Indigo Sky

CHAPTER SEVEN

Here’s the part of the story where you probably expect that I went home to talk to Nate and found out he was totally cool with whatever the fuck had happened with Indigo Sky and we all lived happily ever after.

Right?

Well, no, of course you wouldn’t. Because if that was the case, I wouldn’t be telling this story at all, would I?

Nah, what happened was this …

***

I unlocked the door and headed up the stairs to the apartment I’d shared with Nate for a little over a year. At this point, the place was more home than even my parents’ house, and I walked inside without ceremony. I dropped my keys on the counter and kicked off my boots by the door, ready to jump in the shower and wash off the evidence of my night at Midnight Lotus, knowing the memories would linger for years. Walking through to the bathroom, I glanced around and realized the place hadn’t been touched since I’d been here earlier, before heading to the club.

Nate had left Midnight Lotus, but he hadn’t returned home.

“Huh,” I grunted, wondering where he had gone.

Maybe he had gone to my parents’ house. The place had been as much his as it was mine for a few years, and I knew he felt comfortable there. Or maybe he’d gone to a bar to gloss over the hurt of rejection.

But either way, I grabbed my phone before turning on the shower and sent a text: Hey, just making sure you’re alive .

I showered and relived the memories of Indigo Sky, this time coming with intention against the shower wall. Fuck .

It had been humiliating at the time, but hours later, the sting of embarrassment was gone. Now, it was only hot. The hottest moment of my life—not that I had much to compare it to. But, shit, it was so much better than what some kids had as their first intimate experience, like an awkward dry-hump in their parents’ basement or a fumble in the back of a car or something. Nah, this felt unique and sorta special, and, yeah, I felt a little like a badass for it.

“I don’t know what it is about you,” she had said, but that went both ways.

What was it about her ?

I washed my body and hair, sighing into the steam and spray of water. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t see her again. It was a hot night that had ended on a bittersweet note, and that was all it would be, but …

A bang came from somewhere in the apartment. Something that sounded like the door being pushed open with force. I jolted and got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist. Rivulets of water dripped from my skin and onto the floor as I hurried out of the bathroom and into the living room, where I found Nate slamming the door shut behind him. My relief was quick to disappear when I registered the rage on his face.

“Hey,” I said cautiously, watching as he stomped around the apartment without purpose.

He dropped his cigarettes on the table. Kicked off his shoes beside his bedroom door. Dumped his keys on the coffee table. Every action was done with aggressive intent, anger driving his every move.

Was he mad at me ?

I narrowed my glare at him and asked, “Where’d you go?”

He stopped his pacing and looked at me. “What the fuck do you care?”

“Why are you pissed off at me?” I finally asked.

“I was angry, and I left that fuckin’ place, thinking you were coming with me, but you stayed there. Chatting it up with that fuckin’ whore , letting her fuckin’ make out with you. Where the hell is your loyalty, huh? You get a tiny fuckin’ taste of pussy, and you, what? Forget everything I’ve done for you?”

My brows dropped heavily as I stared at him, incredulous. “What? Making out? Everything you’ve done for me ? What the … wait, wait, wait.” I laid a hand over my forehead and squeezed my eye shut as what he’d said sank in. Then, I opened my eye and pointed a finger at him as I said, “You were watching me?”

Nate opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He looked away and seemed to wilt. The big, tough guy shriveled away, and what was left was this … small husk of a man who dropped to the couch and held his head in his hands.

“I went back to ask if you wanted to meet me at Taco Bell.”

“Why didn’t you just call?”

He dropped his hands to let them hang between his knees as he looked up and met my eye. “I had literally just left the parking lot. I realized I’d been a fuckin’ dick, so I turned around and was gonna talk to you, but I saw that bitch—"

“Can you not call her that?” I interjected angrily. “She didn’t give you a dance. That doesn’t make her a bitch or a whore or whatever. She was doing her job —"

“What-the-fuck-ever, Romeo. I saw you two talking in the parking lot. Then, you were making out, so I came back here and went to the bar across the street.”

My brain was spinning in circles and teetering between feeling sorry for the guy and disturbed as fuck that he’d watched me. I guessed, maybe, to some people, it would’ve sounded innocent enough. But he had come back instead of calling me. We both had cell phones. He could’ve just called. Why hadn’t he called ?

“You could’ve just picked up the phone, Nate,” I muttered, crossing the living room to sit on the arm of the couch.

“Yeah, well, I had, like, two percent battery left anyway.”

“Hmm,” I grunted, nodding. That was likely.

