Bottleneck

by Henry, Max

  A huff escapes my nose as I stare down at the floor. “If I tell you that, then you know it all.”

  Emery shrugs, fingers jumping on my shoulder as he does. “So, kill all the fucking birds with one stone.”

  “Fine.” I screw my eyes shut, disbelieving that I consider doing this. “You remember that campsite down by the highway overpass?” The echo of late-night parties, afternoons drinking warm beers on the back of somebody’s truck, and mornings where the sun felt as though it would render us blind flash through my mind’s eye.

  Emery hums beside me, indicating he knows the place I talk of.

  “Lennon and I went there sometimes, just the two of us.”

  “I remember.” His fingers walk a path over my shoulder to dangle on my collarbone.

  I focus on the gentle tickle of his roughened skin against mine. “After you left, we started going more often. Mom was dating, and the guys she brought home weren’t always that receptive to the idea of two adult kids in the package.”

  “Nice,” he quips.

  “Yeah, well, Lenny and I figured that if she didn’t want to stand up for us, then we’d make a stand of our own.” I chuckle at the memory of our first nights hanging out under the stars. “We wouldn’t stay there, but that all-nighter over on Steward Street was the best place to get served without needing an ID, and the cops never bothered to go down that end to check up on troublemakers because the campsite was full of pensioners in trailers.”

  “Yeah, I remember their neat little doublewides all parked down the South end, flowers rowed up out front like it was some fuckin’ Lego set.”

  I chuckle at his visual before the somberness of what lies next pulls me back under. “We’d get absolutely tanked and then head home to raise hell. Lennon usually drove us back because he was better at doing it when we saw double, but this particular night all we’d been able to get was hard liquor. I can’t remember why, but they’d sold out of the lite beers we’d usually fill up on.” My palms itch with the rush of heat. Burying my nails into the flesh to ease the sting, I continue, Emery silent beside me. “I drove us home.”

  Using the pad of his thumb, he wipes away the moisture pooling along my lower lid. I relent when he slides his hand down, urging me to look his way with stiff fingers gripped either side of my jaw.

  “You don’t need to tell me what happens next.” Disturbingly, life has returned to his eyes now that he shows concern. “I think I can guess.”

  “He didn’t die,” I clarify in case there was any confusion. “But he’ll never forget. Every time he looks in the fucking mirror, it’s there, written all over his damn face.”

  Emery frowns.

  I swallow back the bile that rises, dampen my thoughts to muffle the screams that would play on repeat for months afterward. “The front of the car was crumpled with the impact. Lennon’s legs were trapped beneath the dash, so when the engine caught, he wasn’t able to get out.” I slip out of Emery’s hold and cross over to the lamp beside the TV.

  He solemnly watches as I switch it on and kneel beneath the glow.

  “Here.” I jerk my head to usher him over.

  Careful to avoid Mosaic, who’s since returned to sleep, Emery climbs off the seat and joins me in the warm whitewash.

  I hold my left forearm under the light, turning my arm so that he can see the intricate artwork that covers me from wrist to shoulder. “Tell me when you see it.” Slowly, I rotate my arm back around.

  He reaches out, gripping me gently at the elbow. “Stop.” As though made of glass, he tilts my arm carefully back and forth, frowning while he concentrates on what lies beneath.

  “It took two grafts and four sessions under an artist’s needle to cover it as well they have.”

  He runs the tips of his fingers over the uneven skin, reading the reminder I carry with me everywhere I go. “You were burnt too.”

  “Pulling Lenny free.” The rocks in my throat try to stop me, yet I push on, wanting to cleanse myself of this guilt if only a little. “I made his leg worse by jerking him out in such a rush, which is why they had to amputate just below the knee.”

  “Fuck.” Em sits back, stunned.

  For once in his goddamn life, I’ve managed to silence the sarcastic asshole.

