“What?” he groaned. As he woke up, he scratched his chest and his stomach and his thighs. I’d heard the last batch of dope that had come in made everyone real itchy. He looked all around his room until he saw me. “What did you wake me up for? I was just catching a good nap.”
“You were fucking nodding out, not napping.”
“Whatever.”
I knew he was shooting a lot, but I hadn’t realized things had gotten this bad. He usually came to my place, so I hadn’t seen his room in a while and all the shit that was lying around in here. There were wax paper packets all over his dresser and covering most of the floor along with orange needle caps all over the rug in his closet.
It was a junkie’s fucking paradise.
And my best friend was the junkie.
“I need to talk to you. Shit is all messed up with Kyle, and I need some advice and—Billy?”
His eyes were closed again, his head starting to lean forward.
“Billy, wake the fuck up.”
“Mmm,” he groaned, scratching his forearms.
He was too gone to talk. Too high to even give a shit.
Fuck
.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Billy.” I shut his door, ran down the steps, and let myself out.
Some of the old-timers were hanging out in front of my place. That probably meant my ma was home, banging one of them for a hit while the others waited their turn.
I couldn’t see it.
I sure as hell couldn’t hear it.
So, I walked right past my place, past Kyle’s apartment where I saw her bedroom light on, past the Stop sign at the end of the street, and I turned down the next block. I was still in The Heart, but I didn’t know many of the guys who lived on this street.
If it was even possible, this block looked worse than ours. There were needle caps all over the sidewalk and empty balloons of junk. Broken crack pipes crunched under my sneakers as I stepped on them.
If hell had dirty siding, chipped paint, leaky roofs, boarded up windows, and paraphernalia lining the street, then I was fucking in it.
Every row of two-story buildings that made up this neighborhood was the same. I heard it and saw it as I walked past—screaming on the inside of the apartments, most of them dark from not paying the electric bill, kids outside trying to hustle in the streets because their parents were getting high.
Kyle made it worth staying. I would have left and gone to live in one of Mario’s apartments a long time ago. Maybe I would do that until this little break of hers was over.
But I didn’t like the way she had looked at me in the alley.
Or the way she hadn’t looked at me at all.
Something about this didn’t feel right.
“Watch it,” some guy said to me as I passed him.
Our shoulders smacked against each other.
I turned around. “You fucking watch it. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
It was the wrong hour to piss me off.
“You got something you want to say to me?” he barked.
I told myself to turn back around. I told myself he wasn’t worth it. I told myself not to pay attention to anything this dude said.
But Kyle didn’t give a shit about me anymore. Heroin was more important to Billy than I was.
So, I stopped caring, too.
I wasn’t going to give a fuck about anything—not that guy’s face or what my knuckles were going to do to it. I clenched my fingers together to make a tight fist, and I aimed right for his goddamn nose.
Thirteen
Kyle
When I woke up, there were two trays on the floor. Beard must have delivered them while we’d both been asleep. I was surprised the sound of the door hadn’t woken me. It was the scariest noise inside our cell, and it was a sound I had quickly come to fear. I must have been too mentally worn to hear it, or the drugs had kept me knocked out as they worked their way through my system.
Garin was still sleeping, so I carefully wiggled away from his body and carried the trays over to our bed. He had told me not too long ago that I needed to eat to keep up my strength; so did he. We didn’t have antibiotics or first aid. We had rusty water and food that tasted like plastic. It would have to do.
I traced my fingernails up and down the dark hair on his forearm. “Garin, you have to wake up and eat.”
He stirred slowly, eventually looking at me through his long black lashes. “I was dreaming.”
“About?”
“Us. That night. The sound of the gun.”
My throat started to tighten.
That night
.
It had been significant for so many different reasons.
“I dream about it often, too,” I admitted.
“Does the outcome ever change in your dreams?”
I shook my head. “Never. Paulie…doesn’t ever make it.”
The truth was, I didn’t just have that dream often. I had it constantly. I figured it was one of my punishments, and I’d accepted that.