Nate sucked at charging his phone. No reason to keep track of shit like that when hardly anybody called you. I would know.

“Anyway, sorry for being an asshole. I mean, it was my idea to go to the club. Not your fault she saw you as an easy target.” He shrugged and slumped back into the couch. “At least you got something out of it.”

“Yeah,” I murmured quietly, letting my head hang.

It hurt to think he might be right. I didn’t want to believe I’d been naive or anything, but it was a possibility, wasn’t it? She’d worked me up all night, and then she’d just happened to walk out into the parking lot the second I also happened to be standing there, alone? The more I thought about it, the stupider I felt.

“You good?” Nate asked, and I looked up to see an expression of genuine concern on his face. “You didn’t, like, fuck her, did you? ‘Cause, man—"

“No,” I said. “She just kissed me. We didn’t even really make out or anything. I guess I just thought—"

“What? That she liked you?” He laughed and reached out to slap my knee. “Dude, she’s supposed to act like that. She wants you to come back and give her more money. Don’t be stupid.”

I had been stupid, but I wasn’t going to let myself waste another second dwelling on it. I stood up and headed into my room to throw on some sweats and a T-shirt. Then, I came out and asked Nate if he wanted to hit up Taco Bell because I’d just realized I was starving for something other than pretty women and the manipulative shit they could do to my body.

***

I didn’t go back to Midnight Lotus for quite a while after that. Nate and I fell back into the old routine, and before I knew it, several years had flown by.

We were twenty-eight at this point.

I’d gotten myself a nice girlfriend—Emily. We had met at the shop, hit it off well enough, and started dating.

Meanwhile, Nate had gotten himself into some shit. Arrested for driving under the influence and another time for destruction of property after getting so drunk that he broke a few store windows along Main Street.

He was the troublemaker, and I was the jackass who kept bailing him out. Even my parents were getting sick of his shit despite caring for him as if he were one of their own. Honestly, at that point, it was a fucking miracle he’d managed to keep his job at Roy’s, but I thought that was more out of pity than anything else. Roy knew Nate wouldn’t hold down a job somewhere else, so he kept him on despite him being regularly late.

But one thing I’d always give him was, he did the job right. Anything he set out to do, he did it, and he did it well. It was just unfortunate that some of that shit was a little on the questionable side of morality.

***

“You should get your own place,” Emily said one night.

She was perched at the edge of my bed, braiding her long blonde hair. She always kept it in a braid, unless we were showering or fucking. Sometimes, she would wear it in two braids, like Pippi Longstocking, but it was always, always braided.

“Why? You don’t like it here?” I asked, propping myself up on a pile of pillows.

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “You do ?”

I laughed a bit uncomfortably. “I mean, it’s where I live, so …”

She tipped her head with a disbelieving look, like she couldn’t fathom how it was possible I could be serious, and looked back to the task of weaving her hair like she was freakin’ Rapunzel.

“I don’t know how you’ve never noticed this, but it smells awful in here, and—"

“Well, I mean, two men live here, so …”

“I don’t mean, like, you’re incapable of buying an air freshener or something. I mean, it smells foul . Like, absolutely disgusting. And it’s not you ,” she pressed. “You smell fine, your room smells fine, but the second I walk into the living room, all I smell is … I don’t even know what it is. Weed and cigarettes and body odor and … I don’t know.”

I crinkled my nose. “What? Seriously?”

“You’re used to it, I guess. But it’s awful.”

Is she for real? I turned to look up at the ceiling.

Emily and I had been dating for only four months or so. It wasn’t a long time, but I hadn’t known her to blatantly lie about anything. And when I really thought about it, she had only been to my place a handful of times, whereas I was frequently at hers, even though she shared her apartment with her sister and her sister’s fiancé. It was a similar size to mine with more people, yet we were always there. Was this why? My place with Nate stunk?

“I guess I could clean more—"

“Revan, it’s not you .” She turned to look at me again, her eyes insistent. “You’re fine.”

“You’re saying the problem is Nate? But he’s hardly ever here.”

Nate was almost always out. Hooking up with women. Doing this and that. Working little odd jobs to fund his cigarette, weed, and booze habits. We worked together, went to my parents’ place for dinner on the weekend, and shared the occasional weeknight meal, but apart from that, we had become ships in the night. And it wasn’t a bad thing. I was free to have a relationship without him getting in the way of it, and he didn’t get worked up about whatever the fuck I was doing. Honestly, it had taken this shift in our lives to help me realize that we’d become so codependent on each other that we weren’t allowing ourselves to live separate lives, and when I thought about it like that, I’d realized how fucking pathetic life had gotten in the first place. Sure, I guessed it had started as a necessity, but it was unnecessary for it to have lasted as long as it did.

