Preacher: The East End Boys

by Christopher Harlan

  Preacher

  The East End Boys

  By Christopher Harlan

  Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Harlan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image: Golden Czermak

  Cover Model: Chase Ketron

  Proofreading: Stephanie Albon

  Cover Design & Formatting: Cassy Roop

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note(s) about Preacher

  PART 1

  Lyric

  Prologue—Preacher

  One—Lyric

  Two—Lyric

  Three— Lyric

  Four—Lyric

  Five—Lyric

  Six—Lyric

  Seven—Preacher

  Eight—Preacher

  Nine—Lyric

  Ten—Preacher

  Eleven—Lyric

  Twelve—Lyric

  Thirteen—Lyric

  Fourteen—Lyric

  Fifteen—Preacher

  Sixteen—Lyric

  Seventeen—Lyric

  PART 2

  Why Me?

  Eighteen—Lyric

  Nineteen—Lyric

  Twenty—Preacher

  Twenty-One—Preacher

  Twenty-Two—Lyric

  Twenty-Three—Lyric

  Twenty-Four—Preacher

  Twenty-Five—Lyric

  Twenty-Six—Preacher

  Twenty-Seven—Lyric

  Twenty-Eight—Preacher

  Twenty-Nine—Preacher

  Thirty—Preacher

  Thirty-One—Preacher

  Thirty-Two—Lyric

  Thirty-Three—Lyric

  Thirty-Four—Preacher

  Thirty-Five—Lyric

  Thirty-Six—Lyric

  Thirty-Seven—Preacher

  Thirty-Eight—Lyric

  Thirty-Nine—Lyric

  Forty—Lyric

  Forty-One—Preacher

  Forty-Two—Lyric

  Forty-Three—Lyric

  Forty-Four—Preacher

  Forty-Five—Lyric

  Forty-Six—Lyric

  Forty-Seven—Preacher

  Forty-Eight—Lyric

  Forty-Nine—Pope

  Fifty—Lyric

  Epilogue—Lyric

  Epilogue—Pope

  Also by Christopher Harlan

  Synopsis

  My preacher absolved no sins, because he was the sinner.

  Lyric

  They say that you should give your heart away to the right guy, but mine was taken from me ten years ago, the moment Preacher moved into my neighborhood and sent a blast wave through my entire life.

  He was my paradox—gentle eyes set in a hardened face, an angel and an uncaged beast, mesmerizing good looks and terrifying ferocity, my savior and my destroyer.

  When he disappeared senior year, he broke me like so much fragile glass. I thought I’d moved on from what happened between us, but now he’s reappeared out of nowhere, upending my life and reminding me that I can never break his hold over me.

  Preacher

  I was trouble with a capital T—the guy your mom warned you to stay away from because he’d ruin you. She was right.

  I had no business being with a girl like Lyric—it was against all the rules—but when the hell have I ever followed other people’s rules?

  Never.

  She was beautiful, delicate, and oh so breakable. I was forceful, aggressive, and cocky as hell.

  Ten years ago, fate split us apart before I had a chance to explain what happened. But now, I’m back to remind Lyric of what she knows deep down but has always tried to deny.

  That she’s mine, and she always will be.

  The East End Boys is a series of interconnected standalones that follow characters from the same fictional town of Arkham, New York.

  Each can be read as a stand-alone, and each will tell a different story.

  Preacher is the 1st of these books.

  Pope (date TBA)

  Brick (date TBA)

  “He is not elegant enough for a sonnet, too well-thought out for a free write, taking too much space in my thoughts to ever be a haiku.”

  —Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

  “It was that feeling I had, that my life was waiting for me on the other side, that made me fearless.”

  —Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

  Author’s Note(s) about Preacher

  On Time

  The “Past” chapters take place senior year of high school, approximately 10 years prior to the “Present” chapters

  On Characters

  I always wanted my own literary universe—think my books meet the MCU. I’m happy to integrate a character from my previous work into this one, so when you encounter Dr. Cordelia Summers later in the book, make sure you catch up with her original story in Calem, the 1st in my NYC’s Finest series

  PART 1

  Whenever there’s an explosion, two opposing forces take place.

  First, there’s the blast wave that sends everything outward, and then the negative pressure that pulls everything back towards the center.

  Some people who come into our lives can be like explosions.

  First, Preacher was my blast wave—shattering everything I knew before him. And when his beautiful destruction was over, he pulled me inwards, towards the center of him.

  The scars still haven’t healed.

  Lyric

  Where I’m from, you’re either an East Ender or a West Ender—and, just like Cersi told Ned, there’s nothing in between.

