Page 31 of Pretty Savage: Defy

“Your mom changed his mind?” he asks. “About staying in Italy?”

I look out the window, watching gas stations and exit signs fly by.

“She changed everything,” I say, picturing my mom with her long brown hair, just like mine. “He tried to resist. They dated long distance for a year, while he worked as a bartender and she studied, but they missed each other too much. He moved to California, and they got married six months later.”

“A bartender?” Carrson winces, and I know he’s remembering the version of my dad that he met. The one lying in soiled sheets, too drunk to remember to pay the electricity bill.

“Yeah.” I look down at my hands twisted in my lap. “Back then he could hold his liquor.”

“What happened?”

I know what he means. What happened to make my dad fall apart the way he did.

The freeway stretches ahead of us. Go any direction long enough, and we’d reach the ocean.

“Life, I guess. Losing my mom. Then…me and senior year.” I don’t have to explain more. Carrson already knows. “It all got to be too much.”

I drift for a minute, lost to my thoughts, but before they can go too dark, Carrson interrupts.

“What you’re telling me is your dad met a pretty girl and immediately abandoned all his plans?”

I give him a small smile. “That’s the story.” The sadness slips back in. “Too bad it doesn’t have a happier ending.”

“They got you,” he says. “Seems like a pretty good ending to me.”

I look at him, but he’s watching the road again, expression unreadable except for softness at the corners of his mouth. As if whatever tragedy came later can’t erase the fact that once, somewhere in Florence, two people fell in love and set a whole future in motion.

Chapter seven

Six Days Until Bonding

Laurel

We drive until there’s nothing but mile markers and endless night. Out here the stars have multiplied until they merge together, a swath of white like an ancient god spilled a glass of milk across the sky.

When Carrson stifles his fourth yawn behind a closed fist, even he has to admit defeat. It takes another twenty minutes, but eventually a hotel rises ahead, glowing in the darkness.

“Let’s stop there.” I squint through the windshield as we draw closer.

Four long buses are lined up against the curb, and the neon sign outside flashes:

WELCOME ALL-STATE LITTLE LEAGUE FAMILIES!

GOOD LUCK, PLAYERS!!!

I stare at it. Then at the buses. “Oh no.”

Carrson glances over. “What?”

“We’re about to be trapped in a hotel with a hundred children hopped up on sugar and adrenaline.”

“Sounds just like Ashford House,” he answers. “How bad can it be?”

“Oh, you sweet summer child,” I say, patting him on the arm, which only makes him more confused.

Little boys in grass-stained uniforms swarm the lobby, chasing each other with cheap plastic water guns and shrieking. Most of their parents have retreated to the bar, which is standing room only.

Carrson edges closer to me as he takes in the sunflower seed shells scattered across the floor and the toddler in striped pajamas eating an ice cream cone on the lobby couch.