“Yeah, and thank God for that,” Emily muttered sardonically.

“What does that mean?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

“Nothing. Forget I said anything.” She turned and leaned over, giving me a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I’m running out to the kitchen and grabbing some water. You want anything?”

“You want me to get it?”

She shook her head and smiled. “No, it’s okay. You want some water too?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, returning the smile even if it did come out a little forced.

She left the room, leaving the door ajar, and I looked at the ceiling once again.

Twenty-eight years old. I was twenty- eight and Emily was my first girlfriend. She had taken my virginity two months ago, and truth be told, my life hadn’t changed as much as I’d expected it would. But the sex was okay, and at least I thought we were both happy. So, maybe she was right. Maybe it was time I got my own place, or maybe what she meant was, we should get a place together. Were we ready for that? We had only been together for a few months, but that didn’t matter, did it? I was twenty- eight; she was twenty-four. People our ages were thinking about settling down, getting married, having kids …

Fuck, does she want to get married?

Am I ready to get married? Do I want to get married? Yeah, sure, I guess I do, but … do I want to marry her ?

My poor mind was dizzying itself with a barrage of questions, and my heart was racing toward panic when Emily reappeared in my doorway. Except she wasn’t carrying glasses of water and she was no longer smiling.

She threw the door open and slammed it behind her. Then, immediately, she began to hurry around the room, collecting her pants and shoes and everything else that had been scattered around the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked even though it was pretty fucking obvious she was leaving.

“I have to get out of here.”

“What?” I climbed out of bed at the sound of her alarmed voice and grabbed my boxer briefs from off the floor. “What do you mean?”

She pulled on her leggings in a hurry and cursed when her toe got caught on the hem. Her hands were trembling, and tears were brimming in her eyes; I stupidly wondered if the smell was truly that bad.

Emily pulled in a shaky breath and wiped at her eyes. She slid her feet into her flip-flops and stood up, grabbing her purse from the foot of the bed.

“I like you, Rev. But I don’t think this is going to work out.”

“What the hell happened out there?” I demanded, refusing to believe that we could go from having perfectly decent sex to breaking up within a matter of minutes.

Things had been good, and then they weren’t; there had to be a reason for it.

She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and hurried to my bedroom door as she said, “You can ask your roommate.”

I followed her out of the room, asking her repeatedly to tell me what the hell had happened, but she wouldn’t answer. She made a beeline to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind her in her haste to leave. I stood there in the living room, wearing nothing but my underwear, stunned. I’d be lying if I said I was completely shattered about the sudden breakup. I thought I’d had a pretty good idea that my relationship with Emily wasn’t going to last. But for it to end so suddenly was … jarring, to say the least.

“What the fuck?” I uttered quietly, scratching the back of my neck.

Then, the bathroom door opened. I turned to see Nate come out, whistling a merry little tune that wasn’t at all vibing with my confusion.

He glanced at me, then swept his casual gaze around the apartment, and asked, “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“She left,” I said dryly. “She told me to ask you why.”

He stopped short on his way to his room and picked at his front teeth with a fingernail. “Me? The hell did I do?”

I huffed with exasperation. “Oh, I don’t fuckin’ know, Nate. Why don’t you tell me?”

He shrugged with infuriating nonchalance. “She came out here, wearing a cute shirt and some nice panties, so I complimented her. Didn’t think it was a big deal.”

My brows jumped straight toward my hairline. “You complimented her? The fuck did you say?”

He continued picking and shook his head. “I dunno. Nothing crazy. I just said something like, she has a nice ass or nice tits or … you know, something along those lines.”

It was crude, yes. Out of line? Absolutely. But for her to leave the way she did over an inappropriate comment, to break up with me … it wasn’t adding up.

“That was all you said?”

His head wobbled from side to side as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Well, I might have asked if she’d be willing to join me in my room since she was already dressed for the occasion. She didn’t seem happy about it, so I said that we could invite you if she really wanted. She wasn’t thrilled with that either, so I asked if I could at least watch—"

“You said all of that to her?” I stared at him, unable to believe he could be so … so … so fucking— God, what the fuck is the word I’m looking for here?

Disrespectful.

That was it.

The guy was unfiltered, uncivilized, and quite possibly the most unhinged person I’d ever known. But I never would’ve imagined he’d say something like that to my fucking girlfriend.

And all he could do was shrug. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. A simple no would’ve been fine.”

