Chelsea Fine - Best Kind of Broken

So when I met Levi’s family, and his mother, Linda, loved me like her own and showered me with kind words and affection, I spent as many days and nights as I could in the comfort of the Andrews home. Linda and Mark Andrews were always trying to protect me from my miserable mother and give me what she wouldn’t. They showed me love and family and compassion and all the other things I was starving for.

My heart twists as I think back on all that happiness, that warmth.

God, I miss them.

“Striiike!”

I blink over to Matt, who has his arms raised in victory as he stares down the lane. He spins around with a giant grin. “Did you see that?”

I smile and clap and pretend I saw the whole thing. “Whoo-hoo!”

“Your turn,” he says.

Oh goodie.

I begrudgingly rise and lift my fifty-pound ball from the dispenser with an exaggerated grunt. I step up to the shiny lane—my feet sliding a bit on the polished floor so I have to catch myself like I’m baby Bambi—and halfheartedly throw the ball toward the white pins.

I knock over two. Thrilling.

I retrieve my ball for round two and knock over another three pins.

“Way to go, babe!” Matt says. “That’s your best frame yet.”

I pinch out a smile as we switch places and he prepares for his turn.

I hate this game.

As I take my seat, I glance at the neighboring lane and see the mother fussing with a barrette in the little girl’s—Amanda’s—hair. My mother always hated my hair. The curls drove her crazy. A disgusting rat’s nest, she’d call it.

By the time I was in seventh grade, the rat’s nest had grown to the middle of my back and I freaking loved it. It was wild and difficult to style, but it was my trademark, my identity. Pixie with the long blonde curls. Pixie with the happy hair. It made me feel girly and pretty.

My mom was always trying to get me to pin it back or twist it up into something that looked halfway respectable, but it was almost impossible to tame my unruly ringlets, so rarely ever did I cooperate.

One weekend I refused to pull my hair back and my mom threw a massive fit, but I didn’t care. It was my hair and I was going to wear it down. Nothing could stop me.

Except a pair of scissors.

Sandra Marshall grabbed a thick fistful of my proud curls and swiftly cut them clean off. I watched in horror as the front left side of my identity fell to the floor in a sad heap of golden spirals. Then I cried.

There was nothing I could do to rectify the damage except cut the rest of my hair just as short to match.

“Maybe walking around like an ugly boy will give you some perspective on properly caring for your hair,” she’d said.

I was thirteen and I thought I looked like a boy. I was thirteen and believed I was ugly.

I spent that weekend at Levi’s house, crying to his mom about how kids at school were going to tease me and how no boys would ever like me. Linda did her best to style my hair in the most feminine way possible, but it was a lost cause.

Monday morning came around and I cried all the way to school. Junior high is hell on girls—especially in a small town—so with my head hung in shame, I braved the front doors and steeled myself for the endless teasing and whispering that was sure to ensue.

But it never came.

It seemed everyone in school was too preoccupied with a certain eighth grader’s hair to care about mine. I traveled through the halls, listening to giggles and following wide eyes to the source of the school’s entertainment.

Levi.

His hair was longer back then and he had dyed it purple—neon purple—and spiked it up all over his head. The school’s star football player dying his hair a silly color wasn’t jaw-dropping or mind-blowing, but it was outrageous enough to keep any attention off of me.

Levi and I didn’t speak that day, but once, as we passed in the hall, he gave me a crooked smile and that’s when I knew.

I was his completely.

Bowling pins crash against the floor and the loud noise ricochets in my ears as Matt jumps in triumph over his eight-pin knockout.

I glance over at Amanda, whose head is still down as she and her group finish their game and leave the bowling alley.

I hope she has an Andrews family in her life, or at least a Levi.

Especially a Levi.

“Earth to Sarah.” Matt waves his hand in front of my face.

I look up at him. “My turn again?”

“Yep. Go get ’em, tiger.”

Rawr.

Matt and I bowl for a while longer and we’re having a perfectly pleasant time—and by “we” I mean Matt—when he throws a giant-ass wrench into the evening.

“So,” he says after throwing his fifth strike. “What are you doing Fourth of July weekend?”

I stand from my plastic seat and walk to the ball dispenser. “I haven’t really thought about it. Why?”

He doesn’t sit back down, but instead watches as I pick up my sixty-five-pound ball and insert my fingers into the dark holes of other people’s dead skin cells.

Have I mentioned I hate this game?

“I was thinking about flying back home to San Diego for the weekend. And I want you to come along and meet my family.”

I look up. “Wow. Random.”

He laughs. “Not really. We’ve been together for a while and I think it’s time to show you off. I’ve told my parents all about you, and they can’t wait to meet you in person.”

He told his parents all about me?

My mother doesn’t even know Matt exists. Hell, Ellen barely knows. Should I have been prepping my family members for a Matt meet and greet? Shit. I really suck at the girlfriend thing.

I swallow. “I don’t know…”

Am I ready to meet his family? Am I ready to go on a weekend trip with him? Wouldn’t a weekend trip mean sex? My fingers start to sweat into the ball holes.

“Come on.” He smiles. “I really want you to meet my family.”

