Tell Me Something Real

  I do as he says, unable to look anywhere but him. And then he takes the apple juice and sets it aside, his lips back on mine, his hands roaming and stroking, setting flame to those fires again, only this time when my body threatens to explode and scare me, he doesn’t stop.

  “I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my neck. “Let me give you this, Lincoln. Trust me to give you this.”

  Maybe it’s those words, or maybe my body finally understands what’s happening, but I do as Ford says and I trust him. And then his shifts, and the pressure of his fingers changes, and I can’t do anything but fall.

  I fall in color—bright, vibrant color that fills me to the brim and overwhelms my senses until Ford is all I can see and hear and feel.

  I fall without worry of where I’m going, because I know Ford is with me, and I know, right now, that’s everything.

  +

  I’m at work when Colt walks in two nights later. I startle when I see him, realizing it’s been quite a while since I actually hung out with him.

  I run through the past few weeks, remembering how he and Evie went off campus without telling me, how I left the party with Ford without texting Colt, and the other night, how I found Ford in the gym, when my entire intent had been to go and check on my best friend. The one I’ve been missing. The one I forgot about when I came across my…Ford.

  God, was I about to say boyfriend? Is that what he is?

  Colt steps up to the register, and I smile. “Hey, stranger, how are you?” He nods, but it’s heavy, and he doesn’t say anything. “Hungry?” I ask.

  He pauses, and then nods, fishing his wallet out of his sweats pocket.

  I stand paralyzed watching him, noting that he looks anything but hungry. He looks ill—and in pain. A lot like he did a couple of summers ago when the charges came down on his brother and the town had a field day analyzing the Slaughter boys and their worth.

  For Colt… he’s always been uncertain of this exact thing.

  Since we were kids, he’s always tied his value to someone else in his family. He would never admit it, never accept someone else saying it’s true, but I know better. As much as he always reminds me that I am not a reflection of my crackhead, abusive mother, he can’t tell himself the same thing and believe it. Something inside of Colt demands that he pay for the sins of his family, and every now and then, those sins become too much for him to carry.

  The black look in his eyes is telling me that right now, whatever is weighing on him, is too much. If I’m going to be the one to help lighten it, I have to be careful, because like his inability to view himself as necessary at certain times, Colt never admits to weakness. And he never asks for help.

  “The usual?” I say, trying for light even though my insides are twisting.

  “Not tonight, Linc. How about a coke and a biscuit?”

  My hands tremble, but I keep my tone casual. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Just tired,” he says, throwing bills down on the counter. I put his cup in front of him, waving his money away.

  “I got it.”

  He shakes his head, leaving the bills where they are. “Take the money, Lincoln.”

  He walks away, cup in hand, and I watch him, concern making my entire body tight.

  “Hey, Avina, can I take my break early?”

  My manager offers me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Lincoln, I need you at the register. Rex just went for his break, and we’re already short-staffed tonight.”

  I nod, smiling even though I want to tell her too bad and go to Colt anyway. Part of the reason I don’t is because I need this job, but the other part is because I’m not sure what I need to say to Colt right now. When he gets like this…no words I’ve ever uttered have brought him back.

  One time, during our freshman year, he disappeared for three days. I thought he had finally run away, or worse. Seventy-two hours after he disappeared, he showed up again. When Beau and Maggie and I asked him where he’d been, he said camping.

  It was more—the look on Maggie’s face told me it was more, but Colt never said, and I learned to never ask. But now… I know I need to ask. I just don’t know how.

  I keep my eyes on him the entire time I take orders, bringing his food to him instead of calling his order out.

  “I don’t have a break for another twenty minutes… sorry. Are you okay?”

  He smiles, offering me a bit of relief when he squeezes my hand. “I’m fine, Lincoln. Go ahead. I don’t have plans tonight.”

  “No drop in on Evie tonight?” I try to make it light, but his smile is strained when he shakes his head. “Colt, what’s wrong? I’m worried.”