“Sounds like she did say no and you wouldn’t shut the fuck up.”

“Yeah, well, when you talk to her later—"

“There’s not gonna be a later, you asshole. She broke up with me.”

He found that very amusing, apparently. “Seriously?” He laughed, rolling his eyes. “Christ, you’re better off, man. If she can’t take a fuckin’ joke or an innocent little question—"

“You propositioned her for sex!”

“ Propositioned ?” he mocked, making an obnoxious face. “Look at you and your big fuckin’ words. Anyway, you can do better than Little Miss Tight-Ass, all right? Get over her and move on. She was a bitch anyway. I’ve hardly seen you since you started dating her.”

They say, sometimes, it can take a while to open your eyes when you’re in a toxic relationship, right? Because you’re blinded by your own dependence on that person or you’re … I don’t know … too stuck in the habit of knowing them, of having them in your life, to fully grasp how bad they are for you. Well, for me, it had taken nearly two decades to finally realize that I needed some separation from Nathan Manning.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t care about him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t still my best friend. It was strictly that I knew if I continued to let my life run parallel to his for too much longer, he was going to ruin me. Even more than he already had.

But he’d been right about one thing. I was better off without Emily. Or maybe it was that she was better off without me.

I didn’t say anything as I turned to head back into my room. I needed to get dressed. I needed to get out of there for a while. I needed to clear my fucking head before I said or did something I was going to regret.

So, I threw some clothes on and headed out without so much as telling Nate I was leaving. I ran down the stairs and into the parking lot, and that was when I ran into Joe Weston. My old best friend from kindergarten.

“Holy shit, Revan?” he asked, looking at me like this chance encounter was the best thing to happen to him all year.

“Wow. Yeah. Hey, Joe,” I said, fishing my keys out of my pocket. “How’s it going?”

He nodded, his grin growing wider by the second. “Good, good. Can’t complain, you know. It’s crazy, bumping into you. I was actually just wondering whatever happened to you. They’re planning the ten-year high school reunion for next year, and I was thinking how wild it was that you’d just dropped out and disappeared.”

My laugh was humorless as I lowered my gaze to the pavement. “Nah. Still here.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.” Joe laughed, shaking his head. “You know, we should get together. Catch up or something.”

I sucked in a deep breath and slowly nodded. Because maybe it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to spend time with someone else. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have another friend.

“Yeah, that sounds good. When are you free?”

He shrugged and glanced around the parking lot. “Actually, my wife is out with her friends tonight, and my kids are with my mom. I was just stopping at the hardware store for a couple of things, but if you want to grab a beer or something now, I’d be down.”

Wife? Kids? Suddenly, I felt like I’d spent the past ten years doing fucking nothing with my life while other people my age were making something of themselves. Inadequacy flooded my veins and gnawed deep in the pit of my gut, but still, I nodded.

“Yeah, now works for me too.”

***

What a weird fucking day , I kept thinking as Joe and I walked from the parking lot to the bar across the street.

If Nate hadn’t come home, I’d still be with Emily.

If Joe hadn’t run into me in the parking lot, I’d be on my way to Mom and Dad’s place.

Nothing was going according to plan, but did I ever have a plan? Had I ever? I couldn’t remember a time in my life when anything had made sense, apart from dropping out of high school and becoming a mechanic—but that was never my plan. It was Nate’s, and I piggybacked on it. It’d sounded good enough, and I’d gone with it. I was good at it, but did I love it? Did I love anything ?

Fuck, I was having a quarter-life crisis. That was all I could chalk it up to being. Maybe Nate wasn’t the problem after all. I mean, he was a problem, sure, but couldn’t it be possible that the real problem, at the root of it all, was me ?

“Hey, you good?” Joe asked as we walked into the bar and headed to a high-top table.

“Ah …” I wiped my palm over the sweat beading across my forehead. “Honestly, you kinda caught me at a weird time. I just broke up with my girlfriend, and … I don’t know.”

He nodded slowly, sliding onto his seat. “Sorry, man.”

I took my seat across from his. “Yeah, no, it’s all good. We had only been together for a few months, so …”

“Did you live together?” he asked, his nose crinkling. “‘Cause that would make shit really awkward.”

I laughed at the irony, remembering my conversation with her earlier. If I hadn’t lived with Nate, I’d still be with her now.

“Nah, I live with my roommate. Actually, my apartment is right over there.” I pointed toward the window. “Right above the Chinese place.”

“Oh,” he drawled. “Right by where I ran into you.”

“Yep.”

