Pretty Reckless by L.J. Shen

I breathe your name

Hoping to fill my lungs

With more than just air

The ER doctor unwraps my hand from all the ice packs and observes the red-blue thing that’s swollen to five times its usual fucking size.

“How’d it happen?” The middle-aged, white-haired man scrunches his nose. I know, asshole. It looks nasty, but you ain’t a sight for sore eyes, either.

Via flinches at the question because she already knows the answer.

How did it happen? Let’s see. This morning, I woke up with my dick still smelling like the girl I love. Instead of going to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take a piss, I launched straight into her room to wake her up with an orgasm and my face between her legs, only to find out she wasn’t there anymore.

The stack of suitcases by her door was gone, and so was the girl herself. The only things she left behind were her new and ugly drywall, the sea glass necklace I gave her, and a rusty, tin heart turned human, which she manages to somehow, against all the odds, break a thousand fucking times, over and over again, to a point where I’m still not sure how it is beating.

“He was…he got angry. Lost his cool and punched a wall.”

“A concrete wall?” the doctor asks. Is he a wallanitarian or something? Why does he give a fuck about the wall?

Via nods. I still hate her, but no one else was in the house to drive me to the ER. I sure as hell couldn’t drive myself with the state of my hand, and now it’s pretty clear that I’ve broken a few fingers by the way they hang off my hand. Perfect timing. A day after the last game of the season.

The doctor is talking, explaining to me what happens next. I sit on the white bed in the white room in a hospital that looks more like a fancy hotel and don’t even pretend to listen. My thoughts drift to the house I’m coming back to. A house that is going to feel so empty without her.

Twelve hours later, we’re discharged, and my hand looks like it’s gloved and ready for boxing. When we pull in front of the Followhills’ mansion, I don’t want to go inside. But I don’t want to be that pussy-ass broken guy who can’t deal with the fact his girl just doesn’t want him anymore.

The minute we get in, Melody runs toward us. Her face looks like what my wrapped hand did a few hours ago. Red and swollen.

“Where’ve you been?” She charges at both of us. She’s obviously back from the airport, which means it’s done.

Good, Skull Eyes. Fucking perfect. Watch me rip out all my shirts and walk around shirtless for the remainder of my life.

I’m so tired of the lies and the secrets that I straight up walk past her and open the fridge, taking out a pitcher of iced tea with my healthy hand.

“When I found out your daughter left, even though she promised me she wouldn’t, I got a little creative as far as how anger management goes. In other news, you probably need some work done on your garage wall.”

“Penn.” She gallops toward me, shaking her head. Via is retreating to her room, still staring at us, wide-eyed. She knows better than to assume I’ll fess up to any emotion while she’s around. That shit between us will be much harder to fix than the wall.

As soon as Via’s not around, Mel hugs me. I let her, solely because she is partly Daria in DNA, and I’m a glutton for punishment. I can still smell her daughter on her clothes, which doesn’t make any sense. Knowing Daria, she didn’t hug her mother goodbye today.

“Where is she, Mel?”

She shakes her head in the crook of her neck.

“She doesn’t want anyone to know. I’m sorry. She wouldn’t even let me come with her to help her settle in.”

“But she let Jaime?” I ask.

She is nodding now.

“Did you get your closure?” I want her to say no. I want her to tell me that I’m not the only one here feeling like every breath is a fucking nail jammed straight into my lungs. If this is what love feels like, it’s complete bullshit. I want my money back because Shakespeare was right all along. True love truly sucks ass.

“No.” She bursts into tears. “She barely even told me goodbye. Did you?”

“Not by a fucking long shot.”

The next few weeks are pure torture. The days crawl, time slithers on the walls of a house that’s not empty, but not alive, either. Somehow, all those days add up to a month without Daria. A month in which Jaime comes back, acts like nothing is wrong, and every time he gets a call and it’s from her, he closes the door to his bedroom behind me and shoots me a don’t-even-think-about-it look.

Regretfully, I’m starting to fucking lose it. After caving in to modern society, I open Instagram and Twitter accounts only to find out that Daria is officially not active on any of them. She hasn’t deleted her Instagram, but she doesn’t post there anymore, so the old pictures of her with her cheer team and friends keep me going. I stare at them for hours every day as I do constructive, emotionally healthy things, like figuring out what time zone she is in by making a sheet with all the hours she calls Jaime and Mel.

Yes. About a month after she went away, Daria caved in and started speaking to Mel, too. Bailey always talks as though she’s been keeping in touch with her, too, so I guess it’s just the Scullys Daria wants out of her life, and I can’t even fucking blame her. We stormed into her life and ruined it completely in less than six months. If there were an Olympic medal event for being the biggest cunts, Via and I would have been the pride of this nation.

If my calculations are correct, Daria is still somewhere in the US. She calls very early in the mornings or in the early evenings, which gives me East Coast vibes, but it might be Midwest, too. Heck, maybe she just likes to get up super fucking early, and she is around the block. No one knows. No one will tell me. And I’d be climbing the fucking walls if I hadn’t fractured four of the five fingers on my left hand.