  He swallows and looks down at his food, almost like he’s surprised to see it. “Do you ever wonder why they did this to us? Our parents.”

  “Colt—”

  “She got picked up again.” He doesn’t have to tell me who—or say anything else. I know he’s talking about his mom, and my heart breaks. “She’s only been out since her last ninety days for a couple months, and now, she’s gone again. They don’t know for how long,” he continues.

  Now, I’m sitting, despite the line at the counter, and the fact that Avina could fire me for this. I sit at the crappy fast-food table across from my best friend and watch him pay for the choices of the woman who loved her husband too much to really love her son.

  “I’m sorry, Colt.” I reach over and put my hand on his and he flinches, but he doesn’t break his stare.

  “I just—I keep thinking of what happened that you and I got parents like this. Evie? Her parents are amazing. She and I were supposed to hang out tonight after her game, but her mom said no because it was too late. ‘You need sleep,’ she said to her.” His voice is hollow, like his expression as he stares at something I’ll never see. “Has your mom ever told you that you needed sleep? Not because she’s got a man home and she needs you to stay locked in your room, but because she cares about you? Because she knows sleep is good for you?’

  “No,” I say, and Colt finally breaks his far-off gaze to look at me.

  “Mine either. Not since I can remember.” The words chill me to the bone, and I see the shadows in his eyes, the ones that are filling him from the inside out, stealing his happy and replacing it with the darkness.

  Darkness I can’t see or feel, not the way he does.

  But that doesn’t mean I can’t fight—if not his darkness, him. “We have shit parents,” I say, my voice breathier than I want. Clearing it, I wait for a second, making sure he sees me. “But we also have each other. And you have Maggie and Beau. And Ford and Evie. We have a family we created, Colt.” I’m desperate, but no matter how strong I try to make my voice, I can’t quite erase the fear.

  “For how long?” He swallows, and then he asks again. “For how long, Linc, before everyone starts disappearing? Rich Boy isn’t staying in Albany, and Evie has offers from schools all over the West, Midwest, and South. And I know you’re not just working to pay rent—you’re looking to leave, too. And you should.”

  I hate his words, and how they make me feel. “Leaving doesn’t mean disappearing, Colt.”

  He offers a small, horrifying smile now. “Maybe it should. Easier for everyone that way.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I grip his arm, nails digging in, and he blinks, looking down at his untouched biscuit and then back at me. Before I can say anything, he nods his head. “Your manager is waving to you. You better go.”

  Colt stands, and I pop up with him. “Don’t leave. I’ll tell her I’m not feeling well, and we can go together.”

  He shakes his head. “Work, Lincoln. I’m tired.” But then he reaches for me before he walks out. “You know I love you, right?”

  “I love you, too. Family,” I say. He nods, squeezing my hands and studying my face for a second before letting go.

  “Bye, Linc.”

  I watch him leave, heart thumping.

  “Lincoln, I need
you at the register. Now.”

  I nod at Avina, but before I go, I pull out my cell phone and click on Ford’s name, laughing a little hysterically when it takes a few times to get my shaking hands to actually hit the button.

  He answers on the first ring. “I thought you were at work.”

  “I am. I need you to go find Colt.”

  “What—why?” Ford’s voice goes flat, like he’s trying to understand what happened, but I can’t explain it.

  “Ford—he said goodbye to me. Like, reminded me he loves me after saying all this stuff about disappearing.” I rub a hand over my heart, because it’s beating so hard I’m afraid it’s going to make me pass out. “He… he can’t be alone right now. I don’t know how I know, but I just do. I’m trying to leave work, but honestly, I’m not strong enough even if I do. I need you to go find him… and I need you to make sure he’s okay.”

  Frozen grass crunches under my feet, and I can see my breath escaping in white puffs in front of me. The sky is clear tonight, dropping the temperature and raising the visibility since the moon is nearly full.

