Melinda Di Lorenzo - Bad Reputation

“Mark?”

My voice was very small, and held none of the fury I knew it should.

Shock . The word came to mind, taking a life-size meaning it had never had before. This is what shock feels like. Numbness and sadness and madness that won’t come out .

“Mark?” I repeated, a little more loudly, and he finally glanced my way.

“Jesus, Tucks,” he swore. “What are you doing here?”

“My parents died,” I told him.

His eyes went wide, and I noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either.

“You never take them off when you’re with me,” I whispered.

“What?” Mark stared at me stupidly.

“I have to go.”

I grabbed the vodka and fled the apartment, seeking solace in my own bed. I shoved off my roommate’s attempts to comfort me, and drank the liquor straight. I sobbed until I ached inside and out, and I didn’t know if the tears were for my mom and dad or if they were for Mark and me. It didn’t matter. I cried until all the fight went out of my body and then let sleep start to take me. My final thoughts were of the stark, heart-wrenching headline.

No Survivors .

In the morning, I knew I would pick up the pieces of my life as I had done in the past and move on. Because the headline wasn’t quite true. There was one survivor. It was me.

I couldn’t feel my face, and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

“I can’t feel my face!”

Saying it out loud to the room didn’t help, even when someone replied with a whooping cheer.

“Gotta get some air,” I muttered, and tried to shove myself up off the couch.

I couldn’t move, and I knew I was way past my limit, even though I was the kind of guy who could—who did —go hard most of the time.

“You need some help?”

I peered around, looking for the source of the voice, and finally zeroed in on the petite girl beside me. Her face was close to mine—inches away—and I couldn’t make her features focus properly. Why was she so damned close?

“S’okay,” I slurred in her direction, and vaguely hoped that my breath wasn’t overtly noxious.

I tried to make sense of what was going on. I could hear people all around me, still partying. I swiveled my head. The room was a little dark, but I could see the blurred outline of a couple making out against a nearby wall, and another pair dancing lazily near a tall speaker.

“Wheremeye?” I muttered, and I knew it came out a garbled mess.

“Joey?”

I automatically turned my face at the sound of my name. It was the too-close girl again. What was she doing there, draped across me? Her legs were bare, and wrapped around mine. I gazed down at them, dragging my eyes across their tanned smoothness and up to her lacy underwear.

Oh no .

I could see she was wearing my oversize T-shirt, and I realized my own chest was bare.

“Whadeyedo?” I asked.

I flipped the girl off me, and I heard someone laugh as she hit the ground. I felt bad for a second, but then nausea overwhelmed me. I grabbed my keys and my wallet from the table, and I crashed through the house, searching for the door. I found it just in time to puke my guts up into the bushes. Which was better than into the pile of shoes in the foyer.

I stumbled out to the street, searching for my truck.

“Wherezstupidthing?” I mumbled.

I finally spotted it, parked crookedly right in front of a hydrant. I lurched toward it, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t— couldn’t —drive, but wanting to get out of there bad enough to try it anyway. I shoved the key into the lock and turned.

“Whoa.”

A soft hand accompanied the word, and it tried to yank the key ring from my shaky grasp. I managed to hold on. Barely. I squinted at the woman attached to the grip. Dark hair framed a familiar face, and the effects of alcohol weren’t enough to block out the pain any longer.

“Amber! I know you,” I slurred.

“And I know you, Joey. If you get in that car, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“What’s it matter to you?” I demanded harshly, drunkenly.

“We’re friends. Or at least we were before—”

I cut her off. “I don’t like to talk about that.”

“I won’t make you talk about it. If you give me the keys.”

“No.”

“Where you going, anyway?”

“Home.”

“Is it close?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’ll drive myself.” I hiccuped. “Thank you very much.”

With an exasperated sigh, Amber reached forward and reached for my keys again.

“Can’t catch me!” I shouted gleefully.

I dove sideways, tripped over a bush and landed on my ass. My keys sailed from my hand about three feet away.

“Whoops.”

I struggled to grab them, but one of Amber’s high-heeled boots kicked them out of my reach. When I looked up, there were three Ambers glaring down at me. That, or the alcohol was seriously inhibiting my ability to see properly.

“S’matter with everybody?” I asked.

“Everybody?”

“All three of you.”

She grabbed the keys from the ground and rolled her eyes. “Joey, we were friends once, right?”

“Once,” I agreed. “With one of you, anyway.”

“Then please. Let me take you home.”

After a moment, I shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat. In seconds, we were on the road, and the familiar rumbling of my diesel engine lulled me into a drunken sleep.

When I finally opened my eyes again, the sun was beating through my windshield relentlessly, and my head was throbbing. I was also in an all-too-familiar place—a full four-hundred miles from where I’d been the night before.

Amber was nowhere to be seen.

What the hell? I thought.

I was home.

Actually home. The home I’d fled from three-and-a-half years ago.

I opened the truck door and gagged out the rest of whatever I’d consumed the night before. When I righted myself, I stared up at the ominously cheerful house where I’d grown up. I stepped out onto the concrete and took a reluctant step toward the door.

Coming home should be a good thing. It shouldn’t be a reflection of the guilt, anger and other shitty things that have happened in your life. Even so, as I let myself into my parents’ house and dragged my feet all the way to my dad’s home office, those were the only things I could think about.

My dad barely blinked as I collapsed into the chair across from him.

I watched him, waiting for the self-righteous rage I knew was there, just under the surface. I’d spent my whole life trying to live up to the expectations that went along with being his son. I had lived up to them until everything had gone to shit five years earlier. The man was a corporate mogul, and a financial guru, and a tough-as-nails father. I knew what he wanted from me, and it wasn’t another excuse.

I wished I’d had time to brace myself for his disappointment on the long drive here.

What’s the matter, Joey? I pictured him saying. You run out of girls to string along?

I bristled at the imaginary accusation, just as if he’d actually said the words. I felt tense, waiting for it to come.

We’ve been through enough. You being here…it will just add something else for us to worry about .

My shoulders drooped, and I slipped farther down into the stiff chair that faced him. My dad still kept silent. He sipped his ever-present rye and Coke and looked at me without expression. I wondered if he’d found some new kind of Zen, maybe the result of a concoction of pills and a heavy dose of Irishing everything from coffee to water.