  The invisible line that makes you a ‘Have’ or a ‘Have Not’ in this town is a block named Houston Street, where the house I grew up in still stands. When I walked out my front door as a kid, everything to my right represented working class people with hard jobs, hard lives, and stress so thick you could practically see the fog of it in the air.

  To my left was the opposite—prosperity, a long and storied history, and opportunities that people in the East could never even dream of.

  I lived in a small house that sat on the border of two worlds.

  But, unlike a lot of East Enders, I had a choice of which schools I wanted to go to—the drop out factories to the East, or the schools that consistently produced the incoming class of the Ivy League.

  Of course, my parents chose that path for me, but due to that choice I grew up in the purgatory between those two worlds.

  During the day, I shared hallways, teachers, coaches, and classrooms with the rich kids.

  But if I ever got too comfortable, I’d be reminded of where my parents lived, like it was a bad thing.

  I love where I’m from.

  We grow strong people over here—hard people with roots as deep as dandelions.

  We make them good.

  The kids here grow up in broken families and all the clichés that come with a life of poverty. I grew up knowing drug dealers and gang members, but also future congressmen and Fortune 500 CEO’s.

  Preacher was just like me—a hybrid—only he was much more than that.

  He could write me the best poem I’d ever read, even though he’d never written poetry
before. He could make me feel things I’d never felt and also scare me in ways I’d never known before. And when he needed to, he could lay waste to anyone he thought was a threat.

  He was complicated like that—hard and soft, gentle and violent.

  He was everything and nothing wrapped into one complex person.

  Just like all of our East End Boys.

  Prologue—Preacher

  A Few Years Ago

  I don’t even know this girl’s name.

  Terri? Samantha? Brooke?

  I’m sure she mentioned it, but it wasn’t her name I was interested in at the time.

  Who even cares?

  I know what her name isn’t.

  She’ll be gone in the morning anyhow. We both knew what this was when she came back to my place after a few too many, and it doesn’t involve banter over pancakes and coffee. It involves the temporary needs of two people, followed by an early morning Irish goodbye.

  This is my life now. Nameless places, faceless women, and the strong pour of bartenders who all blend together.

  Lather, rinse, repeat.

  I can’t sleep. I stagger over to the kitchen and grab the almost empty bottle of Wild Turkey sitting lonely on my counter top. They say this was Janis Joplin’s favorite vice—and one day I’ll end up just like her. I have no illusions about that.

  But the future is unaware of its own existence. It’s just like that blonde face down on my sheets—barely perceptible and already fucked.

  I take a deep swig right out of the bottle. It feels like fire running down my throat. I’m used to the burn. It goes away quickly.

  I’m also used to days and nights like this one—of feeling alone even when I’m surrounded by people, of feeling nothing even when my body is being stimulated in every way possible.

  I guess that’s what you get when you do what I did. You travel around like some fucked up nomad, searching high and low for drugs, booze and pussy—anything stimulating that’ll help you forget what you left behind.

  But I had to go. There was no other choice.

  That doesn’t mean I wanted to, or that it didn’t fucking ruin me to the point of me barely recognizing my glassy eyed reflection in the mirror every morning, but some things just need doing, no matter who they hurt when they’re done.

  And I know I hurt her.

  I take another swig. The burning feeling is already gone.

  I’ve heard that people who are about to freeze to death from hypothermia feel an intense warmth right before they die. Imagine that. You’re so fucked up that you literally feel the opposite of what’s really happening. That’s me. I’ve been ripping off my clothes in the snow for a while now. Eventually I’ll stop moving.

  When I look back at the nameless chick in my bed I don’t actually see her—I see HER. Every guy has a her, that girl who only requires a pronoun because everyone knew who you were talking about. Her actual name was unnecessary to say, because there were no others to speak of.

  I go to the drawer where I keep the thing she gave me in a sealed envelope. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Maybe I deserve to feel this kind of pain. The paper is as pristine as the day it was written.

  I love you.

  I’ll always be yours.

  — L

  I put it back in the drawer and take another swig—my last. The bourbon is starting to do its job, which is to make me forget.

  I put the bottle down and walk back over to the bed. I slide in next to what’s her name. No need to wake her. Just as I close my eyes to get another hour or two of sleep, my phone starts ringing and jolts my eyes back open.

  Who the hell could that be at this time?

  I see the name on the screen and answer right away.

  “Pope?” I answer. “What is it?”

  It takes about ten seconds for him to tell me. My brother’s a direct guy. I appreciate that. Then I hang up.

  I hear her voice. “What is it?” Evidently my call woke her up from her coke and tequila inspired coma.

  “My father’s dead,” I tell her.

  She sits up immediately, like I gave her a shot of adrenaline to the heart, Uma Thurman style.

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” I well up, but not for the reason she thinks. “It’s okay, I know this is hard.”

