Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two)

by Rachel Dunning

“Because it was so intense. Like I said, it was emotional. Look, just forget it. I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “Let’s just say you might as well have been. OK? I did it...once...when I was really high. And, well, I knew what I was doing. But, whatever, drugs, you know. I didn’t feel shit for it. It was more the sensation of the high. Not the sex itself.”

  He stops wiping his hair, throws the towel on the ground. Presses me to him. “It might as well have been my first time as well. It was far from it. But it might as well have been, OK? I’ve never had ‘emotional’ sex. And I may as well have never had it. Because getting your cock pulled by someone’s junk is so far from what you and I...shared...yesterday, that it was indeed a first for me.”

  “Th—thank you.”

  He wipes the shaved side of my head with the towel, then the long side. “Never change your hair, Blaze. I love the bad-girl look, even though I know you’re far from that.”

  Something flutters in my chest. I fall into his arms and let him hold me. “You know me more than any boy has ever known me. And I trust you. Completely. Just FYI.” So don’t break my heart. Please don’t.

  -2-

  At the kitchen counter: “You working today?”

  He shrugs. “Yeah. No point in letting this bullshit stop my life. Besides, I think it’ll be good to keep busy. It was”—he looks up at me, eyes quivering—“gruesome, Blaze. Gruesome. I think that’s the worst part. Damn. He basically dove to save Trevor’s life. If it hadn’t been pops, it woulda been Trev and... Fuck. I can’t imagine it. If Trev had been in the way of that bullet. God. I wouldn’t be here, Blaze. I’ll be straight with you. I woulda... I don’t know. That woulda killed me. Losing my best friend would have killed me.”

  I look down at my coffee mug. Twirl it. And a set of images I work hard every day to bury, hits me. Hard...

  -3-

  Back in the day...

  Mr. Bernstein found her. “She’s dead, Blaze.”

  “No! NO! NO! Stop holding me back. NO.” The crying and screaming began at the same time.

  He held me back. And I hit him. I hit the plumpy man, because he wouldn’t let me through. “Blaze, no, don’t—”

  “Savva, baby, baby, wake up, Savva! Get out of my way you freaking asshole! Let me go.”

  “Blaze, there’s nothing you can do, sweetie! She’s dead—”

  “STOP SAYING THAT! STOP SAYING IT!”

  And then they covered her, the medics, white blanket, in her apartment. “No, check again. NO! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES! DON’T COVER HER UP! SHE’S ALIVE!”

  Despite her blueness, and her lifeless eyes, I told them this.

  I hit him—I pummeled my fists into Mr. Bernstein’s chest, kicked his shins. A cop came by, held my arms. “No,” said Mr. Bernstein. “No, let her go.”

  The cop looked at him strangely. “Sir, please—”

  “No! Leave her. I will take care of her.”

  Then I stopped hitting him. I just stood there, feeling like a speck of dust on a spinning LP.

  Savannah’s body was carted out—a white cloud floating in mid-air. I think that’s when it hit me. I mean, really hit me. That she was gone. Because I wailed—the keening howl sounding all the way down the stairs—and I dropped to my knees. No energy.

  The rest is flashes of memory. I think my mind shut down.

  An arm—two arms—under my armpits. My legs somehow getting up. A cigarette butt—half-smoked—in Savva’s corner, the butt a dark yellow.

  The flash of a camera. Voices. “Looks like a clear suicide, sir.”

  Outside, a white van with Brooklyn Paper written on it.

  “I’ll take care of you, Blaze.” I was vaguely aware of that being Mr. Bernstein’s voice. “I’ll take care of you. It’s OK. She’s in a better place now. I’ll take care of you.”

  People on the streets, mumbling, whispering.

  And looking at me.

  Pointing.

  Taking photos.

  The next day, I woke up to a chasm in my heart.

  And the wailing began again, plus the shivering. When I started for the door, to go check if she was maybe still alive—to check if it wasn’t all just a big damned mistake!—Mr. Bernstein—who’d slept on my beanbag, tie ruffled up and yarmulke at an odd angle—was quickly in my way. He shook his head gravely. “She’s gone, Blaze.”

  “No,” I whispered. And already I could feel the tears on my cheeks. “No, Mr. Bernstein. No.”

