Drowning Is Inevitable Read Free Page A

said. He’d started cleaning up his mess, gathering the pieces of clay pot and cussing. His nickname on the football team was the Tasmanian Devil. He wrecked everything in sight, and I had the scars to prove it.
    â€œI don’t want to do this anymore,” I’d said.
    He’d dropped the pieces of flowerpot. “You’re gonna break up with me again?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow long this time, do you think? So I can plan out my week.”
    â€œGod, Max!” I’d screamed. “You’re impossible! You always want more. You push and push. You’re never happy with the way things are.”
    Our yelling had brought my grandmother outside, and now she was standing there staring Max down.
    â€œI’m sorry about your flowerpot, Ms. Josephine. I’ll clean it up.”
    â€œNo, that’s fine. Just leave.”
    â€œAlright, I’m leaving,” he’d said, his face looking dejected. “Olivia, you don’t have to come with me to Baton Rouge. Just pick a direction and go,” he’d added much quieter. He hadn’t meant that, though. He’d wanted me to follow him.
    That brought us to our current problem. “Whatever I do has to be mine, Max.”
    â€œI get it,” he said again.
    This is what Max said anytime he didn’t understand something. We were in stare-down mode when the front door opened.
    Jamie stepped onto the porch and said, “Your grandmother started cleaning around me. I took that as my cue.”
    â€œHey, man,” Jamie said. He nodded in Max’s direction. “I hear you’ve been a dick lately.”
    â€œI’m trying to apologize,” Max said.
    â€œGood luck with that.” Jamie looked at me. “Are we still meeting at Bird Man’s later?”
    â€œYeah, I’ll see you there.”
    We watched Jamie walk away. The closer he got to his house, the more his shoulders slumped: Jamie’s attempt to make himself smaller.
    There were a few moments of awkward silence, and then my grandmother appeared in the front window, giving Max her death glare.
    â€œI think that’s my cue, too,” he said. “Will I see you later tonight?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said.
    â€œMaybe,” he sighed. He stood and walked down the porch steps. With his back to me, he said, “You know you love me.” He got in his truck and drove away, the dust kicking up from his tires.
    It was true. It was my gut instinct to love him. He was broken, but he was mine. I was scared, though. I’d seen the consequences of love in my dad’s eyes.
    My dad was a shadow in my life, standing in the corners, only coming close when it was absolutely necessary or in his most lonesome moments. He watched me warily, as if I was a clue to her, as if the time I spent inside her body had given me a secret, and one day I’d tell him what it was. I was scared to love or be loved in that way.
    It was on this street—Fidelity Street—that he promised her he’d love her forever. They were sixteen and standing under the gigantic live oak tree across from my grandmother’s house. I once asked him to show me exactly where he stood and exactly where she stood.
    â€œTell me word for word what you told her,” I’d said.
    â€œI told her that even though we were only sixteen, I knew I’d love her for the rest of my life.”
    â€œWhat did she say?”
    â€œShe said she’d love me for the rest of hers.”
    He didn’t know his love would outlive hers by a lifetime. Then I’d asked him why he’d never moved on. He’d paused, then grunted and said, “Lillian was enough.”
    He didn’t live with us. He wasn’t comfortable in my grandmother’s house. Then again, nobody had expected him to move in after my mom died. He lived in a one-room apartment above the garage where he worked. I once asked him why he didn’t want me to live with him.