My Partner In Crime

Chapter 8

 I was kind of excited to see his house, since I had never been there. It was small and blue. There was a blonde woman sitting on the porch with in a wheelchair.

"Hey, Dayna." Dodge said as he passed her.

"Well, well!" (like that one that Joey's date said when she brought Janice for Chandler: "Well, well! Look what you brought!") Dayna said with a grin. "You're Clem, right?"

"That's me." I smiled, shaking her hand.

"I'm Dayna, Dodge's sister." Dayna introduced herself. Then she pulled me close. Dodge was standing in the doorway and waiting. "How is he?"

"Dayna, let her go." Dodge said. His voice was more sad than it usually was.

"Have fun," Dayna smiled, releasing my hand. Dodge started on his way into the house and I looked at Dayna again.

"I think he's good." I mouthed, giving her a thumbs up. She nodded and waved me off. I ran after Dodge, who was waiting for me just a short way inside.

"We'll be quick." He said, leading me down a hallway and into a room. The room was full of dark colors: grays and blacks. The only splash of color was an array of trophies on a shelf. Dodge went into a closet to find something.

"Are these yours?" I asked, looking them over. Dodge poked out of the closet to see what I was talking about. When his eyes landed on them, he stepped out of the closet.

"Most of them." He nodded. "Some are my dad's."

"Where is he?" I asked, not realizing that it could be a sore subject.

"We always said that he would die with rope reins in his hands, he was always there." Dodge said slowly, looking at the trophies. "He hung himself." Then he looked at me and came back down to earth. A smile passed over his face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that, I'm sor—"

"No, Dodge, no, it's okay." I said, shaking my head. He started to turn away, but I hugged him.  He stopped, returning the hug. I wasn't too much shorter than him, so my face was buried in his shoulder. He took a deep breath and seemed to relax.

"I'm sorry." He breathed.

"Dodge, I don't have a mom. I get it." I told him, feeling the warmth radiating off of him.. "But she's alive, so I'm sorry that your dad isn't."

"You don't have a mom?" He cocked his head, breaking the embrace. We both stepped back.

"It's a long story." I shrugged.

"It's a long car ride." Dodge copied my shrug. "You good to go?"

"Yeah." I said. He led me outside and to the car. I said bye to Dayna and we went on our way. It was about five minutes of quiet before I spoke. "So, my mom."

"Your mom." He nodded. (my favorite jokes are "your mom" (i don't have a mom, so I throw it around whenever) and "that's what she said", so by all means drop them in the comments if you see a good place.) 

"My mom, like a year after she had Jesse, decided to get closer to my dad's friends." I started, feeling the words in my mouth. "She cheated on my dad with five of his best friends. Then she told the family that he was hitting her and they didn't buy it. During the divorce, she became addicted to cocaine and started giving me and Jesse ghost pepper hot sauce and locking us in closets as punishment."

"How old was he?" Dodge asked. His face had softened.

"At that point, he was two and I was four." I said.

"Doesn't that count as child abuse?" 

"Yep." I nodded, smiling. I had already made my peace with it all in my Sophomore year of high-school, where I was slapped in the face with horrible anger issues and even worse mommy-issues, to the point of referring to my friends mothers as "mom" and gaining a hatred for women. I went to therapy and learned the root and we fixed it.

"I'm sorry." He said, taking his eyes off the road to glance at me.

"Don't be." I shook my head. We sat in silence for a short while, although it wasn't awkward. I looked out the window at the passing buildings and he drove to wherever the party was.

"You know what would be an interesting concept?" He asked.

"Hm?" I turned to him.

"What if Sleeping Beauty had night terrors?" He asked, reading the house numbers to determine how close we were to our destination. The sun was setting at this point.

"That would be terrifying." I grinned. "Like, imagine being the fairies in the room and she starts screaming."

"Now there's motivation to destroy that spindle." Dodge said with a small smile. "Bingo!"

I followed his gaze to a massive house. We parked and got out to attend the party.

~Next chapter is the party~