What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

Ricky’s dad drank to cope with the loss of his
wife. Ricky never talks about it, but when his dad got drunk, he‘d hit him. He
wouldn’t give it up, despite seeing the man that it made his father. It still
bothers me, but I’ve all but given up arguing with him about it anymore.

I’m soaked and don’t want to hear this
conversation. They have to be planning their next outing, and I hate that Ricky
is always leaving. Though I don’t hate it as much as I hate his drinking.

“Night, Daren,” I say, and he gives me a smile.

I ignore Ricky and go right to my room. Closing the
door behind me, I tug off my wet clothing and pull on my nightshirt. I lay my
wet clothing out on the crates I call my nightstand to dry.

I grab the matches off of my nightstand and light
one, using it to light the few candles I have in my room. I would light the
lantern, but I don’t want to mess with it because I plan on going to bed soon.
No point in wasting the gas.
 

I hear Daren laugh from the other side of the door.
There was a time when we really didn’t get along too well. While I might have
known Ricky since we were children, Daren and Ricky have a really tight
relationship. It has been in these last two months that Daren and I have really
started to get along. He doesn’t talk about his past, but I know his family
died during the storms. Ricky told me that Daren was with his girlfriend when
the tornado hit. He realized what was happening and tried to get her to safety
but flying debris killed her. He loved her, and I don’t think he is ready to
move on from her yet. Not that I blame him.
 

The front door opens and then closes with some
mumbling. A few moments later Ricky opens my door and closes it behind him. I
run my brush through my wet hair, yanking out the tangles. My blond hair has
gotten long, now coming halfway down my back. I’ve thought about cutting it,
but I like it long.

I never liked long hair before the storms. My mom
wanted me to grow it out for my senior year. I agreed, planning to chop it off
right before college. Now I can’t bring myself to cut it. I have my dad’s round
face with a small nose. I hold onto the parts of them that I can see in the
mirror. It is the only thing I have left of them.
 

“Take a bath?” he asks, cautiously drumming his
thumbs on the wood door. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but it’s about time.
People were starting to complain.”

“I’m surprised you can smell anything over the
stench of whatever you are drinking.”
 

“We were just planning the next outing. We have to
get supplies to make up what we lost,” Ricky says.

It is amazing how coherent he can sound even when
he is hammered.
 

“Come on, Charlie,” he says, walking towards me.
“Don’t start a fight. I just got home.”

I close my eyes, letting my anger evaporate. I
can’t stay mad at him. Not after everything that he’s been through today.

“I don’t want to fight,” I say.

“Neither do I,” he says, uncrossing my arms and
wrapping them behind his back.

He presses his lips against mine, gently like he
used to. It only lasts for a second before it becomes the intense desire that I
felt just a couple hours before.

His hand is hungry against my skin, his lips hot
against mine. He pushes me back on the bed and slides on top of me. His hand
moves under my back, and he lays me further back on the bed. I gasp at the
roughness, but he doesn’t stop. His stubble is like sandpaper against my skin,
but the familiarity of it excites me.

My hand rubs up and down his back, and he takes it
as encouragement. His hand trails under my shirt, resting on my bare skin above
my shorts. I managed to get my hands between us and push him away. He doesn’t
go far.

“Ricky,” I say, giving him another push. He always
gets pushy when he drinks.

He leans back, a frustrated look on his face, but
he takes a deep breath, and the frustration fades. “Okay, okay,” he sighs.

I sit up, putting my pillow as a barrier between
us. I love him. But the more he pushes me, the more uncomfortable it makes me.
It wasn’t always like this.

In the beginning, it was never this physical. We
stole kisses whenever we could find a moment to squeeze them in. We would just
sit, with me on his lap, and he’d whisper stories in my ear.
Stories
about our past and our future.

Then those stolen moments got fewer and farther in
between. Instead, it became a public display. I thought it was sweet at first,
but then it stopped feeling sweet. The way he was kissing me felt like he
wanted everyone to see us together. Like he was trying to prove something to
everyone watching.
To prove that I was his, someone that no
one else could ever have.
I catch myself, every now and then, wondering
if something is wrong with me for being annoyed. I keep pushing away the only
person in this place that loves me. A lot of people have no one.

