stand?”
Well, well. If it isn’t the teenage grandma from yesterday. Her words do not match her appearance. Neither do those hazel eyes currently burning with fury as she adjusts her overly modest clothes. When she flicks those eyes to me, a wise-ass crack forms, but before I can get it out, Dean says, “Jameson?”
Grandma Jameson.
Suits her: checkered skirt past her knees, blinding white blouse, and a bullshit attitude.
Jameson’s gaze shifts from me to Dean, her eyes widening slightly before she lets out a disbelieving scoff. Ignoring him, she focuses on me again. “You’re in my way.”
“Jamie,” Dean repeats, trying to get her attention.
Jamie reaches up, grasps my shoulders, and not so gently moves me to the side so she can access the locker beside mine. Without another word she opens it, shoves her bag inside.
“Jamie!” Dean again, and I should really ask how the hell he knows this girl because she sure as shit doesn’t run in our circle. “Are you just going to pretend like I don’t exist?”
She doesn’t respond, and I can’t see her reaction because her locker door is blocking her from view.
“Yo, Grandma! Turn up your hearing aid!” I quip, but no one laughs. Well, shit. I thought it was funny.
A moment later, her locker door slams shut. “I can hear just fine,” she seethes through clenched teeth. And then she steps past me and toward Dean, and before I can blink, she’s slapping a sticky note on his forehead with a single word in thick black marker: LIAR.