  “Yeah.” I smile, urging myself not to cry—tears don’t fix what happened. “As you can imagine, I’m not looking forward to Christmas because it’ll be the first time that I’ve seen my brother in years.” I switch the light off, relieved when the dark washes over me once again. “Mom said he wants to reconnect, but I kind of feel like she’s lying to get me home.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” He lifts both arms, placing palms to the back of his neck while he studies me.

  I lean forward on my knees, barely able to see my hand as I reach for the outline of his bare torso across from me. The room falls silent apart from the gentle cadence of our breaths. He flinches, my fingertips a touch his body subconsciously wants to run from.

  I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I search for comfort in the fact he hasn’t moved, essentially allowing me to explore the edges that I’ve been a stranger too for so long.

  “When did you get this?” I whisper, tracing the raised burr of a scar on his neck.

  “L.A.” He swallows, the sound deafening in my heightened state.

  “What happened?”

  “I picked a fight with the wrong guy.” He remains with his arms raised, yet I can tell from the tension in them that he presses his hands hard against the back of his neck to save from doing whatever it is he aches to instead.

  “Do you remember that jock outside the cinema the night after we played the Rabbit Hole?”

  Emery’s shoulder jumps beneath my hand. “Sort of.”

  “He wanted my number and didn’t believe me when I said I couldn’t remember what it was.”

  “You’d just got that shitty little brick of a phone for your birthday,” he recalls, a smile in the lilt of his words. “You’d ask me what the number was all the fucking time.”

  “Want to know something ridiculous?” The pads of my fingers burn, the connection with his chest fire as I trace my way around his pec to the striations over his ribs. “I could recite that number right now if you asked me to.”

  He laughs, but the sound is something unique. Something long forgotten. It’s not the sharp, bitter taunt that he usually has after cutting a person down to size. It’s longer, deeper, more from the gut.

  More real.

  His arms finally drop, his left laying over my right where I rest my palm against his stomach, memorizing how it felt to have that chuckle vibrate from deep within.

  “What are we doing here, Alice?”

  “I don’t know, but I also know that I don’t want to label it.”

  “In case we ruin it?” he asks, husky and quiet.

  “Exactly.”

  He shifts on his haunches, shuffling forward until kneecaps touch mine. “I think I never chased after you because I felt that fate had a hand in cutting you free.”

  “What do you mean?” I tilt my head to let the moonlight bask his face a little more.

  “You’re too good for a guy like me, babe.” He snorts a bitter laugh before startling the hell out of me with a calloused hand to the side of my neck. “Too genuine, too caring. I’d use up what you have and then ask for more, angry when you tell me you have nothing left to give.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I already did, didn’t I?” His thumb strokes across my cheek, reverent in its pace. “You were there for me through everything—”

  “Like you were there for me,” I stress.

  “—and even when I made the mistake of hooking up with Deanna, I still expected more from you. I wanted you to do things that would have made people question your morals,” he grinds out, palm growing tense against my neck. “I wanted it all without the responsibility making it official would have called for.”

  “You wanted me to be your
girlfriend?” I clarify, heart a butterfly snared in the spider’s web.

  “Without calling you that. Yeah.” He sighs, hand dropping away. “I’m surprised you never knew if we slept together.”

  I reach out and snag his hand in mine. “Maybe it was good that I didn’t.”

  “Why?” he asks, seemingly incredulous.

  “It would have changed everything.” I squeeze his hand. “That kind of drama when you were kicking off with the guys? You didn’t need that.”

  “Maybe. But you didn’t need what happened instead.” His fingers flex and bend, intertwining with mine. “You didn’t deserve to be used like that.” A sad laugh echoes through the quiet room.

  I could kiss him right now. Lean in and prove that the way I care for him always outweighed any disappointment I felt. He’d probably reciprocate too, but would it be merely to taste the fantasy in place of his regular high?

  Would he kiss me back to start a chapter we never wrote, or to end the one we did?

  “Are you fuckers going back to bed soon, or are we all staying up the whole night?”

