Hanging Fire

Chapter Seven: Every Kiss Begins With K

Danny 16

“You aren’t Robbin me!”

“You don’t even have a job for me to rob off you!” I yell at my dad, who’s actually sitting pretty straight on our couch, much to my surprise. He’s got on a long oversized gray tee shirt with moth holes from passing time. Some baggy jeans but he’s missing his belt, and they have evidence he’s eaten in them and used them as a napkin. He wasn’t always this bad. Just in the last year.

I touch my hand to my forehead to collect myself before retrying the conversation. “Look. You can’t work.” I lay it flat to him and he blinks. “We need bills paid, but they can’t be in my name. Only yours. I need you to sign up for this bank so I can access it with your information. I can also have my direct deposits sent to it.”

My father’s eyebrows rise high together. “You wanna pay the bills!?”

“I do not.”

“I’ll get another.” He stands up, waving me off.

“You don’t need another drink!” I snap, and he turns and looks at me. A melting face.

“I meant a job. I’ll get another job.”

“You’ll just lose it after a few checks!”

“That’s still money in this house.”

I sometime can’t believe my father and I are related, and that I’d been raised by him.

“I’m just asking so that when you forget… I can log in and authorize it through the app.”

He stops, thinking about this for a minute. He’s going to tell me he doesn’t trust anything online. I’m already expecting it, scowling, when he says,

“You think I’m a bad father?”

I mull this over, unbelievably. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a quick lie. I don’t even have that in me. I’m too honest. Upfront. “I think there are worse fathers.”

I imagine Paul, Noa’s dad.

He cracks a grin and rubs at his beard stubble that’s newly coming in white after his last shave. “I need that. Your brother’s incapable of that with me.”

I c**k my head to the side. He can’t stand it when my brother avoids him. “James has a lot going on with his funding again.”

“And he’s already left. Not a bye or a f**k you.”

“Dad.”

“I’ll get a job. I feel fine. Motivated.”

He gets this way after James. It only lasts a month. The longest? Six.

Never a year.

“That’s fine, but why can’t I just be on an account with you as a precaution?”

“I don’t need my teenage son to worry”—

“If we’re late on taxes another six months, and with the lean the bank already has on the house…I’m afraid it’s going to get swiped from under me.”

“Oh. You’re looking out for your own skin.”

“The hell yes, I am! Why wouldn’t I? You don’t give a s**t about yourself. Why would you be able to think of anyone else?”

He stares at me. I think his jaw twitches, and it causes my heart to lurch in response.

I’m not a bitter guy. I feel like an asshole and want that relationship with my dad, but it’s just not possible without being emotionally manipulated.

“You’re going to leave me if I don’t.”

Oh s**t.

My heart is being clutched in a tight grip.

“James has given up on me. Your mom”—

Squeeze.

“Your mom is so ashamed of me”—

“Dad!” I yell and he stops talking, blinking as he stumbles back a bit. He’s tall, a bear of a man whose lost weight, and now his skin sags over him. Which also means his clothes do, too.

It irritates me to watch how disheveled he looks. “I don’t want to hear about mom.”

“You were a kid! Ya don’t remember”—

“I remember everything.” I deadpan. “You’re so worried about family. Let me save this house.”

With that, he nods. “Fine. I’ll sign up with one. You show me how, but that means you’re doing all the bills with me from here on out.”

I nod eagerly. Happy.

I won something.

I got something I wanted.

I’m smiling like a fool. I can feel it. It didn’t matter that it meant I was stepping into more responsibilities.

I felt the day was coming. One day, my father wasn’t going to be around.

His days of working were already over, whether he believed that or not.

I’d been so proud of myself winning against my dad that I forgot that Noa’s date was tonight.

Her first date.

Peter took a simple route for her, which is smart. Dinner and a movie.

I can’t wait to hear how that goes. The thought of it is amusing.

I wonder what it will look like to see Noa fall in love.

Squeeze.

Should I still go over there tonight to sleep, or would that be…intrusive?

I hear my father downstairs moving about. Loudly in the kitchen.

He’s going to be bad tonight after our conversation. He will hate himself more than usual because I opened my big ass mouth earlier.

Now. I don’t feel so proud to be taking anything on.

I need to be at her house.

I usually go around 9.

It’s 730. Which means the movie just started.

I groan loudly.

This is going to be so long.

I fall back across my bed flat on my back and spread out my arms. I stare at the ceiling, making out shapes and images from the paint strokes.

A phone.

A girl

A flower.

Would she answer your call?

This thought came suddenly, and it feels attached to my chest like another extension to my heart. Perhaps the thought came to feed off of it.