I scrunch my nose. “But… why?”

“Because you’re important to me.” His smile stays in place, but his voice lowers in sincerity. “And because I love you.”

I almost drop my eighty-pound ball as I stare at him. We’ve never said the “L” word to each other.

Obnoxious party music and the loud echoes of falling pins fill the silence between us as he waits for me to respond.

Up until this moment, I wasn’t sure if Matt and I would have a future or not. But standing here, in these ridiculously slippery shoes, with my fingers wedged in the sweaty holes of a ninety-five-pound sphere of nasty, I’m completely sure.

It’s late and the kitchen lights are dimmed as I lock the back door. Just as I’m turning to head for the east wing, the dining room door swings open and a pissed-off Pixie flies past me, knocking into my shoulder as she huffs to the sink.

“Whoa.” I turn around. “Who pissed you off?”

“Matt,” she says through clenched teeth as she washes her hands. She yanks some vegetables from the fridge, grabs a sharp knife, and starts hacking away at mushrooms.

“Matt?” All my guard dog instincts immediately go on alert. “Why? What did he do?”

I’ll kill him. If he hurt her, I will kill him.

“He told me he loved me!” She thrusts her arms out, the sharp knife in her hand glinting under the kitchen lights.

I lift a brow and wait because, surely, that’s not the reason for the broken expression on her face. But she doesn’t elaborate.

I pause. “So…?”

“So…” She laughs without humor as she goes back to hacking. “Just when I think I’m making progress in my life and might be able to get back to normal, or finally have sex with someone other than drunk Benji, or just move on from this deep, sad place I’m in all the time, Matt goes and tells me he loves me and totally screws everything up!” She starts chopping more aggressively.

Pixie hasn’t had sex with anyone other than Benji? I’m outrageously pleased by this information.

“I mean, who does that?” she continues. “Who declares their love for someone they don’t even know? Does he know about my pet turtle when I was nine? No.” Chop, chop, chop. “Does he know that my mother is evil incarnate? No.” Chop, chop, chop. “Hell, five hours ago he didn’t even know my hair was naturally curly! He knows nothing about me. And yet he wants me to fly away with him to meet his parents because he loves me? No. Just no!” Chop, chop, chop.

Pixie has been with only one guy, one time. Why am I so happy about this?

“And you know what else?” She points the knife at me violently. “I am not Captain Hook. If anything, I’m Tinker Bell.” She returns to her wild dicing. “Tinker Bell!”

Tinker Bell?

Shit. I need to start paying attention.

“He’s a crazy person,” she says. Chop, chop, chop. “So clearly I had no choice but to break up with him.”

I squint at her. “He told you he loved you… so you broke up with him?”

“Yep,” she says, popping the p.

“Why?”

“Because Matt doesn’t love me. So it’s all just bullshit. Him. Me. Everything. Bullshit.”

“How do you know he doesn’t love you?”

“Just because.”

“Because why?”

She throws her arms out again and yells, “Because love isn’t something that needs to be said out loud!” Her face flushes with passion. “It’s something you just know. It’s an unspoken thing. It’s humble and quiet and constant…” She goes back to slaughtering the mushrooms, but lowers her tone a bit. “I mean, you can’t just say you love someone and make it true. That’s not how it works. Real love doesn’t need to be declared or confessed. Real love just… is. You know?”

My throat constricts because I do know. God, I know. I know so much it’s hurting me to look at her.

“So yeah.” She swallows. “Matt doesn’t love me and I don’t love him and now I’m right back to where I started, which is exactly nowhere and I’m just so”—chop—“freaking”—chop—“sick”—chop—“of being nowhere. And nobody gets it. Nobody!”

I watch her for a moment, wishing I could take away the pain in those big green eyes of hers as they viciously hack up the remains of the mushrooms. She looks the way I feel inside most days. Hurt. Stuck. Desperate.

“I get it,” I say quietly.

She stops chopping and looks up.

I press my lips together. “I know all about nowhere.”

Our eyes meet beneath the dimmed lights, colliding in a tangle of shared emotions too raw to touch. How did we get so broken?

We might be legal adults now, but lately it feels like we’re just as helpless as children. Just as lost and scared.

If my parents were here, they’d know what to do. How to heal Pixie. How to fix me. They always knew what to do. But since they didn’t stick around for the fallout, we’re navigating this thing on our own. And failing miserably.

Pixie stares at me for a long moment.

“I know you do.” Her voice is barely a whisper, drifting through the air and gliding over my skin. She looks me over with longing and dammit if that’s not everything I want in the world.

My eyes drop to her mouth, her throat, her hands. Every instinct I have is screaming to touch her. To cross the space between us and wrap my arms protectively around her small frame. To shield her from all the bad things, the sorrowful things. All the things I’m made of.

But that can’t happen. We can’t happen.

Neither of us moves as reality seeps in, slow and steady, and the moment evaporates into the dim kitchen. It’s sad in the room, like there’s something very much alive but fatally ill breathing in between Pixie’s broken heart and mine. And we don’t know how to fix it.

We need more distance between us. Distance is painless. Distance is safe.