  Emery moves so fast that Mosaic leaps to his feet, whining in the process. I stand so quickly that my damn head spins.

  “Did I interrupt something?” Fria asks with no shortage of snark.

  Emery relaxes against the front of the sofa, trying and failing to look as though he was seated there the whole time. “Nope.”

  “Could have fooled me,” the bitch mutters, taking her sweet time to wander into the kitchen.

  The light above the cooker flicks on, and she moves between the coffee pot and the tap.

  “What are you doing?” My heart is yet to slow.

  “Making a goddamn drink. Figured you assholes could use one too if you’re going to be up all night pretending you don’t want to fuck each other.”

  Not that we were pretending all that well. “Skip me,” I grumble. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “Just you and me again, huh, Emery?” she calls in a syrupy sweet tone.

  I stiffen, turning my head to the side to find him watching me as he answers. “Rather not, thanks. Think I’ll go back to sleep too.”

  “Well, I hope you can snooze through the sound of the TV,” Fria snaps. “I’m awake now, and that means getting myself tired enough to want to sleep again.”

  He sighs, running a hand over his face.

  I pause at the head of the hall with my hand to the doorframe. “You can crash on my floor if you like.”

  “Keep the door open, kids,” Fria sasses.

  I flick her a middle finger and then stride down to my room. If he wants to come in, he can. I’ll leave that up to him.

  Wouldn’t want to get the wrong idea about him now, would I?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Emery

  “Knights of Cydonia” - Muse

  Suffering through half an hour of whatever bullshit program Fria had on was a necessity if I didn’t want my desperation to show. Pretty sure I yawned enough times to make it seem plausible that I just want to get the rest of a fucking solid night’s sleep before the sun comes up.

  Mosaic trails behind me, slowly limping as I drag his bed toward Alice’s door.

  My body still hums where her fingers branded my skin, the sensation as fresh as if she were beside me, right now, still touching me as though I held enough venom to kill her should she indulge too long.

  I guess in some ways I do. Our friendship was fucking awesome, but it was also the definition of a one-sided toxic arrangement. She took all that was bad from me, and I drank in all that was good from her, converting it to the poison she’d work so hard to extract.

  “You still awake?” I whisper into the backlit room.

  A streetlight bathes her bed in slices of orange, making a strange artwork of the body beneath the sheets.

  She rolls to her back, arm extending out toward me across the mattress. “Yeah. Still awake.”

  Mosaic flops on his bed, happy enough with where I dump it beside the set of drawers. “I didn’t want to leave him out there with her.”

  “Don’t blame you.” She flicks the covers back, inviting me in.

  I shut the damn door first. “Are you sure? I can crash next to him on the floor.”

  “Emery, just get in the damn bed with me.”

  “You say that to all the men you hate?”

  She sighs, rolling away but leaving the covers open. “I don’t hate you.”

  “Pretty sure you’ve told me otherwise.” I slide my legs down beside hers, flicking the sheets over my waist.

  She stiffens for a second yet doesn’t protest when I push my lower arm beneath her pillow and get cozy behind her. “Remember doing this while we waited for the bus that night when it wasn’t supposed to snow?”

  “Pretty sure we were standing upright,” she mumbles.

  “Tomatoes, tomahtoes,” I grumble.

  Alice’s breathing slows, her body growing lax the longer we lie in silence. Me on the other hand? My fucking dick is ready to fight its way past the restriction of my boxers.

  “How long we gonna keep pretending?” I ask, words brushing her ear.

  Her ribs expand with the deep breath she takes. “As long as we have to for me to figure out what it is you want.” She rolls slightly toward me so she can peer over her shoulder. “Is that bourbon I smell on your breath?”

  Fuck it. “I may have snuck a bit from my emergency flask for courage.”

  A sigh is all I get.

  “You want me to leave now?”

  “No,” she breathes. “You’re going to need to do it slowly. I can’t fault you for a tipple or two. Just no getting hammered anymore, okay?”

