All Broke Down Read online

  Neither of them looks like they mind.

  Dallas checks her watch and says, “Hey. Torres is improving. He was here a whole fifteen minutes before he took his shirt off. That’s got to be a new record.”

  He must hear us laughing because he lets go of the brunette and says, “Moore! Get your ass out here!”

  When I don’t move, Stella gives me a shove. “Go on. You heard the man.”

  “You’re just trying to get me to take my clothes off, aren’t you?”

  “Been there. Done that. So many girls have seen it, you probably should make a T-shirt.”

  I shake my head and start toward the stairs. “The rest of you might as well go ahead and come. He’s going to want to play—”

  I don’t finish my sentence before Torres yells at the top of his lungs, “SLIP CUP!!!”

  “What the hell is slip cup?” McClain asks.

  Begrudgingly, the whole group comes with me, and we crowd with the rest of the partygoers around Torres as he explains his Slip ’N Slide/flip cup relay game. Basically, you take off down the slide where you get wet and soapy, and then at the end, you have to chug a plastic cup of beer, and flip it over with one finger. When the cup lands perfectly facedown (not easy when you’re all soapy or all drunk), the next person on your team can take off down the slide.

  By some miracle, Torres persuades our entire group (and about twenty other people) to play. I watch in amusement as Stella strips down to her swimsuit, locking eyes with Ryan as he does the same. I shake my head and pull off my shirt. I’m not wearing swim trunks, but the athletic shorts I have on will work just fine.

  Torres splits us all into teams, and gets another punch to the arm from McClain when he lingers too long near a bikini-clad Dallas.

  By the time the game starts, people are cheering, and there’s enough booze and boobs to make me completely forget that I’d ever been in a shitty mood. I’m waiting on the already tipsy girl in front of me to flip her cup before I can go. I start to lose patience somewhere between her seventh and eighth try, and I glance to the side just as a beat-up old town car pulls up next to the curb.

  A girl climbs out of the driver’s side, and I don’t see her face, but she’s got white blonde hair falling down her back and tan skin, and some dude I don’t know behind me says, “Damn.”

  I’m so busy looking at her that I don’t even notice when drunk and ditzy manages to finally flip her cup.

  The woman rounds the back of the car, and lifts a pair of dark sunglasses off her face. The guy behind me pushes at my back, telling me it’s my turn to run, but I can’t stop staring.

  Not because she’s pretty or wearing skimpy clothes or smiling right at me.

  But because she’s my mother.

  Chapter 2

  Silas

  She wears ridiculously high heels that sink into the grass when she steps up on my lawn. She raises a hand and waves at me. And I’m not sure why, but that fucking wave is what does me in.

  I ignore my team yelling at me as I stalk across the lawn. She looks just like I remember her. God, what has it been? Eight fucking years? She still dresses like someone half her age and wears too much makeup, but even so she’s pretty. Beautiful maybe. The kind of face that always drew attention. Her whole life always revolved around her looks, so my brother’s and mine did, too. When Mom looked good, when she had a guy, we had a place to sleep. If she didn’t, we didn’t.

  But that shit is over. No part of my life revolves around her, and I’m not about to let her pull me back in.

  “Get the fuck in your car and go,” I say when I’m standing in front of her.

  She doesn’t reply. Just blinks her long lashes and studies my face for a few seconds that stretch into lifetimes. When I open my mouth to tell her to leave again, she reaches up and touches my face.

  I grab her wrist and shove her hand away.

  “Get in your fucking car.”

  “Baby . . .” she says.

  “I haven’t been your baby in a long time. And that’s not changing, so you can leave.”

  Her lips pucker on a frown. “You’ll always be my baby.”

  She tries to touch me again, and I step back.

  “I was yours through all your shitty boyfriends. Through the first time you left, and the second. Hell, I was even yours for all those years you weren’t around, while Sean and I lived with Grams or whatever family would take us. But I stopped being yours sometime around the time Sean went to prison, and you didn’t even bother picking up a phone, let alone showing your face. So, Megan, I suggest you do what you do best. Get in your car and leave before I call the cops and make you.”