“Eat.” I handed him a piece of cantaloupe, hoping the presence of food would keep him from talking about that night. “This actually isn’t all that bad.”
I swallowed the bite after mushing it around my mouth. Maybe I was just getting used to the plastic taste. At least they’d also given us two small paper cartons of milk, which was the first time they’d ever set drinks on our trays.
He ripped off a piece of the toast and put it in his mouth. His hands stayed near his lips, touching the cuts, feeling around some of the bruises.
“Your face looks worse today.”
The bruises under his eyes seemed to have darkened, or the lighting in here had gotten worse. The cuts had started to heal a little, the wide dotted scabs showing how deep and long each gash was. His beard hid the marks on his cheeks, but because I had stared at him for so long, I knew what lay beneath the hairs.
I continued to watch him as he took a bite of the cantaloupe. My tray sat mostly untouched, besides the fruit. Eating meant I would have to look down at my food, and I didn’t want to move my gaze from his damaged face. I wanted to save this moment. Hold it. Live in it for as long as I could. I would use this moment the next time I was taken from my cell. The next time I was slapped and jizzed on. The next time I needed to feel something beyond my own pain. Because I feared we didn’t have many more moments like this together.
“Do you have guilt, Kyle?”
And then the moment was over.
The truth stared into my face, and I hated the way it made me feel. I didn’t want him to see it, so I walked over to the sink and washed the juice off my hands. I couldn’t look at him when I answered, “Yes. Every day.”
“I gave Billy his first bag. I’m the reason he started using.”
I looked at him as he stirred the oatmeal with his finger. He wasn’t going to eat it. Neither was I. I couldn’t imagine putting anything in my stomach at this point.
This was his guilt, the part of our pasts that ate at him, and from what I could see, it was just as deep as the part that gnawed at me. I couldn’t let him take the blame.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” He pushed his tray away and moved over to the wall next to me, leaning back against it, as he glared down at me. “He wanted to try it. He wanted to know what all the hype was about. He wanted just a taste…and I fucking gave it to him.”
“He would have tasted it whether you’d given it to him or not.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
“It was all over The Heart. His mom and Paulie used. He could have gotten it from either of them. Stop blaming yourself, Garin.”
“I deserve the blame. It’s mine.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Aside from you, I was the only person in his life who truly gave a shit, who wasn’t whacked out of their mind on drugs, who was supposed to keep him safe.” He punched the wall again, but it wasn’t out of anger. This time, his face was filled with sadness. “I didn’t keep him safe. I led him straight down the path that the rest of his family took.”
“Stop. Garin—”
“For years, I begged him to go to rehab. I offered to pay for it. I offered to get him a job once he was clean and buy him a house and make sure he never wanted for anything ever again. He wouldn’t go.” He rubbed his hands against his thighs, like the friction would take away his pain. “I couldn’t fix him, Kyle. It’s all I wanted. It’s all I ever wanted.”
The room went silent, but the lack of noise didn’t hide the emotion that pulsed inside here. It was in Garin’s eyes. It was in me.
“Once Paulie died, there wasn’t anything we could have done for him,” I said. “If he hadn’t already been using, he probably would have started then. That pain…it was too much.”
I remembered all the times Anthony had found me on the floor of my closet. There weren’t any windows in there; there wasn’t any light. It was just my tears, my shaking body, four walls, darkness, and guilt. Anthony would pull me off the floor and tell me to stop crying and demand that I get my shit together. It had taken me months before I had found my breath again.
“I wish it hadn’t changed everything between us.”
We’d talked about this before, but it felt different now. More personal. Much more intimate.
“Me, too,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my stomach to dull the ache.
It wasn’t from hunger but from all the regret I felt. I wished more than anything that things hadn’t changed between the guys and me. My whole life would have been different. I wouldn’t have been in this cell. I wouldn’t have been living in Florida. Maybe I wouldn’t have even had my shop.
“Then, why did we let it?” he asked.