There is this place in my gut where something
doesn’t feel right. When Ricky is around and when he tries to push me, that
place nudges me. I know that I am missing something. I just don’t know what it
is. Maybe I’m broken after losing my family. Maybe I will never love someone
properly again.

Knowing he is frustrated with me but isn’t going to
push me any further, I change the subject. I move next to him, curling up
against him.

“Why don’t you tell me when you are leaving?” I
ask, resting my head on his chest. I can hear the steady beat of his heart, so
I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“Three days,” he says, his hand resting on my upper
back.

“So not tomorrow, or the day after that, but that
next tomorrow?” I clarify.

“Correct.”

“You are always leaving me,” I say, opening my
eyes.

“I have to,” he says, kissing the top of my head.
“Believe me, I don’t want to. I‘d much rather be with you.”

“Then how come when you are with me, you waste your
time drinking?” I open my eyes, not sure where that came from. I didn’t mean to
say that.

“It’s like you are trying to start a fight,” Ricky
says, pulling away from me.

I sit up, twisting to look at him. “I’m not trying
to start anything. You just aren’t the same when you drink.”

He runs his hand through his hair. “I think I’m
just going to go to bed.”

“Hey,” I say, tugging on his arm. “Please don’t
leave mad. I wasn’t trying to start anything.”

“You’re right. I’m drunk. We should just talk
later,” he says, pulling out of my grip. “Night.”

“Goodnight,” I whisper as he walks out of the room,
shutting the door behind him.
 

I roll on my side, putting my arm under my pillow.
Guilt eats at my stomach. I didn’t think that I was being too pushy, but I
guess I was. I huff, rolling onto my back.

I should be happy. He admitted that I was right,
which is a rarity. It doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like he’s trying to
placate me. That makes things even worse. He won’t change until he feels that
there is a serious problem, and he doesn’t see his drinking as a problem. I
don’t even tell Nicole the brunt of it.

He doesn’t realize that alcohol brings out the
worst in him. These last couple of months, the drinking has gotten worse. When
he gets drunk, completely wasted, he turns into his father. He has never hit
me, but he yells, accuses me of cheating on him, and then ends up crying
himself to sleep. Most of the time when he gets that drunk, Daren deals with
him. No one outside of Daren and me know about Ricky’s drinking problem. If
they did, they would lose respect for him, and his leadership is one of the
only consistencies people have here.

I think he started drinking to deal with the lives
he had taken. Being orphaned in such a dramatic way affected Ricky, but when he
started to have to kill people to survive, the drinking and controlling
everything went to a whole new level. He drinks to stop feeling guilty.
However, the drinking intensifies the guilt, so he continues drinking and never
seems to realize how far he has fallen.
 

I get it though. I get using alcohol to ease the
guilt. I’ve thought about it.

My own guilt is enough to drown me alive. I went to
the soccer fields that day, to get in an extra practice. My parents came to get
me, leaving Danny at home. When we were driving back, a tree fell in front of
the car. We got out to run the rest of the way home. I got ahead of them, just
a block ahead. They were running past the gas station and it blew. They died
instantly and the force of the explosion buried me in rubble. I woke up; I
didn’t know how much time had passed. There was too much rubble on top of me
for me to move. I thought I was going to die until I heard Ricky’s voice.

My parents wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for me.
And then I let them down again with Danny. I should have protected him. It is
my fault that he’s dead. He died scared and alone because of me. I live with
that every day. Three people are dead because of my actions.

Their deaths took a big piece out of me.
Something that I can never get back.
I’m learning how to
live with it.

April 2

“Let me out!” I scream at the top of my lungs,
banging my hands against the wall, but glass is breaking all around me.
Something flashes off to the side, and I see my brother standing there, his
hands covered in blood.