While I think to myself, where did this thought come from? I also can’t let it go.

I can’t help but wonder.

Will she pick up my call while on her date?

I pull my phone out and go to our recent texts, hovering over her name. A cold sweaty sensation passes over me as my chest tightens as my blood dances violently with the anticipation.

She doesn’t answer.

The disappointment that she doesn’t is something I don’t acknowledge.

Not even to myself.

I do it again. Call her.

I bet she’ll squirm.

I bet she’s not watching the movie, or even thinking about Peter.

She’s thinking about how she can’t answer because she’s in the theater.

Fine, I’ll be good and stop, so she’ll enjoy the movie.

After an hour and a half passes by, I text her instead of calling.

It’s also when my father starts to talk to himself and reenact all his past regrets.

I don’t have time for it. I don’t want to make time either, so I’m already out my house and near hers’, hours before she’s actually home.

What I’m unsure of doing is going into her room without her.

Would she bring Peter home?

I don’t think she would mess around. Noa’s mind doesn’t work that way. Her first crush was a boy Bratz doll and Danny Phantom.

I don’t think a human guy—She kissed James.

My annoying conscious reminds me. The thought always pisses me off.

Yeah, but she doesn’t like James.

I respond to myself.

She never hated or disliked James for no reason. She’s never brought him up in conversation. It’s why the kiss they shared makes no sense. I barely knew they had ever talked. Especially since he’s four years older than us.

That kiss has haunted me. This has been the most I’d ever given it any thought.

I feel the brows crease between my eyes, my jaw locking, and fists tight when I’m underneath her window, calling for the last time. Again, no answer.

But she sends a text.

Wait for me at home.

It’s the simplest response.

It’s also exciting and while it feels wrong, I don’t stop.

I reach up to grab her window ledge and pull myself up like I’ve always done. With one hand I maneuver my fingers under it and her old wooden framed window lifts, stiffly. When it’s up halfway, I slither inside.

I haven’t given a s**t about Madelyn hearing me come in over a year now. I’d go through the door, but I like the feeling of sneaking around and I think Noa does, too.

If I went through the front door and Noa knew Madelyn was aware, it’d hurt her. It’s another way her mom can say I don’t give a s**t what happens to you.

Noa and I know she doesn’t. I know she’s got to hear me in her daughter’s room at night. We talk, we laugh, we watch tv, we’ll play a game now and then, but never does her mom acknowledge it. Not for the last two and half years, but I don’t think Noa wants to admit it.

She’ll take what she can get. She’d like to believe her mom wouldn’t want me here. Hell, I don’t think her brother ever gave a f**k.

It’s infuriating.

Because even I give a s**t.

It’s why I’m not sure how I feel about Peter coming to her room.

Peter is a good guy.

I swallow as I make my way to her bed.

I sit down on her purple throw blankets. She’s got black pillowcases and a white comforter and at the bottom of her mattress is a pile of all the hoodies and sweatshirts she’s worn in the last week.

I fold them all for her.

Then I make her bed and before I know it, I’m cleaning her room.

I do this. She does the same at my house. We both learned pretty young how to be independent thanks to who raised us. Meeting at twelve, we also got the chance to be there and help each other. It’s second nature.

As I go and throw her laundry in the washing machine, I see her mother slip out of the house.

In a red dress.

She doesn’t notice me, and if she did; she didn’t care. Her blonde bombshell hair swaying behind her back as it bounces with the slam of the door behind her.

I toss in Noa’s clothes, pausing on a pair of her underwear and don’t even realize I’ve frozen.

They’re pink. Like her hair.

Quickly I toss them in, realizing I’m being weird, and slam the lid down, starting it.

Completely ignoring what happened, I go back to her room and jump in her bed to watch tv. Waiting for her like she said.

It’s late. When I hear two car doors slam outside the window. I stir in her sheets. I’d passed out—I look at the clock and realize it’s almost one in the morning. My throat feels thick with something and my chest hurts.

Squeeze.

I go to her window to peek.

I don’t even try to hide because I’m feeling bitter.

My eyes hood downward on them.

She’s laughing. No—It’s giggling!

And they’re close. Peter reaches behind her, his hand flat on her lower back as he pulls her in.

He’s bending low. She’s lifting herself up on her toes.

Their lips meet and stay connected.

It’s not like James.

It doesn’t feel haunting to watch her kiss, Peter.

Yet, it doesn’t feel like nothing either.

In fact, it’s not even in the middle where I might feel confused or grossed out. Nope.

As I stand there looking out Noa’s window, where I wait for her in her bedroom, and watch her kiss another man, I can’t help but think of it exactly like that.

Another man.

Not me.

This kiss is killing me.