School was finished for the kidlets and summer sank in, in all of it's hot, lethargic glory. The window of opportunity I had to get in touch with Charli came and went without so much of a blink, though her number stayed tucked in my bedside drawer, a ticket for the escape route I was quietly ignoring. Like all the great Cameron men who have come before me, I faced the troubling philosophical and realistic problems in my life by pretending that they weren't there. I kept true to my sluggish routine of working, drinking with Clint and Phil, banging Ellie, lying about banging Ellie, and catching a few bad TV shows in between it all. I knew from experience that the shit will inevitably hit the fan, but I chose to live as though I did not possess this little token of knowledge. Why break a perfect 24-year record, after all?

Unfortunately, with every day that passed, my secrets and sins grew heavier. Without school and school chums to occupy their time, Sean and Ellie had this tendency to be home. Like, fucking always. It was all three of us, constantly crammed together in that ass-nasty duplex, while cabin fever and the clandestine tension between us brewed with a vengeance. The awkwardness of being squeezed between Sean and Ellie was magnified times twelve. Having to look at his face only to turn around and look at hers, watching them touch, sharing the couch with them, fighting over the fucking bathroom; it was all too comfortable and absurd and nerve-racking. It made it extremely hard to ignore the truth when it was staring me in the face 24/7.

At the height of both the July heat and the huge joke that was my existence, Sean asked me to take Ellie on a date. Well, sort of.

"Just get her out of the house," he pleaded, staring at me with big blue puppy eyes I hadn't seen since we were little kids and he was begging me to let him play with me. "Make her buy groceries or something, she loves that shit. It only needs to be for an hour or so."

I was standing in the living room, sighing heavily as I scratched my hair and pondering the dozens of reasons why this was an outlandish request. "Yeah because that's not suspicious at all, Sean," I said, shaking my head. "This is a lame fucking plan, man, and personally, I've got better things to do."

Sean rolled his eyes and grunted in his usual "I hate the world and no one loves me" way. "Look, just don't make a big deal out of it and she won't ask any questions. And fuck no you don't have anything better to do. Just please, please, stop being an asshole for one day and throw me a bone here."

I was eighty-percent of the way to making up my mind to say yes, but all the same, I had to drag it out a little longer, sigh a few more times, and make it seem like I was really struggling with the decision. You know, torture Sean as much as I possibly could. But truth be told, he was right. I did have nothing else to do. Not to mention the fact that he was handing me an excuse to be alone with Ellie on a silver platter. And the icing on the cake, the real selling point, was Sean saying please. Sean actually needing something from me again.

With golden timing, the lady of the hour strolled into the living room, carrying a chipping plastic basket of laundry. "Hey guys," she mumbled casually.

"Ellie, put the laundry down and go hop on the bike," I commanded without hesitation. I saw Sean smile slightly and flash me a brief look of gratitude.

Ellie gazed back at me, dumbstruck. "Huh?"

"Questions are for douchebags, Red, now shut up and march. Chop chop, I got shit to do."

And because we are such a twisted group of mother fuckers, she only shrugged and did as she was told.

-----

I told myself that we were at Charlie's solely because the food was good. I refused to let myself believe there was any sentimentality attached to that place, suppressed the urge to think of it as "our" spot.

Ellie ordered a veggie burger and I ordered ribs. We were attended to by a palid bleach-blonde waitress with heavy bags under eyes and track marks on her arms that explained why. She held the plates far away from her face as she carried them and placed them on the table with an unintentional exhalation of relief, as if the very sight and smell of food revolted her. I was the kind of person who threw the word "junkie" around casually, but when I looked into that girl's eyes, I felt a pang of combined pity and guilt. She could be someone's sister, someone's daughter. That could just as easily be Ellie, or Manny, or even Sean. It could be Clint or Phil. It could be me.

I wondered what the waitress was like when she was younger. Did she always know she'd be here, a sleezy cliche waitress with a heroin itch? Was her mom a crackwhore, did she grow up on our side of town? For all I knew, Sean and I could have played hide and seek with this chick. Or maybe she hadn't had that inborn poor-kid trait of lowered expectations. Maybe there was a time when she actually had hopes of a real life, thought she could crawl to the other side of the tracks. Maybe, just maybe, there had once been hope in her life. Thinking about it made my insides feel heavy.

"Um... hello, Tracker?" said Ellie, peering over at me in amused confusion. "Are you still with us, Mr. Cameron? Surely you must be dying to dig in to that lovely plate of flesh."