“Help me, Charlie! Please help me! I’m trapped!”
Danny screams at me, banging his hands on a window, leaving red marks where his
hands hit, the blood dripping down the glass.

I try to yell back at him, but nothing is coming
out. I stand, and I try to run towards my brother, but the wind keeps blowing
my hair in my face, and I can’t see him. My legs won’t carry me fast enough. He
is slipping further and further away from me.

I find my voice. “NOOOOOO! NO come back! Don’t
leave me!” I start screaming, seeing the walls around me beginning to collapse.

“Charlie! Charlie, wake up! You need to wake up!”
Ricky yells as he shakes me awake.

I sit up, almost knocking heads with him. Covered
in a thick layer of sweat, my clothing is sticking to my body. Tears stream
down my face, and Ricky’s hands on my shoulders feel like ice.

“Charlie, what the hell were you dreaming about?”
he asks, sitting back and letting his hands fall from my shoulders.

“Nothing . .
.
 
nothing
. . .
 
it was just a bad dream . . .
 
just a dream,” I tell him. My heart is
pounding as I wipe away tears with the back of my hand.

Ricky studies me for a moment, knowing only a few
things could upset me. “It was about Danny again, wasn’t it?” he asks.

“Yes.” The
blood dripping down
the windows.

Ricky closes his eyes. “I thought you stopped
having those nightmares.”

“I thought I had,” I say, my heart starting to
slow. As the adrenaline fades, the pain of losing Danny burns its way through
my chest. These nightmares are like losing Danny all over again.

Ricky pulls me close, and I let him. He rubs his
hand up and down my back, but the gesture doesn’t bring me as much comfort as
it should. It tears another hole in my heart. It reminds me of my mother
comforting me when I was younger.

“You doing okay now?” he asks, his voice soft and
gentle.

“Yeah,” I tell him, my hand on his chest feeling
the familiar beat of his heart under my palm.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Ricky asks.

“No,” I mumble, looking at the wall. “It’s time for me to
start getting ready anyways.”

He pulls back, pushing the hair out of my face. “Are you
sure that you want to work today? Why don’t you take the day off? We can pick
up where I left off last night before I acted like a jerk.”

“I need to work today,” I cut him off before he can tempt me
to skip my duties and stay with him all day.

“Okay, Charlie. You do whatever you think is best for you.
I’m sorry about last night,” he says, reaching out and cupping my face. He runs
his thumb over my lips before leaning in to kiss me. “I was being a jerk, and
I’m sorry. You’re going through a lot. You don’t need me adding to it.”

I’m glad that he apologized first. “I shouldn’t have pushed.
Yesterday was stressful for you. I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

“You didn’t,” he says, kissing me again. “I’ll let you get
ready.”

He leaves, and I sit in bed for a minute before sliding my
legs out. I stretch out my arms, my body sore from not getting enough sleep. I
stand, pulling off Ricky’s shirt that I slept in. I put on clean attire; a
raggedy button-up long-sleeve faded blue jean shirt and old basketball shorts.
I consider shoes. I prefer my bare feet, but it’s not safe. There’s no way
of
knowing what I would step on. I slide them on, keeping
the laces loose.

I open my door and see Ricky sitting at the kitchen table;
his head in his hands, his shoulders slumped. I thought he had already left.

I hesitate before walking over to him. I run my hand up his
back, resting at his shoulder blades, the muscles tight under my hand.

“I regret a lot of the things that I have done over these
last few months,” he says as he lifts his head and stares at the wall. “I can’t
even begin to list all of the things that I regret.”

“Babe,” I say, sliding into the chair next to him and
putting my hand on his, “I’m always here for you to talk to, you know that
right?”

He looks at me, and recognition passes over his face before
it closes off, leaving no trace of emotion.

“You should probably go,” he says, standing up and slinging
his vest on but not zipping it up. He walks over to the door opening it. “I’ll
see you tonight.”

“O-
kay
,” I say, not even able to
utter the whole word before the door slams shut behind him. “Love you too.” I
murmur.