  Up ahead, I spot Colt’s truck, and relief blows through me for the first time since I got Lincoln’s call. I checked his house, the football field, and, now, one of the fields he worked with Lincoln at the beginning of the summer. It’s been burned and replanted, and it backs up to the mountains.

  Lincoln sent me a list of places to look, and now that I’ve found him, I’m both relieved and terrified. Something is wrong, and I have no idea what.

  The closer I get, the more audible the sloshing of liquid in a bottle is. I’m fifteen feet away, and I can see Colt now, sitting on his tailgate, his back to me, shoulders hunched, ball cap pulled low, and only a T-shirt on despite the below freezing temperatures. I walk closer, and take it all in—Colt, the field, the moon—and I feel the cold all the way down inside.

  This Colt—he’s too much like the person Lincoln described not so long ago. The resigned Colt, the one who knows a darkness I can’t even begin to see, let alone feel or live with.

  “I know you’re there, Lincoln. I can hear your footsteps.”

  “Not Lincoln,” I say, feigning confidence I don’t feel, and striding the rest of the way over the uneven ground. “And if you can hear me, then you should be opening me a beer instead of being a selfish dick and drinking them all yourself.”

  Colt stares at me when I climb into the truck bed, settling down on the opposite side of him like I was planning to meet him here the entire time. I stay quiet, and eventually, he hands me a bottle. Instead of the Coors Light I was expecting, it’s a fifth of HRD.

  “Going big tonight, huh? What’s the occasion?”

  He turns and resumes staring out into the field. “What do you want, Ford? I assume Lincoln called you?”

  The vodka is in my hand, so I bring it to my lips and take a swig. It burns a hard path down my throat and pools like lava in my belly. I give it time to settle, handing it back to Colt and shoving my hands into the pockets of my jacket in an attempt to keep warm.

  “She’s worried about you,” I finally say.

  “Well, go on back and tell her I’m fine. I don’t need her to worry.”

  “You know that’s not how it works, man. She’s your best friend.”

  “Yeah, well, she has you now.”

  The lava is snuffed out, replaced by cold. The kind of cold that comes when fear is the only thing you have left to feel. I’ve only been scared like this one other time in my life, and I almost killed someone that night.

  “It’s not the same and you know it.”

  “You don’t know shit about it, Ford.”

  “So tell me,” I say, the words more desperate than forceful. “Tell me why you went to Lincoln’s work, and scared the fuck out of her, before saying goodbye. Tell me why you’re out in a field in the freezing cold, drinking alone.” I lower my voice. “Tell me why the girl you’ve protected your entire life is sick with worry, and you can’t even bother to respond to a goddamn text and make her feel better.”

  “Because it’s too much right now!” he explodes, shoving off the tailgate. I follow, my feet singing when I hit the ground, but I ignore the stabs of pain and the black curtain that wants to fall over my brain, so I can pretend I don’t know what Colt means.

  “Colt,” I start, but he whips around and I see it. God, I see the pain and the devastation and I can’t remember a time I ever felt like that. Not even at my darkest, driving too high and too fast, I never felt like that.

  “She’ll talk to me,” he says, quieter. “And it will work. She’ll tell me why I’m wrong, why this isn’t all I’ll ever feel, and then she’ll tell me how we can survive together. And it will work,” he repeats, but it doesn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t take the cold away. “I’ll stay for her, but Ford… how I feel isn’t normal. And it isn’t going away. I’ve always felt like this—no matter how hard I try to feel something else, how hard I work to just be here, eventually this is what comes back, and I can’t stand it.” He swallows down more liquid. “I just…Lincoln has you now.”

  Oh, Jesus. I get it. I finally get what I’ve been missing since those first days: Colt isn’t angry and withdrawn or hurt because he can’t have Lincoln; we aren’t repeating the mistakes of our fathers. No, Colt is in pain, the kind of pain that some people are born with, the kind that never goes away, and because he knows he can leave me with Lincoln, that I’ll love her and take care of her, he’s making his choice.