  “Do my best.” Sure as fuck ain’t making any promises. “How’s your back feeling?” I lean away far enough that I can get my hand between us.

  She moans in appreciation when I massage my knuckles up and down her spine. “Stiff, but that’s nothing new.”

  “Tell me where you want it.” I continue kneading the knotted muscles around her joints, trying in vain to ignore how goddamn hard my dick is. “Top or bottom?”

  “You realize how lude that sounds?” she asks, a hint of a smile in her tone.

  “I’ll take either answer. Both are acceptable.”

  Alice lifts her uppermost arm to reach back and slap me blindly on the back of the head. I capitalize on the moment and lean over her, forcing her to roll fully onto her back.

  “I missed you so goddamn much.”

  She stares at me in the half-light. “Why, though? What is it about me that fills the hole Deanna left in you?”

  My dick softens at the mere mention of the bitch’s name. “Would you still do all of this is we were eighteen and broke again?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.” She reaches up to push the hair from my eyes.

  It falls back in place the moment her palm glides from my head. “Exactly. She wouldn’t.”

  “So, you like me better because I’d love you even if you were broke?”

  “Is that such a terrible thing?”

  “I guess not.” She frowns, arms lax above her head. “Would you still love me if I had killed my brother?”

  I jerk back so I can study her face better. “What kind of fucking question is that?”

  “I just want to know if you’d love me even if you knew for sure I’m not perfect.”

  “Jesus.” I lean down and touch our noses before pulling back to answer. “You’ve never been perfect, Alice. You’re just perfect for me.”

  I make the goddamn woman cry. Her chin puckers, eyebrows peaked in the middle as she fights to trap the tears that flow like an open faucet behind her lids. Fuck it. I goddamn broke her.

  “Shit.” My thumb fails to swipe them away fast enough as she turns her head to hide her despair. “This isn’t the reaction I was expecting,” I say with a weak laugh.

  “I’m sorry.” Her arms shove me out of the way as Alice lifts the pillow from beneath
her head, covering her face with it. “It’s just too much.”

  “It’s not enough,” I choke out, shifting back to sit at the foot of her bed. “I’ve barely started, babe.”

  “I can’t make head or tails of it, though,” she groans into the stuffing before shoving the pillow roughly aside. “Last week, you were still dating Deanna. And now.” Alice grounds herself in the mattress, pushing her body up the bed to mirror my position. “Wouldn’t I be a fool if I just fell back into this?”

  “We’re not falling back into anything, though.” I should have brought that damn flask in here with me. “We never crossed this line to be making the same mistakes.”

  “We did,” she whispers, frowning.

  “Not that I remember.” I hold her stare.

  Her lips curl up on one side. “You admit it would be a mistake, though?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Fuck. Why is this going south so damn fast? “Forget it.” I slide off the end of the bed and lower myself to the original position I had in mind.

  Mosaic shifts a little to let me use the end of his cushion as a pillow. One of the comforters from Alice’s bed buries me.

  “You’re giving up far too easy, again,” she states, shifting around in the sheets to get comfortable.

  “Maybe you’re making it way too hard,” I pout, straightening the comforter before I reach out to sink my fingers into Mosaic’s fur.

  “Goodnight, Emery.”

  “Good morning, Alice.” Nestling my head against his, I close my eyes and breathe in the comforting smell of warm dog body.

  I open my eyes five minutes later to find it’s more like five hours that have passed.

  Alice’s bed lies empty; her sheets ruffled around the foot. Sharp claws catch my bare arm when Mosaic stretches beside me. The poor fucker probably needs to get outside before his bladder bursts.

  The girls are nowhere to be found. Not in the other room, not on the sofa, and not in the kitchen. My best buddy following close behind, I twist my neck to take in the array of bags and gear piled up in front of the TV as I make my way to the door.

  Never was there a more evident reminder that while my life pivots in a whole new direction, Alice’s remains on the same steady course.