  “Yes.” He nodded slowly, closed his eyes. “Yes. She’s gone, Blaze. She committed suicide yesterday. Overdose. She’s gone. There ain’t nothin’ you or I can do about it, honey. But you’re alive, OK? You’re alive. You get that?”

  And then I cried again, on his chest.

  He made me coffee—standing where I am now. And I sat where Deck is sitting now. When Mr. Bernstein gave me the coffee, I sat there staring at it for a half hour. When it got cold, he poured it out; poured me another one.

  I think somewhere along the line there were groceries. A sandwich. And then, four days later, a constant emptiness that’s never left me. But at least Mr. Bernstein could go home, no longer afraid I’d jump out the window.

  Or spike myself up like Savva did.

  I almost did. But, again, Mr. Bernstein saved me—whether he knows it or not...

  Two weeks later, Patryk Warta—Patryk the Painter, Savva’s boyfriend since she was sixteen—left for Poland. “Is too rough for me here, Błażej. I cannot—I cannot—” And he broke down in tears.

  I didn’t.

  I was empty of them by that time.

  Without her by my side, life became an endless void of desert plains, spreading out into the vast distance, in between buildings, in between flowers and life, spraying it everywhere with tinges of blackness and death.

  Without her, life became nothing more than something to get through—a prison sentence bound for an inevitable end. A song with no bassline.

  Until Declan...

  -4-

  Back in the present...

  “You survive it. The death of a best friend. You survive it.”

  “I don’t know if I would. If Trev—”

  Almost angry, almost as if convincing myself: “You would! You do! Trust—trust me.” I can’t look him in the eyes. I know he sees straight through me. I stare at my feet; feel the heat of the coffee mug in my hand.

  I look at Savva’s apartment.

  She’s dead, Blaze. And you’re alive.

  “Is that where she lived?” Deck asks, following my eyes. “Your friend who ODed.”

  I nod. My eyes will soon be out for the count. I fight it, but the rush fights back. My glands tighten. Quickly after, there’s a prickle in my eyes. I hold the mug harder, firmer. I see the coffee shake in it. If I could, I’d ask him to veer off the subject. I’d tell him that it’s not because I don’t want to talk about it, but because I can’t.

  “She must’ve been a good friend.”

  All I can do is nod. I grit my teeth, but my jaw wins the shaking battle. I put the coffee down, press my thumb and index into my eyes.

  Declan doesn’t stand, doesn’t hold me. And I appreciate it, because that wouldn’t make me feel better. It would just make me feel weaker. And I’m not weak about this. I’ve survived it, and I’ll continue to survive it. So long as I don’t keep getting reminded of it.

  After a few minutes, feeling more composed, I say, “In a way, we have her to thank for our...relationship.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the reason I first kissed you was... Well, you know when you first saw my sleeve?” I gesture to my tats. “And you saw the rose up here and then, well, you looked down at the skull and the flames and the wolf and you said something like: ‘That musta been a heavy time in your life,’ or something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well.” I point to Savva’s apartment. “I got them shortly after that. Anyway, when you said that, I was tired and it hit me like a train. And we’d just met an
d...I confess...I kinda liked you already because, well, I just did. Anyway, you said that, and it struck something. And I’d been on my feet all night, and I was about to break down crying and that would’ve been weird, especially seeing as I actually wanted to get your number and everything. So I kissed you.”

  “That’s why you kissed me?”

  I laugh. “Sure.” He waits. “Well, mostly.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “And?”

  “And? That’s it.”

  “It wasn’t my ink, my eyes, my blonde hair? My muscles, damn it!”

  I can’t stop chuckling. “You’re disappointed?”

  He slouches back. “Nah. I don’t care how it happened. Just that it did.”

  Warmness fills my chest. “Me too. Me too.”

  -5-

  “What actually happened, Deck? I mean, Trev said she was high or something—your dad’s...girlfriend?”

  He tells me. Everything. The woman his father had been sleeping with—and slept with on the very night Declan’s mother was sucking in her last breaths at the hospital! He tells me about the mistress’s proclivity for both White Powder and firearms without a permit. “Before he died, he told me that her habit was ‘nuthin serious.’ Those were his precise words. ‘It ain’t nuthin serious.’”

