It was on a day of no particular significance that I had returned home from Glenhurst rehabilitation centre, upon returning home my mother greeted me with a smile, my step-father did not. Instead he showed all his affection to my step-sister, Ida, who had come to pick me up.
It was a long drive back to Sulwich, and although I would never have admitted it, I did miss both her and my step-sister immensely, something which Ida would never let me live down if she ever found out. She chatted idly to me about her first year at college, I tuned most of it out and watched as the town's outskirts melted away and the sprawling fields and woods of Knox County.
The colours of autumn veiling the countryside with a blaze of vibrant reds and oranges, that blazed like flames in the autumnal sun.
Upon my return to our rural home in Maythew Hamlet, my mother threw her arms around me and beset me with questions of how I had been keeping and if I was feeling alright, all the while my step-father urged her to make sure that she had everything, as their coach left in an hour.
I tried to forge a conversation with her, but at every turn my stepfather interjected with prompts to pack her final few things, and eventually we both relented, our catch-up chat would have to be picked up after their vacation.
My step-father handed the house keys to Ada, and told her that he had left some money for her to get a pizza and she could have a few friends round, just not on the night they were coming back, he left me with a stern instruction not to park my old Ford Focus in the garage as it was now exclusively for my his new Jaguar.
My mother left me with a smile and a peck on the cheek before she left with my step-father for the coach station. I offered to take them, hoping to be able to have more of a conversation with my mother, but he refused, and said a taxi would do, and that my old Focus was too small anyway.
Not good enough you mean. I thought to myself, I flipped him off the moment the taxi had taken him and my mother away, I turned back, and found Ada gazing at me, eyebrows raised.
"He hit menopause or something?" I asked.
She shrugged "The promotion's gone to his head, you should have seen him over the last few months." She folded her arms, and we both met each other's gaze.
"He over it yet?" I asked, having mustered up the courage to finally ask the question.
"He didn't get over my mother getting a tattoo, and that lead to their divorce. So don't take it personally." She gave my shoulder a playful slap. "Been quiet here without you."
"Quieter." I repeated. Calmer she meant. Although that wasn't her style, too much of a party girl, like her mother.
I glanced back across the street again and I was pleased to see that Kendra's car was back on her mother's drive, the same old white Suzuki she had got for her sixteenth birthday five years ago.
"You want to get a pizza then?" Ada asked.
"Yeah...what?" I said, unable to tear my eyes from Kendra as she stepped out eyes glued to her phone, dressed in a crop top and a pair of tight jeans, her backside twitching perfectly beneath the denim.
Ada snapped her fingers at me.
"Liam. Liam. You're drooling." I glanced back to her.
"What?"
"Pizza? Do you want one? After you're done ogling."
"I'm not ogling."
"Yes you are, and who could blame you, she's hot."
We shared a smile.
"Just look at that ass." She said leaning up against the doorway, she pursed her lips, causing me to guffaw and snort.
"Maybe a bit later." I said eventually. "Are you having friends round tonight?"
"Yeah. Thought we could throw a bit of a party, my friends and yours, your friend Den's still single right?"
"When is he not. But not tonight, I think I'm just going to chill with Paulie."
She folded her arms. "Right, just Paulie, and not his sister."
"We go way back, but who know, maybe she'll tag along."
Ida rolled her eyes and headed back inside, calling to me that this was my last chance to grab a pizza, I told her I would get one myself later, as I jogged across the street and headed up Kendra's drive and knocked on the door. I stepped back glancing up at the window directly above the door, I could still remember the night when Kendra had leant out and her dressing gown had spilled open. That was an image burnt into my mind, and something I'd never let Paulie live down. I could even feel my heart racing despite knowing that Kendra was not home.
Get it together Liam.
The door swung open snapping me out of my daydream and I was greeted by Paulie and Kendra's mother, Madeline, dressed in black three-quarter length running bottoms and a pink top, her hair tied back in a neat ponytail. She looked not a day older than forty despite being nearly fifty-two.
She and Kendra shared many features, from their crystalline blue eyes to their sharp thin noses, both also possessed rounded and voluptuous lips, hers being smeared with a thin layer of pink lipstick. She also possessed a pair of pronounced cheekbones that looked as though they'd slice your finger open should you reach out and touch one, something which Kendra had not inherited, along with the auburn hair that framed Madeline's face in a blockish shape.
"Liam." She exclaimed, and she wrapped her arms around me, I hugged her back. To admit that I had not found her to be an extremely attractive older woman when I was younger would be an outright lie, and she still had something about her now, but with Kendra in mind no other woman came close. "You're back."
