“And why are you covering for her?”

His question shocked me motionless. I don’t think anything moved other than my eyes for a long while. It wasn’t the manner in which he said it—there wasn’t any bitterness to his tone—but that he said it at all. Because he knew more about me and Bray than I assumed he did.

“Maybe I’m out of line,” Tate went on, “or I have no idea what I’m talking about, but in my opinion”—he pointed at me—“I think you’d do anything for that girl.”

“I guess I would,” I admitted.

“The question is, how far would you go?”

I looked away and thought about it. Then I turned back and said, “Probably as far as you’d go for your brother.”

Tate nodded, slouched down a little in the chair with his long legs splayed out in front of him, his fingers locked over his stomach. “Then you just answered your own question. Why are you two running, anyway?”

“Who said we’re running from anything?”

Tate smiled faintly and shook his head. “It’s kind of obvious. Even though your car and your shit was stolen—which, by the way, you never got the police involved in—I haven’t seen either one of you try to call anyone back in Indiana. No Hey Mom, we’re doin’ great, or Yeah, bro, we’ve been partying with this masochist pothead and his asshole brother, but we’re still alive.” He laughed and then shook his finger at me. “You’re not homeless—you’re both too groomed and healthy for that. What did you do, Elias? Or rather, what did she do?”

I looked away from his eyes and began staring at a porch light on the other side of the street.

Tate raised his back from the chair and leaned over, letting his hands dangle between his knees. “No disrespect, but your girlfriend, fiancée, whatever, she’s a loose cannon. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great girl from what I know about her. But she seems unstable.”

I wanted to punch him, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I knew what he was saying wasn’t far off the mark. So I sucked it up and left it alone.

He leaned back in the chair again and locked his hands behind his head. “I guess sometimes good people do bad things, almost always in the name of love.” He laughed lightly. “But after all is said and done, is what we do really ‘bad’ or just necessary?”

Tate surprised me the more I got to know him. I wondered how he got where he was when he had such a strong hold on his own life despite all the partying he did, but then I realized that he and I weren’t really so different.

“It’s all right if you two don’t want to go to Texas,” he said. “It’s probably better that you don’t, anyway. Maybe Adam will let you stay here until I get back.”

Then suddenly he added as if an afterthought, “Well, whatever you’re covering up for her, by now you’re probably in as much trouble as she is.”

What just happened? I thought as I stared right through Tate. Just minutes ago I was full of resentment and had started to envision my next conversation with Bray. I was going to lay down the law and tell her that I was going home and she was going with me if I had to drag her back kicking and screaming. But out of nowhere, the resentment was gone. I now realized Tate was in a similar situation with Caleb, and I wasn’t so alone in my plight. I wasn’t the only guy running around doing stupid things for a person that he happened to love. Maybe I took Tate’s words and subconsciously twisted them into advice, because deep down I was struggling to find justification for what I had done and what I continued to do.

I never asked Tate exactly what Caleb did to warrant a trip to Corpus Christi. I didn’t think it was right, since I wouldn’t tell him anymore than I had about us, so it was only fair. But I left Tate at the table that night with a new outlook of moving forward with Bray. I still knew that what we were doing was wrong, but I wanted desperately to find another way out of it. I couldn’t let Bray go to prison. Like Tate had said about Caleb, she wouldn’t make it in there.

So from that point on, I made it my mission to use the time we were away with Tate to figure out how to get her out of this. It wasn’t just about running anymore. What I was doing now had purpose.

Later that night, after Tate and Caleb argued behind closed doors in the guest bedroom, the only agreement the two of them came to was that Johanna and Grace had to go back to Norfolk. Everyone in the house heard the conversation:

“Dammit, Caleb! Why do I keep having to bail you out of shit? You owe this guy eight thousand dollars. What’d you do with the money, Caleb? You know what, I don’t even wanna know.”

A loud bang vibrated down the hallway. I could imagine it being Tate’s fist against the wall inside the room.