  I think of Xavier yesterday at the Swallow Café, “powdering his nose” in the bathroom. Jekyll before he left me, violent Mr. Hyde on his return. One second wanting to “be” with me, the other, having my wrist locked in his grip while he dragged me off the bench and onto the ground.

  I don’t tell Deck about this. Now is not the time. If ever. Xavier is still Savannah’s brother. He always will be. And he’ll always be the boy who spat in Damian Keegan’s eye after Damian threw mud on my dress when we were tweens.

  Or the dude who pulled a gat on someone rougher for me. And basically saved my ass.

  My how things change.

  Deck’s final statement to me is about his father’s comments about Karma just before he died. “You believe in that shit?” he asks.

  A quick uncertainty grabs at me, the fear of it. The sheer possibility of being punished, in this life, for things done to others. For mistakes committed when you were simply too young to know any better. Or is that statement a white lie in itself? Created by those who once threw mud on girls’ dresses and then grew up to justify it by saying they were “too young to know any better.”

  “K—Karma?” I scratch my forehead. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I always think things might come bite me back in the ass. That’s why I tend to maybe think twice before I do stupid shit to other people. But who’s to say if the universe isn’t built that way? I guess I’m more afraid of it existing, than actually believing in it.”

  “Because you’ve done your fair amount of shit that Karma would have a field day with, right?”

  “I guess. I mean, if it did exist, then we’d all be fucked, isn’t it?” I pull up a stool and sit across from him. “I guess I just don’t think about it. And when I do, I really hope it doesn’t exist.”

  I tell him how I was the one who started Savva on drugs. Es and weed. Then how she moved onto the heavier stuff herself. “When she moved onto H, her brother sold it to her.”

  “Damn! I’d hate to be on the receiving end of his Karma.”

  I think of Xavier being on the receiving end of my shattering ceramic mug. “But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, how far back do you go with it? Was it him? Me? Was it Savva herself? Was it her parents? If it really is Karma, who cops it ultimately?”

  He shrugs. “Personally, I’m not into that esoteric shit. But I do think that things end up biting you in the ass if you give them the opportunity to. It’s not that they will, but if you open the door to them, then they will. Pops opened the door up to that crazy bitch. I opened the door up to— Well, some things. Since I met you I been tryin’ to close those doors. Because...”

  I sip my coffee. Wait. “Uh-huh?”

  “Because, Blaze, by whatever grace of god or twist of fate you landed in my lap, I sure as fuck ain’t gonna let anything take that away from me. And I just keep hoping it isn’t the universe playing a sick joke on me, you know. Sort of like: Oh, you thought you could have her? Ha ha ha. Just kidding! You shoulda thoughta that before you— Something like that?”

  “Before you what, Deck?”

  “Before I...did some of the stupid-ass shit I did when I was younger.”

  “You’re making me a little nervous.”

  “Nah, chill. It ain’t nuthin serious. I just think I gotta close some of those doors, y’know.”

  “Is it anything I should be worried about?”

  “No! I promise you!”

  “Then tell me, just so I know.”

  He sighs out loud. “Look, Blaze, it ain’t nuthin you should be afraid of. It’s just...on the subject of relationships...I mean. I just gotta clean up some old shit.”

  “OK, I can respect that.” I stretch out and hold his hand. “I’m really sorry about your father, Deck. And...I’m here for you, OK?”

  He bites his lip. Swallows hard. Doesn’t answer. Just nods tightly. And again, his eyes water up, and he wipes a tear from the left one. Then from the right. “I gotta go. Gotta get to work.”

  He hugs me, arms trembling.

  I feel like I should tell him about what happened with Xavier yesterday, how he attacked me (and how I attacked him back!) And how that probably leaves me without my breakthrough gig in two weeks; and with no hopes of getting a new place after my loft’s lease expires in six months.

  I need his help. I need his help with business. Because that’s his forte. Not mine.

  But he needs me now more than I need him. It can wait another few days. Until he gets steady on his feet again.