  She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, and gives me these big, innocent eyes, and God I want to hit something. My past and my present are supposed to remain separate. But now she’s set it all on a goddamn collision course, and that feeling of inevitability I’ve always felt? The pull of it is so heavy right now, it makes gravity feel like a joke.

  When she doesn’t move fast enough, I pull out my cell phone, and she holds up her manicured hands. “Fine! Okay. I’m leaving.”

  I don’t put my phone up, but I let it drop to my side. She steps back off the lawn into the street. She wavers for a second on her heels, and then she turns and saunters back to her car, like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

  She opens the door and before she climbs inside she says with a smile, “Go back to your party, baby. We’ll talk another time.”

  I squeeze my fist so hard, I’m surprised I don’t crush my phone. She ducks into her car, and it sputters to life, old and rusted and completely at odds with the image she works to project.

  Then she’s gone, and it feels like everything I’ve built here is seconds away from crumbling around me. Like a house of cards destroyed by a simple breath. And all I can think is if things are gonna fall apart, I’m not going to stand here trying to catch the pieces.

  I turn and most of the game is still going, but half a dozen people stand off to the side watching me. McClain. Stella. Brookes. Torres. A few more. I walk away from the curb, and Torres grins at me. “You been holding out on us, Moore? Who was that hot piece—”

  “Say one more fucking word, and you lose your tongue.”

  He holds his hands up in surrender, but he’s still smiling. They all are. Except Stella and Brookes. They’re both looking at me like they, too, are waiting for my sky to start falling. Like they’re the only ones who really understand what they just saw.

  My phone buzzes in my hand again, and I’m ready to throw it until I see the text. It’s from Levi again.

  Come on, man. I need to blow off some steam. Get your ass to Trent’s.

  I stalk past the group, ignoring the looks I get, and pick up my shirt from where I’d tossed it on the grass. Then I run inside to grab my keys and switch out my athletic shorts for jeans. Because it just so happens I need to blow off some steam, too.

  TRENT’S IS A dank, grungy, hole-in-the-wall place that most students pass over for the newer, popular bars in the campus bubble. The bell rings as I step in the door, and even though it’s late afternoon, it’s dark enough inside that I have to squint to find Levi.

  He sits at the bar, a bottle lifted to his mouth and another sitting beside him that I assume is for me. The place is practically empty except for the bartender, and an old dude in a booth at the back.

  For a moment, I hesitate. Something twists in my gut and my jaw clenches, and I don’t even really know why I came here. Part of me wants to say fuck it all, get smashed with Levi, and give in to the inevitability of this shitfest. Another part, a bigger part, wants to lay into my old friend and work off what I’m feeling with my fists.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I should turn around and walk back out to my truck. There are only stupid decisions waiting for me here.

  But I’ve never cared all that much about being smart.

  I stalk across the bar and slide onto the stool next to him. I t
ip back the beer and fix my eyes on the baseball game playing on the old TV sitting up beside bottles of liquor on the shelf.

  “What? I don’t even get a hello?” Levi says.

  I ditch the hello and ask instead, “How was prison? You got out fast.” Must be nice to have a lawyer for a dad. Hell, must be nice to have a dad in the picture, period.

  Levi lifts his hands in a shrug and says, “Can’t keep me down.”

  Sad thing is . . . he’s probably right. Guys like him always get second, third, and fourth chances.

  “What are you doing here, Levi?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m having a drink, and then I’m gonna get laid. Priorities, am I right?”

  “I mean . . . what are you planning to do here?”

  “I thought I just covered that.”

  “You’re just going to hang out here in town? When you’re not allowed to set foot on campus? Are you even allowed to be in a bar right now?”

  He shrugs. “I just can’t be around drugs of any kind. Alcohol might count, but nobody’s gonna find out.” He gestures to the deserted bar. “And why do I have to figure out what I’m doing right now? I’ll just hang out. It will be the same as it always was . . . but now I don’t have to go to class.”