“Oh, nice. It’s funny I hadn’t bumped into you sooner then. Beck and I always get our Chinese food there.”

I tipped my head. “Beck?”

All of a sudden, Joe was uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat as a waitress brought over coasters and asked what we’d like to drink. We put in our respective orders, and as she left, he said, “Yeah, um, you remember Becky?”

I nodded. How could I forget my first real crush?

“Well, she and I started dating in our senior year of high school, and we’ve been together ever since.”

Wife. Kids.

“Wow. So, you’re, like, real-life high school sweethearts.”

There was a hint of pride in his smile as he replied, “Yeah. It’s crazy, but … it’s good, you know? I didn’t wanna say anything because I know you liked her, but—"

“Joe,” I interrupted, offering a lopsided smile, “that was, like, way over ten years ago.”

Even as I said it, I couldn’t believe that much time had passed since then. So much time, and what the hell did I have to show for it?

“Nah, I know.” He sighed and relaxed. “Anyway, how have things been otherwise?”

We chatted for a little while, going back and forth, sharing different tidbits about our respective lives. He had two little girls. He and Becky were both teachers in the elementary school we had gone to. They’d just bought a house not far from where my parents lived. The shit I was putting into the conversation seemed to fall flat in comparison, even though he didn’t seem to think so with his smiles and questions and enthusiasm. The guy acted like he was genuinely happy to be with me despite the differences in our lives, and it was strange to remember that this was a guy who had once made fun of me for losing my fucking eye.

As if he could read my mind, he glanced at me as he sipped from his bottle of beer. Then, he lowered it to the table and said, “I was a real piece of shit to you when we were kids.”

“What? Nah, it’s fine. We were kids, man. Kids say fucked-up shit.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. I was your friend , and I treated you like shit when you needed me.”

I couldn’t deny that, so I didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” he added, staring into the open mouth of his bottle.

“I don’t hold any grudges against you, Joe.”

He nodded. “You still hang out with Nathan?”

I huffed a short laugh. “Actually, he’s the roommate I mentioned.”

Joe’s good-natured grin dropped as he spun his empty bottle on the table. “Ah, okay. I was just wondering.”

“Why?” I asked, a little defensive. I might’ve been mad at Nate, but he was still my friend.

“Well, I knew you guys were tight, and, uh …” He lifted a shoulder and diverted his gaze to something other than me. “Fuck it, I’ll just say it. I have no love for that guy. He was a real piece of shit to Beck—"

“The thing at the dance?” I asked as it all came back to me in a flood of disjointed memories. Her throwing herself at Nate. Her accusing him of lying.

Joe looked absolutely pissed now. “Well, that was part of it. He made her life a living freakin’ hell for weeks in high school.”

Weeks? That didn’t sound right.

“What are you talking about?”

“I dunno,” Joe said, now seeming to wish he’d never said anything at all. “She told me he’d follow her around. Say nasty stuff behind her back. That kinda thing.”

“And this was before or after the dance?” I asked, as if it made any difference.

Joe twisted his lips and picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I just know he was kinda … not the nicest guy to her. But, I mean, he was never the nicest guy, so …”

“He had a shitty time at home,” I offered like a weak consolation prize. “His mom was pretty awful, and her boyfriend wasn’t much better.”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, I kinda figured there was something going on. He grew up without a dad for a long time—I knew that much—and that’s rough. But … I don’t know, Revan. Does a shitty childhood give someone the right to be a shitty person?”

***

Joe and I shot the shit for an hour or two after that. As it turned out, we had way more in common than I’d have thought we would—you know, with him being married with kids and all—and we agreed it’d be nice to get together again soon. We exchanged numbers and went our separate ways with me feeling better than I had before.

I realized I’d been right about spending time with someone else, someone different . It had been refreshing, but it had also been a bit of an eye-opener.

Joe thought Nate was a shitty person, and even though I probably should’ve agreed, I didn’t.

Nate was damaged from years of abuse. He was hurt. He didn’t know how the fuck to care for someone, and he didn’t know how to show someone that he did. But he wasn’t a shitty person for it. He was just … broken. And maybe that meant he was too far gone to be fixed—I didn’t know—but maybe that was also what had drawn him to auto repair in the first place. Maybe it was the idea of taking something beaten up, dirty, ugly, and in disrepair and making it better, making it work . Making it look like something it could’ve been had it been cared for.

So, I went home and found him asleep on the couch. He woke up, told me he’d left some pizza in the fridge for me, then headed to bed. And I forgave him—again—because, in his own fucked-up way, I knew he cared about me, and someone in this hell hole of a planet had to care for him.