  “Wanna hang out tonight?” I ask. I feel the pause in the room like a truck overturning. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be forward—”

  He pulls me closer. “No! No. Not at all. Blaze, we just slept together. Of course I wanna be with you. Would you mind getting drunk with a bunch of guys? I hate to say it but...I guess it’s become some sort of sick tradition with us: To drink away the dead.”

  “Like the Irish,” I say.

  “Yeah, like the Irish. I’ll wanna be with my boys”—he tightens his grip on me—“and my girl. I can call you that, can’t I?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “I mean, I know you prob’ly got a live act you wanted to go to—”

  “I do. And they’re good. And the bar’s a great place to get drunk.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Tomorrow I have a gig. In the city. Wanna come along?”

  “In the city! Damn! That’s hot!”

  He clearly has no clue about this struggling-artist business. I roll my eyes. “It’s not hot. It’s a teeny-bopper party whose Upper East Side mother prefers cheap labor from Brooklyn to equally good, but double as expensive, labor from her own borough.”

  He chuckles, and the way it reaches his eyes makes me feel I’ve achieved my goal for the morning. Now, how to get that smile happening every day from now on? Every day when he wonders what he could have done to prevent the bullet from hitting his father’s head...

  Every day that he replays the fatal events in his mind.

  “Can I bring Trev to the gig?”

  I scrunch up my eyes. “Uhm, actually, not really. I mean, it’s a closed party. You’d be sitting in the DJ box with me drinking OJ all night. It’s not really an invitation to the party itself.”

  He moves his lips an inch away from mine. “I’d love to be there.”

  “I’m warning you, we’re talking, like, Justin Bieber and One Direction here. Ashley Tisdale, Demi Lovato, Natasha Bedingfield—”

  “Whoa! Whoa! Stop! Yikes. Gag me. You tryin’ to give me nightmares or something? I thought you wanted me to be there.”

  “I do. I just want you to be under no illusions when you arrive there.”

  “And you’re co
ol with playin’ that stuff?”

  “You mean, am I OK with selling my soul?”

  He grins embarrassedly. “I was trying to build on what we have, not shatter it. So I chose politeness over brutal honesty.”

  I clutch his shirt by his abs. “You’re so sweet, you know that?”

  Our lips meet, and the hotness of his breath makes me forget our conversation for just a second. Against all good reason, I pull away. “Tomorrow night. You gonna be a Belieber or what?”

  “I’m having second thoughts.”

  That’s when I punch him hard on the chest. The laugh it brings out in him makes me count a score of two for the morning. “It’s good to see you smile, Declan Cox.”

  “It’s amazing to hear you call me that, Blaze Ryleigh.” He moves closer.

  “No! You gotta work. And I gotta practice.”

  “For Justin Bieber?”

  “Asshole. No! I gotta practice my real music. And I gotta track down Viktoriya—you know, the Red Lipstikk singer from the bar on Wednesday?—to get some of her tracks. When I got her number she was real keen to do coffee for some reason.” Thinking of Wednesday night, when Tolek suddenly appeared at the Slambam bar, makes my stomach turn.

  “Hell, all I gotta do is move a bunch of furniture while listening to your non-Belieber mixes in my car. I got a real easy life these days.”

  No you don’t. “Are you sure you wanna come?”

  “For the third time, YES, I’ll come to your Belieber party tomorrow. Why don’t I give you a ride?”

  “Sure. I’ll need to be there at six to set up. And, as for your comment about selling out—”

  “I never said that.”

  “Yeah, but you thought it. So, as to that comment, I do whatever I can to pay the rent.”

  “I know the feeling. Look, I haven’t forgotten you asked for my help yesterday to promote your business. Tonight we’re gonna sing away the dead, but after that life goes on. So as soon as you’re ready...”

  “There’s no rush...” I know he can see I’m lying.

  “Blaze, everything OK?”

  No, it’s not. I cut a violent drug dealer’s head with a mug—the same drug dealer I had sex with once. And who, underneath all the mind-altering chemicals, is also a close friend of mine—hard to believe though it may be. And he’s also my dead best friend’s brother. If that weren’t enough, he’s also the same guy who seems to be the only door to me not having to spread the Belieber Faith to the world and all its followers just so I can make the rent and keep a tiny trickle of dough flowing up to my struggling mother and gramps in Poland.