"Hi Madeline. How are you?"
"All good thanks, you want Paulie?"
"I was hoping to see him. He's not working is he?"
She snorted and leant on the doorway. "Paulie working, that'd be the day. No, he's up on his game, go up and see him." She stepped out of the way to let me in, the familiar smoky scent of the Ingridson household bringing back a flood of memories. Playing hide and seek as kids, watching the Saw movies when Madeline had been out visiting her parents in Iowa and of course when they had thrown the Halloween party, and Kendra had been dressed as a very immodest nun.
I headed upstairs and wrapped on Paulie's door. I called in to tell him it was me and he opened the door, he had been midway through something or other on his computer, a game I could not afford of some kind.
We embraced and he apologised for the state of his room. Something's never changed, he was as scruffy as ever, his auburn hair a mess but his own crystalline blues no longer locked behind his thick spectacles.
"So, beer, my place?" I said. "Mom's out for a few days."
"Dan too?" Paulie asked, a ghost of a smile creeping across his lips.
"Yes." I replied curtly. "Dan too. Ida's having some friends over too."
"Is she really." Paulie replied, his eyes lighting up, and his hand instinctively running through his hair, already planning his introduction in his head no doubt.
I glanced out of the window, hoping that maybe Kendra would be on her way back, and had initially been planning to invite her too, and came close to asking Paulie, but no doubt he'd become suspicious.
"Hey, didn't he get a new car too?" Paulie asked, ripping me out of my fantasies.
"Yeah, a Jag apparently. You would have seen it surely."
Paulie joined me by the window and gestured to the garage attached to the side of my house. "He's kept it locked in that garage, not even got a glimpse yet."
"Do you want too?" I said with a smile.
It was truly a thing of beauty. I wasn't a massive car guy, and neither was Paulie, but even the two of us could tell that this was something special. Racing green, sparkling from hood to boot, with leather seats and a spotless sleek mock mahogany dashboard. I leant down to get a better look inside.
"This has got to be what?" Paulie began. "Nearly five hundred thousand."
"This is Dan we're talking about. The only thing he likes more than his Rolex is his cars, I would guess he spent close to a million on this."
We stood in silence for a moment gazing over the chassis of the Jaguar. Judging by the wheel being on the other side it had been imported from the UK, probably with a few custom modifications per his request.
"I wonder what it feels like to drive a million dollar car?". Paulie mused aloud with a mocking tone.
I matched his tone. "You know what I'd love to find out too." I then held up the keys. "You really think we were just going to have a look."
We climbed in, carefully, daring to not even leave a smudge on the chassis and closed the doors slowly and delicately as we could. I grasped the wheel and exhaled, my heart suddenly thundering against my chest, Paulie ran his finger over the dashboard. "How can such an asshole afford something like this, just isn't fair."
I pushed the key into the ignition and turned it, the engine jolted to life, soft and almost smooth in its growling. I placed both hands on the wheel and exhaled again.
"Paulie." I said, my voice something close to a tremble, heart in my throat. "Open the garage door."
I dared not put it above five mile per hour as we rolled out of the driveway and reached the road, my heart still hammering against my ribs, I readjusted my grip. "Right, once around the country roads, then back."
Paulie nodded. "But we'll need tunes first."
He switched the radio on and tuned it to an R&B station, not my thing, but it seemed to fit as we rolled out into the street.
And more perfectly timed it could not have been, as Kendra had just headed up her drive. I brought it to a stop and rolled the window down. Kendra glanced over her shoulder, and gazed at us almost in shock.
"Hey Kendra." I leant on the window. "Fancy a ride?"
"Are you supposed to be in there?" She replied, folding her arms. "Paulie?"
"Dan said I could take it for one spin." I said quickly. "Jump in, might be your only chance."
"Yeah, I'm not getting involved in this." She said promptly and headed in, I craned my neck to keep an eye on her backside as she headed in, before finding Paulie gazing at me with a blank expression.
"What?" I asked with a shrug.
"Just drive the car and stop checking out my sister."
I couldn't help but snigger and put the Jaguar in gear before I headed for the back country roads that surrounded our small rural town.
Paulie let out a hoot and a holler as I put it in fifth and brought it up to speed, the trees and fields rushing past us, and we veered right onto the road, aptly nicknamed The Autobahn due to its length, and the fact that due to the lack of police presence, one could almost go at any speed upon it with no repercussions.
I weaved in and out of potholes and turned off onto a narrow country road, flanked on both sides by tall hedges and a dense forest. We both let out a few more hoots as I floored the gas and we shot round the winding road. I slowly began to slow it down.