I exhaled, fading back into reality, and realized the waitress had long gone. I looked at Ellie, who was still smirking at me over her burger. Blinding July light beamed through the large windows and formed a pale, glittering outline around her. It always surprised me, those rare glimpses I got of her actually looking complacent.

"Seventeen," I said, soaking in the word and all that it implied. "So how does it feel, birthday girl? Everything you'd expected?" I smiled at her with playful condescendence.

She shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. I could see her face, then. So young but so tired. God. Only seventeen. It seemed so long ago for me. But I guess it wasn't so far. The distance between us wasn't as great as I'd have liked it to be.

"Well I guess I can see R-rated movies now," she said. "And my boyfriend's throwing me a surprise party. That's pretty rad I guess."

I laughed, wiping the barbecue sauce from my lips with a paper napkin. "Yeah. I guess it was pretty obvious. Sean's not the brightest crayon in the box."

She nodded vaguely and suddenly became very interested in her plate of food. The conversation fizzled out. It was always weird, talking about Sean. We both knew that we loved him, and of course we were bound to bring him up from time to time, but there was always that silent realization that we were screwing our beloved Sean in the ass.

"Yeah," I said meaninglessly. I took a deep breath, slowly dragging my eyes across the diner, looking at nothing and everything. It sure did suck to be me, I realized all at once. "Yeah."

I reached across the table and startled Ellie by putting my hand on her face. She stopped mid-chew and put her burger back on the plate. "Um, Tracker?'

I felt like kissing her, for no reason at all, which was odd. Needing the reassurance of her lips was not something I generally felt necessary. But then, who was I to understand what I needed these days?

I decided not to kiss her.

"So yeah, not that I don't dig cake and shit, but I'll probably be dipping out from tonight's festivities." I pulled my hand away from her face and reached into the leather satchel I'd brought with me. "Teenagers, hip hop music, smiling faces… not really my scene. So um, here's your present now." I pulled a wrinkled piece of black fabric out of the bag and tossed it onto the table, as if it hardly mattered. As if it didn't mean absolutely everything.

She reached out with her thin, pale hands and an adorably curious smile on her face. She grabbed the unwrapped present and held it in front of her. A black T-shirt, threadbare and faded with time, purple and green letters spelling out "Very Very Jealous," a list of dates and cities on the back. It smelled like cigarettes and engine oil. It blocked her face from my view, but I didn't care. I almost didn't want to know what she thought of it.

"I was seventeen when I saw them. It was one of their first tours," I told her. She nodded and let the shirt collapse in her hands. I saw her eyes glow with intrigue as she caressed the tired threads with her fingers. "Clint and I were dumbshit crazy, you know, we tried to follow the tour. Didn't really have the money to make it all the way, but we saw them a fair amount of times. Good shit."

She still hadn't said anything.

"But, yeah… I don't really need it any more. I know it's kind of gross or whatever, but I thought you might dig it. You could call it retro or vintage or some shit."

It was almost the only thing I'd held onto for longer than a year. I didn't even keep my wife that long. It was one of my most favorite things of all time. And I was giving it away to this dumbass.

I suck at words, Ellie, I thought to myself. This is the only way I can say a damn thing to you. This is all I have to give.

She slid it on over her long-sleeved black shirt, smiling down at the soft fabric and petting it slowly. "It's perfect. I love it."

Her eyes met mine and she reached for me, timidly, feeling like she needed to ask permission. I kissed her hard and touched her hair, touched my oldest T-shirt against her skin. Seventeen-year-old me was touching seventeen-year-old her and for a moment, what we were doing didn't feel like the most fucked up shit on the planet.

000000

I chilled with Clint and Phil that night and didn't come home until well after four in the morning, when I was sure all traces of the teenage hooplah would be gone. She was waiting for me, to my surprise, sitting on the edge of my bed wearing only the Very Very Jealous t-shirt. I scooped her up in my arms and we fucked, tumbling in the blankets without saying a word. No "I love yous" or "thank yous" or "happy birthdays" to cloud our minds. Just action. Just comfort. That was all we really knew.

I had never felt more comfortable with her than that night. She was wearing my shirt and we just felt so goddamn untouchable. Everything felt right, finally. I could finally hold her and want it, sincerely, desperately. She fit so neatly and quietly into my arms that I was hardly fazed when we drifted into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, I could hear him breathing before I even opened my eyes. I felt my heart stop suddenly; my sweat went cold. It was a sickening feeling. The comfort of Ellie's skin still so near to me, but cold hard reality staring me down only inches away on the other side of my eyelids.

Slowly I opened my eyes and saw him, through a bleary morning fog, his eyes livid and his hands trembling.

Sean had found us.