In Pieces, page 4
And I don’t even know why. It shouldn’t even matter. He’s just an ex-boyfriend. It’s been three years. We were only kids…or at least I was.
But no matter how much time has passed, how much pain endured, you never forget your first heartbreak. And no matter how much you heal, you never fully recover.
But then something else strikes me, and I fix my glare on David. “You knew?”
He rubs the back of his neck, looking decidedly sheepish. “Yeah, kid.”
And I explode. “I’m. Not. A. Fucking. Kid!” I don’t care that heads turn our way, or that David frowns so hard his brow seems to swallow his eyes. “Damn it, David! You don’t have to barge into my conversations, or warn guys away from me like I’m your helpless little sister! You’re not my brother! You’re just my brother’s friend, and you barely even know me.” It isn’t true, and we both know it, but I have a point to make. David doesn’t know what’s best for me, and he doesn’t get to control my life. “I’m not a child that needs to be coddled or lied to!”
He recoils like I’ve slapped him. Well, good! “Beth—”
I turn and walk away from him. I’m a little drunk, and a lot aggravated, and I just want to get the hell out of here. I let my anger feed me, consuming my thoughts, mentally cursing David. I have to. Because if I don’t overreact, if there’s room beyond the anger, then I will have to process Brian’s presence, and I really don’t want to do that right now.
I storm through the crowded house and out the front door. I text Lani that I’m leaving, and get about three feet off the front porch before I’m snatched back by a huge hand on my arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” David practically snarls.
“Back to my dorm!” I wrench from his grip.
He jumps in my way and gets in my face. “You don’t walk home alone. Ever.”
“I can take care of myself!” We square off. Rationally I know he’s right, but I’ve dug my heels in so deep I’m afraid I’m stuck.
“Dicknose!” David shouts.
Huh?
Some kid appears by his side as if summoned by royalty. He looks attentively up at David, who’s casually lighting a cigarette.
“Pledge task—walk Beth home. Keep your fucking hands to yourself and your eyes off her ass,” David orders.
“For God’s sake.” I turn on my heel and leave.
Great. Now my babysitter has assigned a pledge to do his duty for him.
He shuffles up to me. “Hi. I’m—”
“Dicknose. I got it.”
His steps falter. “Well, that’s my pledge name. But my actual name is Grant.”
“Well I don’t need a babysitter, Grant, so why don’t you scurry on back to the frat house,” I spit.
He hesitates. “Uh…I can’t really do that.”
I suspected as much. I increase my pace, and, thankfully, he doesn’t try to catch up, but I’m continuously aware of his footsteps echoing about five feet behind me the whole way home.
It’s less than a ten-minute walk, and while there are a few other students around, Thursday is a notorious party night, and most people are out, not hanging around the dorm. I have to reluctantly admit I’m glad I didn’t leave alone, after all. Well, to myself anyway. To Dicknose, I only turn and glare, silently dismissing him. He does have kind of a long nose, and I have to suppress a giggle at the image my mind conjures up.
“I uh—should probably walk you to your door,” he mumbles uncertainly.
Not going to happen. I’m perfectly capable of walking the fifty yards through the small quad at Standman Hall. “I’m not going inside yet. I want to have a cigarette,” I lie.
He shuffles from foot to foot. “That’s okay. I’ll wait.”
I sigh in exasperation. I don’t even actually have a cigarette. “Look, I just want to be alone, okay?”
He doesn’t move, and every moment that passes, I grow more and more irritated.
“Okay, Dicknose. You have three seconds to leave. After that, I’m going to start screaming, and well, people are going to assume what they’re going to assume, and then—”
He splays his palms in surrender. “All right, Jeez.” He scowls at me like I’m more trouble than I’m worth, which was, of course, my intention. “But if Brother March asks, I walked you to your door, okay?”
“Totally,” I agree, and off Dicknose goes.
