Twisted

I have never been this happy to be out of the house, ever. I have been driving for a few hours trying to process the information my father gave me not too long ago. It surprised me that he would do such a thing but the more I thought about it and the more the shock wore off, the more anger towards him I started to feel. How could he destroy a family like this?

I mean it wasn’t enough for Sophie, not to mention me as well, to lose one of her parents but for her to move away to the other side of the country wasn’t sitting right with me. She was in the back seat, asleep for the past few hours but I just continued driving, knowing that as soon as I get home I was going to pack to move.

It wasn’t even home anymore; it was a broken house with a broken family living in it. I jerked when I heard a vile shout and realized that I was swerving, so I pulled into the nearest garage and sat there, thinking. The argument was still fresh in my mind and what I heard was permanently branded into my mind.

“I can’t do this anymore Max, I can’t. I have tried for so long but everything seems to be falling apart.” My mother, Delia, screamed at my father. Sophie and I were in her bedroom playing with her toys and dolls. I know what you are thinking, what is an eighteen-year-old girl doing playing with stuffed toys with her six-year-old sister? Well, I wanted to take her mind off of everything and I love her to death. I would do anything for her, so playing with ridiculous looking toys and dress-up helped to ease her mind.

“What do you want from me!? What?” he asked her, anger in his voice. Even though we were on the second floor, I could still hear the screams that were coming from the living room.

“I want to be rid of you. I want to leave and never see you again. I want a divorce.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. None of it made sense and from what I have observed over the past few years was that they seemed to be happy, content when all of a sudden the fights started. I didn’t know what to do but I was handling it as best I could when I suddenly heard Sophie’s door open. My father walked in with a grave look on his face and said the three words that changed me forever.

“We are leaving.” I couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone was ripping my heart out of my chest and tearing it to pieces. That was when I grabbed Sophie, ignored my fathers’ calls and drove off.

I jerked back to the present when I heard someone tap my window and looking I saw that it was none other than Caleb, the golden boy of my town and a drop dead gorgeous guy. He had the baby blues, the surfer hair and the body of a god. I always found him attractive and tonight was nothing new.

I opened my car door and got out before quietly shutting it so that it didn’t disturb Sophie. I wondered what he was doing here at a garage at this time of night, because when I looked at my watch I saw that it was already three am.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me. I leaned back against my door and sighed, a sad empty sound.

“I could ask you exactly the same.” I liked how his eyes shone in the dark and how the dimple popped up when he smiled. He rested next to me against the car, his arms crossed that made his muscles bulge and I had to admit, he was a fine looking specimen.

“Touché. I’m an insomniac. So I drive around at night to waste hours. You?” I was surprised to hear that he was an insomniac but I would rather be that than have a broken family.

“I found out that my parents are divorcing and that I am moving to God knows where tomorrow with my father and Sophie. As soon as he told me that we were leaving I grabbed Sophie and drove off. I’m sure that they are still fighting or packing things for us to leave but I know that as soon as I go back then everything is going to hit me all over again, so I’ve been driving. I didn’t want to deal with them or anyone else at the moment so I just took off.” I said with a shrug. I didn’t want to think about anything or anyone in fear that I might start bawling like a baby and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to deal with my emotions at the moment.

“You’re leaving?” he sounded surprised and when I nodded I heard him exhale deeply. I looked at him and raised a brow, wondering what was going on and felt my eyes widen when I saw a light blush on his face, or maybe it was just the light of the garage that caused it to look like that.