  “Hard?” I ask. The Joker himself couldn’t have cackled louder. “Sweetheart, this is best news I’ve gotten in years.”

  She looks at me horrified. I don’t care.

  She’ll be out of my life in a few minutes.

  Time to get a plane ticket to New York.

  One—Lyric

  The Present

  I start my morning session with the sex addict.

  Sara is her name. Sara with no H.

  This is only our third session. The first two hours we spent together were mostly me reeling inside from listening to story after story of her self-destructive tendencies. In school, we learned not to get too connected to our patients—to keep a safe emotional distance, for their sanity as much as for ours, but some cases just get to you—the heartbreakers.

  It wasn’t just her story that shocked me when she first came into my office, it was how young she is. She was only a week removed from her twenty-first birthday but easily passable as a high school senior—petite, with long brown hair, blue eyes, and a distressed body language that tells me she’s not comfortable in her own skin.

  In other words, she’s me when I was eighteen.

  Maybe that’s what really bothers me about her case—how familiar the things she says feel to me—and, how every time she comes in for a session, my ability to stay detached is challenged.

  The similarities between us don’t stop at appearances. Just like I was, she’s funny in her own way, very sarcastic, and more than a little insecure. Most of the time she doesn’t make eye contact for more than a few seconds, but I know that she’s listening to everything being said while quietly observing everything around her.

  What scares me the most is that my session notes on her could be pages right out of my diary when I was her age.

  Bad guys. Bad decisions. Just bad.

  “He’s beautiful,” she tells me. “The kind of guy you can’t say no to, but also the guy who’s all sorts of wrong for you. You know the type, doctor?” Yeah, I sure do. “I thought we’d be together forever, but then he broke my heart.” She starts sobbing uncontrollably—the guilt of her behaviors coming off of her like an odor that doesn’t go away in the shower. “Why do I always pick the wrong guys?” she asks. “The ones who hurt me.”

  Because sometimes we’re powered by our hearts and not our brains, Sara with no H—and because we’re stupid enough to think that we can change the devil, when in fact we know damn well that it’s the devil who will change us instead.

  “I don’t know,” I lied to her. “There are all kinds of reasons women pick the wrong men for them. But that’s why we’re here, right? As long as you’re an active participant in your own healing, I promise that we’ll find out the answer to your question together.”

  I hope what I’m saying is true—that there are answers to why we do the things we do—for her sake, and for mine.

  Before she leaves, she stops at the edge of the office door and stares at my neck. “That’s a beautiful necklace.” I instinctively put my hand to it and my thumb begins rubbing in little circles—an unconscious gesture that tells you everything you need to know about what it means to me. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but where did you get it?”

  My all-sorts-of-wrong guy gave it to me, Sara. He claimed me—mind, body and soul—he put this beautiful thing against my skin, and I’ve never taken off to this very day. And even though he’s gone, I’m still his. Just look at my neck.

  “It was a present from someone, a long time ago.” Ten years to be exact.

  “Well, it’s beautiful,” she tells me. “But I’m sure people tell you that all the time.”

  I smile. “You’re the first o
ne in a while, actually.”

  “Really? I’m surprised. It must have been from someone special.”

  Her use of the past tense doesn’t escape me. Maybe I gave something off that made her realize that part of my life died a long time ago, or maybe no one rubs a necklace like I just did for a relationship they’re still in. Who knows? She isn’t wrong either way. It was from someone special. “So next week, same time?” I ask, changing the subject to something innocuous.

  “Yup.” She’s so pretty, and so broken—more of a mirror than a patient. “And since you haven’t heard it in a while I’ll say it one more time—that necklace is stunning. Keep it close to your heart. Maybe one day I’ll stop dating these losers and find a good guy who’ll give me something just like it. Maybe.”

  We’re both damaged—the difference is that I took my past and turned it into a promising future. By the time I was her age, I was already working on a five-year combined Masters and Ph.D. Program at Columbia, on my way to being one of the youngest psychologists in the city to have her own private practice. Sara is working her way towards a life of anonymous sex, drugs, and alcohol abuse.

  I always wondered what accounted for those differences. How people who are so similar on the inside can end up on such different paths.

  I’ve always told myself that people like Sara are the reason I became a clinical psychologist. That’s mostly true. I’ve always been interested in understanding why people do the things they do—what motivates them, what scares them, what makes them who they are. People like my father. Like Kennedy and my sister Jessalyn.

  People like him.

  But the part I don’t admit out loud is that maybe I became a psychologist so I could understand myself better.

  I’m still working on that.

  A few more patients come and go after Sara—a group that is starting to become my regulars even though my practice is relatively new. After three long and exhausting sessions I’m ready for a break, which I build into my schedule every day so I can clear my head of other people’s problems for a few minutes.