I blow out a long breath. I’m used to overprotection, and I usually accept it in stride. But not here, and not from David. There’s a reason I left home for college, and I’m done being the depressed girl that everyone has to keep an extra eye on. How will I ever assert my independence with David watching over me like some kind of misguided security detail?
And now Brian is here.
Here, of all places. But why?
Certainly he hasn’t sought me out, or I’m sure he would have just called or texted at the very least. But he had to know I’m here, right?
Three years ago the thought would have thrilled me. Now it’s just confusing and disconcerting. And actually kind of annoying.
I make my way along the walkway that bisects the courtyard at the center of Standman that passes for a quad. The five red brick buildings set in a U sit quietly in the lamplight. I don’t pass a single soul on my way to the door.
But I’m wrong, and I startle when I spot someone in the shadows of one of the narrow alleyways that separate each building. Well, I spot the glowing cherry of his cigarette hanging in his hand by his side anyway, and it’s only when I’m reaching in my purse for my security key fob that he takes a pull, the small light source illuminating his features just enough to make out the face of that glarey stranger from my abnormal psych class.
Why is he lurking in alleyways like a freaking serial killer? And why is he still glaring at me? A shiver of unease rolls through me, and suddenly I wonder if he’s more than just strange—if he’s actually dangerous.
I rush through the door and make sure it closes securely behind me. At least he can’t get in here—dorm security and all. I’ll never admit it to David but, for the first time, I consider that maybe having a bodyguard on campus isn’t the end of the world, after all.
Chapter Four
Beth
Age twelve
I hurry down the steps of our synagogue, rushing around the corner, and behind the nook where the kids who think they’re too cool for Hebrew school smoke cigarettes during the one break we get during class. I kick the few littered snack bags and cigarette butts out of the way, clearing myself a spot before sliding down along the brick façade and hugging my knees to my chest.
I choke back a sob. I’ve been coming here almost every Sunday since kindergarten, but the class is half empty now, kids dropping like flies as soon as their bar or bat mitzvah passes. We’re all supposed to be here for the Jewish education, but it’s the worst kept secret in Port Woodmere that nine times out of ten, our parents only send us because Temple Chaverim requires it to hold the coming-of-age ceremony here.
Most of the girls have already stopped showing up, having had their bat mitzvahs at twelve, as per tradition. But I stopped coming for a while after my dad left, leaving me with well over a year to make up before the rabbi would agree to schedule my official foray into womanhood. It was my father, after all, who’d pushed our religious education, considering my mother was raised calling herself Protestant but practicing nothing. Which happens to be the exact reason I just ran out of our Hebrew lesson nearly half an hour early: if my mother had been born Jewish, Ira Traeger wouldn’t have just called me a shiksa, and told the whole class that, as a non-Jew, I shouldn’t be allowed to be bat mitzvahed at all.
I swipe at my flushed cheeks with my knuckles, resenting my tears as much as the words that caused them. I wish I was tougher. The kind of girl immune to the sting of words. My best friend, Darcy, who stopped coming last May after her mildly inappropriate Game of Thrones themed bat mitzvah—the one that had half the town calling her parents’ judgment into question—would have simply laughed it off if Ira Traeger had insulted her, or perhaps rolled her eyes and slung a far wittier insult right back. Under no circumstances would she have fled the classroom, slamming her knee on the doorframe on her way thanks to her tear-blurred sight.
I rub my palm just under the hem of my denim shorts, where the bright red, vertical ellipse promises a telltale bruise by morning. It really hurts, but it’s not the physical pain that crushes me.
I sniffle. I wouldn’t even be in that class with that jerk if it weren’t for my father’s choice to run away rather than face his mistakes.
I’m so lost in my own self-pity that I don’t recognize the waft of cigarette smoke until it’s too close to run or hide, and I sit here, frozen, as the figure too tall to be another thirteen-year-old emerges from around the corner.
My stomach flips as he comes into view, his cocky swagger viscerally familiar. Even backlit and hidden in shadow, I recognize David.
“B?”