  “The same as it always was,” I mutter and drain the rest of my beer in three big gulps. I wave down the bartender for another while Levi continues.

  “Yeah, man. We should drive down to Austin this weekend. Go to Sixth Street. We’ll get plastered. Maybe float the river.”

  “I have practice on Monday.”

  “You’ll be back in time.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

  He scoffs. “Fuck. Coach Cole is the worst. Soon you guys won’t be able to do jack shit.”

  “It’s not Coach. It’s all of us.”

  “All of you?”

  “Yeah. We want the team focused. McClain and I—”

  “McClain? Are you fucking serious right now?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious. You seem to be forgetting that you screwed us all over. McClain stepped up.”

  Levi scowls, a low, bitter laugh rolling out before he takes another drink. “That guy’s nothing. Walk-on, junior college piece of shit.”

  I’d always felt more at ease with Levi than anyone else. He reminded me of my brother in ways. My brother was always kind of an asshole, too.

  And with my past pressing in on me, I know I’ve got two choices. I can go the easy way, the way that comes naturally to me. I can stay at this bar, get drunk, get some girls, and ride out my time here at Rusk doing whatever the hell I want for as long as it lasts. That’s how I’ve always lived—take the good you can get before the bad catches up to you.

  But I actually feel sick at the thought of staying here with Levi. As easy as it would be, as many times as I’ve made that choice, it doesn’t hold the same appeal now. It used to feel smart, like I was one leg up on the world, but now it feels like I’m running downhill because I’m too much of a pussy to turn and face the incline.

  I stand up, take one last gulp of my beer, and throw some cash on the bar.

  “I gotta go.”

  Levi moves, too, his stool scraping the cement floor as he pushes it back.

  “What the hell, man? You just got here.”

  “I don’t see much reason to stay.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Levi asks, getting up in my face. “I thought out of everyone you would have my back.”

  “I’ve got my own back.” That’s the one thing I’ve always known. I can’t depend on anyone else but me. “The only thing I care about is staying on that team. You’ve already fucked up your shot. And I’m not gonna let you or anyone else do the same for me.”

  “That team will fall apart without me. Then what will you do? Run back to the trailer park you came from?”

  That shouldn’t sting. It wouldn’t on any other day, but I can’t help but think that it’s only a matter of time before everyone here knows that about me.

  I want to get right back in his face, turn this on him, make him feel like the worthless one. But I get the feeling that’s why this is all happening. Maybe I’m not the only one feeling out of control today.

  “Nah, man. You got it wrong. The team is better off without you.”

  I turn to walk away, and he shoves hard at my back. Stumbling forward, I collide with a few stools, toppling them, and barely staying on my feet.

  I try to breathe, but my vision goes black around the edges, and that familiar need to hit something roars back. I clench my fists to rein it in and stand, my eyes on the door.

  “You’re nothing, Silas. You’ve already got has-been written all over you.” I glance back, even though I know that’s exactly what he wants. The bartender is pointedly ignoring us, polishing a glass that probably hasn’t really been clean in five years. Levi continues, “Don’t you fucking look down on me. I know you, man. I’m gonna be just fine, but you? It’s just a matter of time before you fuck it all up. And then what will you have? Nothing.”

  And that one? That hits a little too close to home.

  I get up in his face, nose to nose. “You know me? You don’t know shit.”

  “I know enough. Brother’s in prison. Mom’s a whore. Trash is trash whether you dress it up with a scholarship and a uniform or not.”

  His face makes a satisfying crack when my fist connects. The jolt of pain in my wrist, the bite of broken skin on my knuckles . . . it dulls out my thoughts and sharpens everything else.

  Satisfaction and anger and exhilaration burn through me, and the world sure as fuck doesn’t feel muted anymore.

  He’s slow to recover and retaliate, and even though I see it coming, I let him get one hit in. He goes for my midsection, but he must still be dazed from my hit because it makes even less of an impact than I expect. I barely feel it. And I don’t know why, but the piss-poor punch makes me even angrier.

