There were three more texts in the same vein, each more desperately misspelled and unpunctuated than the last. I didn’t respond to any of them, but I knew he’d get the ‘read’ receipts. He’d know I saw them, which meant I’d be hearing from him at some point. No way I was ready for that, so I pulled up the voicemails and listened to the ones from Michael first.
In the first one he sounded frantic, desperate, a little crazy. “Baby, baby—you gotta call me back. I know what you saw, and it’s not like you think. It was just that once. We can fix this, Dru, I know we can. I love you.”
Delete.
“Dru, baby. I’m so sorry.” He sounded calmer in this one, and honestly close to tears. “I screwed up. I know I did. I just—I wish you’d give me a chance to explain.”
Explain your cock in Tawny’s blown-out pussy, asshole.
Delete.
When I finally drummed up the courage to open Michael’s last voicemail, it wasn’t what I was expecting. “I’m guessing you won’t listen to this, and if you do, you won’t call me back. I get it. I was an asshole. Nobody has any clue where you are and we’re all worried. It’s not like you to just vanish. At least call your dad so he stops panicking. I think if you don’t let him know where you are soon, he’s gonna make me disappear, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a joke.” He sounded lucid, but drunk. “There’s so much I could say, but I’ve been drinking and I’m not gonna say it in a voicemail. I just—I know I messed up, but—fuck. Your dad’s calling again. Hopefully somebody will hear from you at some point, Dru. We’re all worried. So…bye, I guess.”
I didn’t delete that one. Not sure why, honestly. I just…couldn’t.
Something wet dripped from the end of my nose onto the bar top.
What the fuck? I refused to cry about that bastard again. Not anymore.
He wasn’t worth wasting any more time or thought or energy on. Nobody was ever going to be faithful; Mom left Dad and me when I was eleven, cleaned out the bank account and split with some dude on a Harley. I remember it. She had a backpack, a too-big helmet, and walked out of the house, climbed onto the back of a rumbling Harley, wrapped her arms around the rider, a big, burly, hairy beast of a man, and they left, just like that. Dad stood beside me on the front porch, watching, utterly shell-shocked.
It had come totally out of left field. Dad had joined the Marines at eighteen, had spent twenty years in the Corps, and had finally retired. He hadn’t been sure what he was going to do, and had been at loose ends. Money wasn’t tight, but we weren’t flush, either. We’d had a nice house, a decent car, food to eat, enough extra cash to go to the movies now and then, out to eat maybe. I remember Dad being home a lot, and Mom working at a diner to put a little more cushion in the bank until Dad figured out his next career.
And then, without a word, without a reason, without so much as a single argument or blowout, Mom just…left.
It had scarred both Dad and me for life. Dad never dated again, and I’d always found it impossible to trust anyone except Dad. I never really had many friends, never really dated all that much. I got into lots of trouble in high school, of the drinking and smoking pot and fucking boys in the back of cars variety, but that was because I was angry and confused. I didn’t have a mom to show me how to be a woman, and Dad had his career as a cop by then, so there wasn’t anyone to tell me no. None of the boys I ever fucked meant anything. It was what troublemakers did, and it was—believe me when I say I get how fucking cliché this is—a cry for attention.
I met Michael my junior year of college. He was a few years older than me, cool, laid-back, good-looking, had an intact nuclear family, mom, dad, brother, sister. He wasn’t exactly close to his siblings, but he had them and saw them regularly. His dad was an asshole and his mom was a drunk, but he had them, both together in the same house, still married. It was odd, for me. We’d go over to his house, the same one he grew up in his whole life—unlike me, a Corps brat who’d been to six different elementary schools between kindergarten and fifth grade—and we’d sit around the dinner table with his whole family, and they’d argue and bicker and drink too much and sometimes Michael and his brother would nearly come to blows after too much red wine, but they’d always hug before Michael and I left, and he’d hug his mom and dad and sister too, and it was just…so weird. It made no sense to me. They were dysfunctional, sure, but in a normal way.
My mom had abandoned me. I’d been more independent at twelve than most college kids. I made my own breakfast, packed my own lunch, and usually made dinner for Dad, too. I did my homework without being told, and most of the housework. I could take a bus from home to the precinct, and did so regularly. I’d routinely accept rides to and from school or to the station from Dad’s cop buddies, which meant climbing into the passenger seat and playing with the radio and turning on the siren if they got a call.