I should get up. I should dry my cheeks. I should, I should, I should…I don’t. “Hi,” I croak.
David’s brow furrows, and he drops his cigarette and stubs it beneath his sneaker. I expect him to help me up, but he crouches down instead, bringing himself to my level. “Who do I have to kill?” he asks, only half kidding, and magically, a small laugh bubbles its way up from my chest. That’s where David lives. Right inside my chest, bouncing around the four chambers of my heart, where he made himself at home the very first time I laid eyes on him at one of Sammy’s soccer games.
I avert my gaze and shake my head, not wanting him to see my vulnerability, even if rationally I realize it’s too late for that. Another rogue tear slides down my nose, but he gets to it before I do. “You could tell me why you’re upset, kid. Or I can go in there”—he nods to the building—“and interrogate your little classmates until someone talks.”
I crack a smile, but I keep my eyes trained on my Uggs.
David nudges my chin so that I meet his gaze. He raises his brows. “I’m not above enhanced interrogation techniques. Or flat-out fucking torture, for that matter.”
I shrug. “I’m just being stupid,” I admit.
His mouth twists into a lopsided smirk, but it’s a sad smirk—a skeptical one. “I find that hard to believe.”
I finally really look at him, taking in his sweat-damp T-shirt and loose basketball shorts. “What are you doing here?” I don’t think I’ve seen him at temple since his own bar mitzvah, save the rare high holiday he might be guilted into escorting his mother to.
“Picking you up, kid,” he says like it should be obvious. “I was playing ball with Cap and your mom was giving us a ride back to your house. We told her we’d wait here until you’re done so she didn’t have to make two trips. I just told her I needed to take a piss so I could sneak in a smoke.” He nods to the forgotten cigarette on the ground. “So, now that I am here, are you going to tell me what has you in tears at fucking Hebrew school?”
I sigh, pushing down the nerves that roll my stomach at admitting my real concerns. “Did you know I’m not really Jewish?” I ask David. Has Sammy ever talked about this? Does he even know it?
David cocks a brow. “Of course you are.”
I shake my head. “I thought we were, but…Ira Traeger said it goes by your mother. That if your dad isn’t Jewish, but your mom is, then you’re Jewish. But if your mom isn’t, even if your dad is…”
“That’s motherfucking bullshit.” David is adamant. I love his fierceness, and I love his expletives. I need them right now.
“But I asked Morah Biederman, and she said—”
“Who gives a fuck what that mean old hag said? Who gives a fuck what Ira fucking Traeger said, for that matter? You were raised Jewish, you want to be Jewish, so you’re Jewish,” he shrugs. Simple as that.
But it isn’t.
“But technically, you know, I’m not.”
David watches me thoughtfully, and it’s unnerving. “B, what’s this really about?”
I swallow. What is this about? It’s about me thinking I was something my whole life, only to learn I don’t know what I am.
I sigh. “I don’t know. I guess…It used to be so important to my dad, you know? The whole Hebrew school thing. He was so excited at Sammy’s bar mitzvah, so proud…” I trail off. He was—at first. Until he drank himself angry and shoved my mother into the wall in the bridal suite of the Port Woodmere Country Club.
David tucks the curtain of hair that’s fallen over my cheek—the one I’m hiding under—behind my ear. “Your dad didn’t leave because of you. And you don’t need to get bat mitzvahed to try and impress him. If he’s not already proud of you then he’s a fucking idiot.”
I stare at the cracked concrete under my heels, imagining the crack growing and widening until it’s too big to cross. Until I’m completely isolated. It’s an appropriate metaphor. The more time that passes without contact from my father, the further away he feels. Even if I know he’s just across the river in Manhattan. But every day he’s not a part of my life makes it that much less likely he ever will be again. And maybe part of me did want to pursue a bat mitzvah to please him. Maybe subconsciously I thought he might actually show up. That I’d get him back.