  “Come on, Levi. I might be trash, but you’re pathetic. Lazy. Couldn’t even play football without cheating.”

  He swings again, and I lean back enough that he only clips my jaw. The jolt is enough to sting and break the dam on my much-needed adrenaline. I grip him by the shirt and ram him into the bar on my right. A few glasses go sliding and crash onto the floor. The bartender yells something, but I don’t listen, delivering my own hit to Levi’s stomach, followed by a second.

  He curses and shoves me back, and I stumble into a chair, sending a few more glasses shattering against the concrete floor. He comes at me, and I shift, using his speed to leverage him past me, tossing him forward into a table that topples and splinters under his weight.

  He rolls onto his back, groaning, but I don’t let him stay down. I need more of a fight than this. I drag him to his feet and make him look me in the eye. He swings and clocks me in the side of the head, but my blood is pumping so fast and hard that it’s more obnoxious than painful. I don’t know if I want to hit him again or just shake him as hard as I can. While I’m standing there thinking like a dumbass, he gets a good punch into my kidney, and my whole body locks up against the pain for a few seconds. Before he gets off another, I shove him into the wall. He hits hard, and only my hand keeps him from slumping down to the ground.

  “You just couldn’t leave it the fuck alone, could you?” I ask. “Spoiled rich boy is unhappy, so he has to drag everyone else down with him.”

  Levi is beginning to list to the side, and I’m sure if I let him go, he’d keep on leaning until he crashed. Whatever pain he’s in, it doesn’t hamper the angry look he gives me.

  He spits and his bloody saliva lands on my shoe. I’ve got him pegged and he hates it.

  “That’s enough,” I hear the bartender say behind me. “Walk away.”

  Levi laughs. “Don’t pretend I dragged you down. You came here looking to fight. You work better down in the gutter.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Then I c
lock him once more, and his expression goes slack, and he slumps down against the wall at my feet. His head droops toward his chest, blood dribbling down from his busted mouth.

  Reflecting colored lights dance over the walls now, and I hear police sirens. And fuck, I think I might actually be jealous of that black, nothing world Levi’s lost in.

  How the hell did I go from walking away to this?

  For the first time, I take stock of the bar around us. Broken glass. Broken furniture. The dude from the booth is long gone. A woman has her head poking past the kitchen door, watching me warily with her cell phone to her ear. The bartender is an older, chubbier version of Mr. Clean, and though he has a bat pressed beneath his palms against the wooden bar, he doesn’t look ready to use it.

  I turn and head for the door, but even before the cop steps inside, I know I’ve got no shot at walking out of here that easy. The cop asks me what happened, but there’s no point in saying he started it like a little pansy. Not when you’ve got a juvy record. He gets the rundown from the bartender and the woman who called them. While a paramedic checks on a barely conscious Levi, I’m put in the back of a police car.

  They say bad shit happens in threes, but I gave up counting a long time ago.

  The bad seems to follow me. Or hell. Maybe Levi’s right. Maybe it’s me that follows the bad.

  Maybe I don’t know who I am apart from that.

  Chapter 3

  Dylan

  The plastic zip ties bite into the skin of my wrists, and I wait, my shoulders aching from having my hands bound behind my back. My heart is racing, has been since I refused the officer’s order to disperse from the protest and got arrested instead. I wonder how long my heart can beat this fast without giving out. Maybe I’ll pass out soon, and then I’ll get at least a modicum of relief from the guilt and fear gnawing at my insides.

  The female police officer is finishing up my paperwork, while my friend Matt is being escorted away to the holding cell by another officer. He meets my eyes and makes a ridiculous face. I don’t know how he’s so calm. With his massive russet beard, he looks more scary than silly. He’s got a good six inches on the guy who arrested us, and I don’t blame the cop for looking nervous. Matty looks like he could go Sasquatch on everyone and bust his way out of here.