Page 33 of Tell Me I'm Enough

Bash squints over at Erik, propping his legs up on the empty chair next to him. “You’re my closest friend here…yet you keep so much from me. It hurts,” he says, pretending to be offended.

“You never ask,” Erik retorts.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s hear it then. I’m the newbie…so share with the class yourmysteriouspast.”

Bash points over at me. “I knew I liked this kid. Yeah, what he said. Tell the class all about bad boy Erik turned campus saint.”

Erik rolls his eyes at both of us. “I’ll give you the cliff notes.”

“We’ll take it,” Bash says, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“I’m from the IE, my dad runs an auto shop that runs with the Saints of Ash—”

“You’re a biker kid?” I ask, cutting him off, shocked.

“What the hell is Saints of Ash?” Bash asks.

I look over at him, jaw almost on the ground. “Literally the biggest biker gang in theworld!”

“Like leather and beards and shades and tall handlebars?” Bash asks.

Erik rolls his eyes. “Yeah, kinda.”

“Sounds like some white people shit,” Bash tells him, leaning back in his chair.

I can’t help but laugh at that.

“Anyway,” Erik continues. “I grew up heavily around all of that, even did some time in juvie—”

“Juvie?” Bash spits out, shocked. “I’ve been rooming with a criminal for the last year?”

Erik just rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but you’re not getting any more details on that one. I’ve tried to block a lot of that time out of my memory. But like I was saying, I guess…I eventually got to the age where I had to decide if I wanted to continue down that path or go another direction…because once you’re in, you’re in. You don’t get out.”

“That’s why you don’t talk to your parents?” Bash asks him.

Erik nods.

I feel a pang of sadness for him, ‘cause I see the pain behind that nod.

Looking at him, you would never guess any of this. Actually, you would. He looksexactlythe part. But talking to him, I would have never known.

I guess that’s the thing about life, you learn pretty quickly, the more you talk to people, that everyone has a story, everyonehas a past, everyone has pain that has shaped them into who they are.

“I got tangled up with this girl and a bad situation before I left for college that kind of pushed me to figure out what I really wanted in life, and I just had this moment of realization…like I wasn’t supposed to be in that life. I knew I had to leave it all behind and start over.”

“What happened to the girl?” I ask.

“It was…complicated. And I was kinda…in love with someone else.”

“What happened tothatgirl?” Bash asks with a smirk.

Erik pauses for a second. “I…hurt her. Plus, I wasn’t really allowed to be around her because her family is from a rival club. So…thattore us apart, and then I did something in the end that pretty much ruined it all for good.”

“Sounds like some Romeo and Juliet shit,” I joke.

Erik huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, but I sadly don’t get her back, so…”

“And now you’re here, exiled and saved.”