One evening, Jaime sits me down and tells me that we’re going to Notre Dame to check out the facilities, flirt, and say yes. He booked us both first-class tickets and all. I guess that means he is over the fact I had my tongue and dick in his daughter’s privates. Ain’t he a fucking champ.

“I don’t want any illicit behavior while we’re on campus. I catch you smoking, drinking, or fucking—simultaneously or individually—I swear you’ll be finding a different sponsor to subsidize your next four years because it’s not going to be me.” He waves his finger in my face.

I push the brochures across the coffee table and nod.

“Clear, sir.”

“Jesus.” He flings himself back on the couch, throwing an arm over his face. “You’re about as lively as a puppy that’s been run over by every truck in the state. At least try to pretend that you’re here.”

“I’m here, sir.”

“But you’re not present.”

What do I say to that? This bitch is Hare Krishna now?

“And stop calling me sir. You’re like a son to me.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that, sir, since I feel very strongly about your daughter and not in a sisterly way.”

He exhales, levels up, and slaps the coffee table to grab my attention. I’m still the same lax, drooped-over-the-couch motherfucker I was a second ago. Life just seems to have an aftertaste of nothing when Daria is not around, and whoever said time heals was given LSD or something. Because it wasn’t time that healed them. The more time that passes, the more I want to rip my own fucking skin from my body and let my heart pack a suitcase and go looking for her. It doesn’t escape me that I was crushed about Via—but never had the balls to actually go and find her. With Daria, it’s a different story. The Followhills can beg all they want. Come graduation, I’m packing my bag, breaking the piggy bank, and going to look for her.

“Penn,” he warns. I throw an actual pen—the one I’ve been using the past ten minutes to write all the shit about our bullshit trip down—and stand.

“Just give me her number. I won’t call. I’ll text.”

“You’re just making it harder. If you truly have feelings for her, you will let her have her way and not contact her, not go against her wishes while she’s trying to heal.”

“Like you did with Mel, right?” I chuckle bitterly, shaking my head. I make a beeline to my room, but he stands and raises his voice to me. For the first time, ever.

“Penn Scully.”

I turn around, slow-clapping him.

“Whoa. Escalation. You just used my full name. Not all of it, of course. You don’t know my middle name. You’re not my real dad, after all.”

I’m just being a double douche with a side of jerk. I don’t have a middle name. My mother never fucking bothered. And the truth is, even if I had one, my biological dad wouldn’t know it. If he knows the color of my eyes, then I’m the Pope.

“Stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself, Penn. She’s the one who has to handle life away from her house, her parents, everything she knows, and start from scratch,” Jaime’s voice booms.

“How is she doing?” I throw the question I’ve been asking for an entire month at him once again. “And please spare me the bullshit answer of ‘she’s handling it.’ Daria doesn’t handle things. She either slays or she crumples. She has no middle ground, and we both know it.”

And fuck, did I love it when she slayed and played with me. She was a sweet torture I’d go through all over again, even knowing how it’s going to end. She doesn’t want me. She made it perfectly clear.

“She’s dealing with it.” Jaime grins devilishly, sticking it to me, and his eyes are mad, sparkling bright blue. Like Daria’s when she’s in her element. “Now, are you going to get your head out of your ass and soldier through this like a man, or are you going to fall apart like a boy?”

“Only if you do something for me.”

“I think I’ve done quite enough for you, boy.” He throws his head back and laughs. But I’m dead serious. When he sees that, he stops laughing and rolls his eyes. Again—like Daria. It’s only now when I look for stuff to remind me of her that I’m beginning to see how alike she is to her parents. How can she possibly think she is an awful person when she is made of two people who took in totally vindictive, awful teenage strays when no one else would?

“You don’t want me to see her? Talk to her? Know where she is? Fine. But I want you to give her this.” I grab my backpack and take out a leather journal, identical to the one Daria had. It wasn’t by coincidence that we have the same journal. Melody gave it to Via the day she gave Daria hers, four and a half years ago. I think—though I’ll never ask to confirm—she wanted both girls to reach the same realization and try to bridge shit together. Much good it did Melody. Via bailed, and Daria went off the freaking rails. I don’t know why I kept the untouched journal. It just seemed like a waste to throw away something that seemed expensive, being leather bound and all. I started writing in it only four years later, the night my mother died, and I saw Daria for the first time in years.

Writing so I could remember.

Writing so I could let go and forget.

“What is this?” Jaime frowns at the journal. I think he thinks it’s the original one Daria had. But that shit burned to the ground with the snake pit.

“Some stuff I wrote for her. Don’t read it.”

“You know I will.” He laughs.

“Whatever, asshole,” I groan. “So, will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Send it to her!” I roar. He is playing with me, and I fucking hate it.

Jaime looks up at the ceiling and pretends to think about it. “If you start acting like a human being and not like a zombie, maybe.”

We shake on it, and for the first time since I’ve met him, my shake is harder than his.