My eyes well with tears and I focus on keeping them leveed. The last thing I want is to cry in front of David. David is toughness and fight, profanity and crude comments. David is rebellion. David is not tears. And I don’t want to be the weepy little girl to his badassery.
“Want to see something?” he says cryptically.
The knowing smirk stretched across his face gets my heart beating faster. I nod.
David reaches up over his shoulders and grabs his T-shirt by the back of the neckline before yanking the whole thing up over his head. My heart rate skyrockets. Where David was once lanky and trim, he is filling out in a very grown-up kind of way. Light hair adorns his chest and lean muscles bulge as he moves. He sits back on his haunches and twists around to show me his back, and my eyes zero in on a white piece of bandage over his right shoulder.
I gasp. “You got another one?” David is only fourteen. He shouldn’t be getting tattoos that will decorate his skin for the rest of his life. Fourteen is no age to make permanent decisions. It’s not even legal! And beyond that, it’s against our religion. His religion.
“Peel back the tape,” he whispers.
My stomach flutters. I swallow down my nerves as my fingers touch his hot skin, slipping beneath the sticky adhesive until I can slide down the gauze.
It’s absolutely beautiful.
His skin has already healed over the intricate black Hebrew letters.
My fingers automatically glide over the ink. Chai. Life. “You’re not supposed to get tattoos, nice Jewish boy,” I whisper. “They won’t bury you in a Jewish cemetery.” I repeat the warning we’ve been told all our lives to ward us away from the horrible sin of tattoos.
But why does something so wrong look so freaking beautiful?
His mouth quirks up. “But I’m not that nice—you know that, B. And I’m not actually a Jewish boy, either.”
I blink at him.
David sighs. “It’s ironic, yeah? Tribute to a religion that bans them. Like it does me. And you—if you buy into Ira Traeger’s bullshit.”
“But your mom’s Jewish,” I remind him.
David’s Adam’s apple rolls with his swallow, and it surprises me. David is rarely ever nervous. “My parents are both Jewish,” he agrees. “But, they’re not really my parents.”
“What?”
“Well, they are. But they’re not my birth parents.”
Huh? “You’re adopted?” I’ve known David most of my life, have vacationed with his family, and this is the first I’m hearing of this.
David nods.
I frown. “I never knew that.” Disappointment sinks my heart into my stomach. Not because he’s adopted, but because I didn’t know. Because I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.
David’s broad shoulders shrug, the chai dancing on his skin. “Neither did I. I only found out a few months ago.”
Wow. “Does my brother know?”
The small shake of his head means the world to me.
David just confided something to me he hasn’t even told his best friend.
“So, you know, I’m just as Jewish, or not Jewish, as you.”
“Have you met your birth parents?” I ask him, suddenly less interested in Ira Traeger’s bullshit.
David scoffs. “Nah. No thanks, right? They got rid of me as fast as they could, so why would I want to meet them now?”
I don’t respond to that. I’m not sure I agree with him, but I do know there’s something all wrong about not wanting David, even if rationally I know they might’ve had good reason for their choices.
“But…I know her name.” I know he means his birth mother.
“You do?”
“I asked my mom.” He averts his gaze and starts to slip his shirt back on.
“Well, who is she?” I ask. Where did David come from? Whose genes combined to make this impossible, perfectly imperfect boy?
“I don’t really want to get into it, B, but I’ll tell you this—she’s not Jewish. So I’m not. I’m not actually anything, technically. So if I could have a stupid bar mitzvah, then you can, too. But if you want to do it, do it for you, not for your dad, okay? That’s a fuck of a lot of time to put into something for someone who doesn’t put any time into you.”
I stare at David. Reality is sharp and bitter, but that doesn’t make it any less true, and if anyone knows the truth about my father, it’s David. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Always am, kid,” David smiles. “But I still think this Ira Traeger could use a good ass-kicking.”
I giggle. “It wouldn’t be a fair fight.” I picture scrawny, pimply Ira. David would crush him with nothing more than a look.
“No such thing as a fair fight, B. Someone always has the advantage.”
