Page 175 of June First
“What should I say? What should I do?” My whole body is shaking as I stand beside the bed on trembling legs, fists balled like stones at my sides.
Nothing.
He doesn’t even blink.
“Brant,” I choke out, leaning over the bed to shake his shoulders. Panic tightens my chest. “Please. I need you.”
After a long moment, he finally cranes his head toward me, his jaw rippling with tension. “I forgot to set an alarm. I didn’t mean to sleep in.”
My fingers curl along his shoulders, my lungs feeling wheezy. I drink in a few choppy breaths as our eyes meet. “Th-that doesn’t matter. How do we fix this?”
“Fix this?” His dark eyebrows pinch together, his muscles stiffening as his gaze tracks my face. Then he murmurs in a low, defeated voice, “There’s no fixing this, June.”
I shake him again with flared emotion. “Stop. There must be.”
“No.”
“Stop!” I shriek, drawing back from the bed. My ribs ache from the weight of my breaths as I glance around the room for my purse and car keys. “I–I need to talk to Mom. She’ll understand. She’ll understand…” I pant out, my thoughts scattered while I idly step into a pair of house slippers. “I can fix this.”
Before I stumble out of the bedroom, I look back at Brant who is still rooted to the mattress, frozen. His face falls into his hands. “You can’t fix it.”
I choke on a strangled cry, gripping my purse strap.
I have to.
As I spin around, he says to me as I retreat, “We were broken before we even began.”
Dad’s car is in the driveway when I pull in.
My heart thunders as my tears fall like a violent rain shower. He’s probably telling my mother the sordid truth right now.
I squeeze the steering wheel, my forehead collapsing against it as I let out a hopeless sob, wondering what the hell I’m going to do.
How can I explain the inexplicable?
How can I excuse the inexcusable?
How can I justify the unacceptable?
With all the words in existence, I can’t seem to piece together any that will make this sound even remotely reasonable.
We were careless.
We were reckless and foolish, and my worst fear has come to life.
Instead of me sitting down with my parents with a laid-out plan, a well-rehearsed explanation, my father walked in on us spooned together like lovers, naked in Brant’s bed.
Humiliation warms my skin.
And then a sharp tapping at the window pops my head up from the wheel.
A gasp escapes me when I lock eyes with my mother through the glass. She’s waving at me with a smile, but that smile slips the moment she notices the torment gazing back at her.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know yet.
My hand quivers as I twist the key out of the ignition and push open the driver’s side door. Two slipper-covered feet meet the cement, but they are not enough to hold me upright. With knees made of jelly, I buckle, falling at my mother’s ankles with an anguished cry as tiny pebbles dig into my palms. Tearstained hair curtains my face, my shoulders heaving with grief.