“I hope he doesn’t tear my place up,” Adam said from the couch. He was a tall, skinny guy with sandy-brown hair and stylish black-rimmed glasses that made him look like a stereotypical intellect sipping a latte.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” I heard Tate say with a demanding edge in his voice. “I’m going to pay this guy off and then I’m done. I’m fucking done, little brother. Eight thousand dollars is about all I have left in savings.”

“Nobody asked you to bail me out.”

“If I don’t, who will, Caleb? Dad? You’ve already milked him dry of his savings. Kyle? Shit, bro, if he finds out I’m helping you he’s going to kick my ass. Everly? Baby sister is siding with Kyle, bro. I’m all you’ve got left.”

Then he said, “Why don’t you just call Mom? Talk to her and see how she’s doing? You haven’t called her in a year. You know she’ll let you move back in. You can get away from all that bullshit. Get a decent job and start putting your life back together. Maybe Cera will take you—”

“Don’t even go there,” Caleb snapped. “Just don’t—”

A long, dark silence lingered.

“I think it’s time you sent Johanna and Grace home,” Tate said. “It’s not a good idea to take them to Corpus Christi.”

“Yeah, and what about your new freeloader friends out there?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tate said. “But you need to worry about you and this shit you’ve gotten us into. Send the girls home.”

“I’ll take them to the bus station tonight,” Caleb said.

Grace and Bray locked eyes from across the room upon hearing that. They both looked dejected. But I could tell right away that Bray was forcibly trying to hide the fact that she was utterly heartbroken. I hated to see it. I hated to know that the one person Bray was closest to besides me was about to walk out of her life and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Thirty minutes later after the arguing and Tate scouring the house and outside in the yard for his keys, Bray and Grace were saying their good-byes.

“Here’s my number,” Grace said as she slipped a torn-off piece of a magazine page into Bray’s hand. “Call me when you get back to Indiana. Maybe we can visit sometime.” They fell into a tight embrace.

“As soon as I get another cell phone, I’ll call you with my number,” Bray said.

I could tell that Bray was on the verge of tears. They hadn’t known each other long, but they’d bonded, and Bray always had a hard time bonding with people. Besides me, Lissa had been her closest friend growing up, and it turned out that Lissa wasn’t as close to Bray as she thought she was. As I stood there watching the two of them say good-bye, I thought to myself how I wished it could’ve been different, that they could’ve met under better circumstances. Because I knew that once Grace walked out that door, they’d never see each other again.

Chapter Twenty-One

Elias

Caleb drove Grace and Johanna to the bus station.

Adam came strolling out of the shower wearing a pair of black running shorts and a towel draped around the back of his neck.

“Since Caleb will be chickless tonight, he can have the couch,” Adam said, drying the back of his hair. Then he pointed at Bray and me. “You’re welcome to crash in the office. The couch bed in there is really comfortable.” He stopped just before he made his way down the hall. “Though if I were you I’d change the sheets.”

This was good news. I didn’t think I could sleep another night crammed onto the couch in the den with Bray like we had the past few nights at Adam’s.

Adam disappeared inside his bedroom like he did at the same time every night. Tate was outside on the back porch again. All of us thought it best to just stay out of his way while he was seething over this thing with Caleb. Except for Jen, of course, who was outside trying to talk to him and calm him down. Even she knew better than to act her usual abusive self around him while he was like this.

Secretly, I envied the two of them, the chaotic yet strong relationship they had.

I wanted to be alone with Bray for a while. I got up and took her hand. “Want to go for a walk?”

She smiled up at me. It was such an innocent and sweet smile that I felt even guiltier for the resentment I was feeling.

“Lead the way,” she said and placed her hand into mine.

We left the house and walked down the street for a long time, then we cut through a parking lot toward a baseball field. There were two light poles near the chain-link fence at the end of the field that cast a dull gray glow over the dirt and white painted lines. We slipped through an unlocked gate near a dugout and walked out past the pitcher’s mound and sat down on the grass.

“I hate it that Grace had to go,” I told her.

She laid down beside me on the grass and looked up toward the sky. Thick clouds completely covered the stars. I sat upright next to her with my legs angled upward. I picked at a few blades of grass and rolled them in my fingertips.