There was no
we
. It was all
me
.
If I gave him an answer, I would be confessing every bit of truth I’d been hiding. It would be the biggest relief. It would probably eliminate all of my anxiety. I wouldn’t have a hard time finding my breath ever again.
But I couldn’t do it.
“Some things are so destructive that they’re impossible to recover from. I think losing Paulie showed us the scary reality of what could happen to any of us and…” Lies. All lies.
We knew how dangerous The Heart was; we knew the possibilities. We’d seen them. Daily. Paulie’s death should have driven me toward the guys; it shouldn’t have caused me to run from them.
“And it was just too much,” I said.
“So, we shouldn’t get close to anyone because we don’t know when we’ll suddenly lose them?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to do, what else to say. The lies were building layer by layer.
His hand touched my shoulder. I imagined him kissing me, caressing me even more. But what I really deserved was for him to take his hand away and never touch me again.
“It should have brought us closer.”
He was right, of course. If only the circumstances had been different.
“We should have been there for each other,” he continued. “We needed it. I needed
you
.”
I knew he did. I’d heard it in his voice when he stood outside my front door and begged me to come out. I’d seen it in his face when he waited in the hallway outside my classes. I’d felt it in his touch when he cornered me in the alley, gripped my shoulders, and pleaded with me to talk to him.
“I need time to heal,”
I had said.
More lies.
Lies I wish I could take back.
“I know.” It was too painful to meet his eyes, so I kept them on the ground.
“Why did it have to happen
that
night?”
It was a question I had asked myself so many times before.
“The same night I finally got to taste you,” he continued. “Had it happened any night after, you wouldn’t have slipped away so easily.”
Easily?
Breathe for me
.
He thought my decision to run was an easy one to make? That it was even a decision at all? That it hadn’t eaten at me then and every day since? That his eyes didn’t remind me of all the years I’d lost, years I’d never get back, years where I could have had everything I wanted?
“I never planned on letting you go, Kyle.”
I looked up slowly, my arms squeezing my stomach. My knees were shaking. I knew my chest would be next, that my breathing would only get worse.
“I was going to bring you to Vegas with me, get you into college out there, and take care of you. I was going to love you.” He turned me to face him. “Fuck, Kyle, I did love you.”
“Stop.” I tried to move around him, but he wouldn’t let me. I needed to find air. I needed to forget the words he had just spoken. I needed to get the hell out of here. “I can’t listen to this.”
“Why?”
“It hurts too much.”
His hands were on my arms, so I rolled my shoulders to wiggle out of his grip. It didn’t work. He only clamped down tighter.
“Tell me why it hurts.” I didn’t answer, so he lifted my chin until I looked him in the eyes. “Tell me.”
“Because I wish I could rewind the past. I wish things had gone down differently. I wish we’d never lost Paulie, and things hadn’t changed between the three of us. And…” I was telling him the obvious. What I wasn’t telling him was my feelings. There was no reason to hide them anymore. “I cared about you so much. More than you’re supposed to care about your best friend. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to give you everything. My heart, my body. All of me. And I threw it all away—our relationship, moving with you, caring for you.”
My lips were soaked from the tears that I didn’t know had been falling. I tried to move again, but he stopped me. He wasn’t going to let me go until I got it all out even though there was so much that would never come out.
“When you kissed me at the bar, all of those memories resurfaced, and the guilt slapped me right in the face.”
His bruised eyelids narrowed. His mouth stayed still. His expression hadn’t changed at all. I didn’t know if I had scared him or given him the answer he’d wanted to hear. The unknown was as terrifying as what was waiting for me outside this cell.
But there was more. The biggest part of all this was resting on my tongue. He had to hear it. He had to know. It was the most honest I would ever be with him.
“I’ve loved you since I was a kid,” I said. “And I still do.”
Fourteen
Kyle
I waited for him to speak; he said nothing. I waited for him to step toward me; he didn’t. I waited for his face to give me some sort of reaction; it remained still.