  He isn’t afraid of not having her; it’s the exact opposite. He was afraid of her not having anyone; but, now, he isn’t afraid of that, because he knows that if he disappears, she won’t be alone. I’ll always be here.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” I tell him. My voice isn’t its normal calm. Instead, it’s a little harsh, and a lot desperate. “I’m not you. You’re her best friend, Colt. No matter how much you think she can live without you… she can’t. Not if you leave like this.”

  “Goddammit, Ford, don’t.”

  I act like he didn’t speak, stepping forward and shoving him in the chest, ignoring my fear and the pain and relying on the anger that’s gotten us both to this point in our lives. “No, you don’t. Do you really think she’s going to survive this? You think she’s going to understand?”

  “Yes!” he yells, shoving me back. “Yes, I do, goddammit. You don’t know what it’s like here, Ford. You don’t know what it’s like to be the kid who’s hungry, who’s lonely, who’s too big to need his fucking mommy but still does. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up and only have one thing, one person, keeping you alive. But I do. And she doesn’t need me to do it anymore. Christ, I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

  I want to tell him I do—that I understand what it’s like to not have anyone. But I can’t, because he’s right about one thing: I’ve never lived this way. I’ve never seen despair and neglect and hunger and loneliness the way he and Lincoln have. I’ve never lived a life knowing that the home I was going back to might not be there, or that the people in it might take things from me I could never get back.

  I’ve never lived a life where not living was something I dreamed about.

  I drank, I drove too fast, I listened to other people too little… but I never lived like this. Never lived like Colt.

  “Colt,” I say, because I have to say something. But what?

  He shakes his head, already stepping away. “Take care of her.”

  He turns to leave, and I know what he’s going to do. I don’t know how, or where, but I know, and I can’t. Just… I can’t. Not now. Not when I’ve just realized that he’s my family, and as much as I have come to feel for Lincoln, I’ve come to feel for Colt—the brother I never had.

  The family I never knew.

  When he turns to me, ready to tell me to fuck off, I do the only thing I can think of and I sucker punch him, dropping him to his knees when my fist connects with his nose. Bl
ood geysers out, and Colt’s hands automatically press against it to stem the flow.

  “Fuck you, Ford.” But his voice… it’s telling me I’ve won. For now. He proves those last two words accurate when he looks up at me, and our eyes hold. “You can’t always be there.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m here now. And, goddammit, so are you.” Giving in to the weakness that washes through me, I turn my back and slump against the side of the truck, sliding down until I hit the grass.

  Colt’s still bleeding next to me, silent. But he’s still here.

  “I don’t know what it’s like to be hungry and poor,” I tell him. Staring out into the field, my heart rabbits in my chest, and I confess everything to my cousin. “But I know what it’s like to think that what you do doesn’t matter to other people—that because you can handle the pain, you’re in control. The thing is,” I continue. “It’s a lie. I wasn’t in control the night I drove my Porsche off a cliff. I wasn’t in control when the girl I had with me was unresponsive on the scene. And I wasn’t in control when my parents looked at me and told me if I wanted to kill myself, I should be the only one in the car to avoid litigation if it doesn’t work out next time.”

  I hear his breath catch next to me, and I turn to look at him. “Do you get what I’m saying, Colt? You aren’t in control of a lot of things—what this will do to Lincoln… shit, to me? You can’t control that. So, before you go and make a decision you can’t take back, you better understand that your family—we’ll be the ones hurting then. And that? It is in your control.”

  He stares at me, maybe wondering why I didn’t tell him not to do it, or try to change his mind. Or maybe he understands that I know he’s the only one who can change his mind…but maybe, thinking of her, of me, of Evie, can show him what he doesn’t feel: there are people here for him.

  Maybe, me sitting here, sharing a fifth of gasoline disguised as vodka while he bleeds onto his shirt, will show him what moving here showed me: there are always people here for us. We just have to see them.

  +

  “They call it an epidemic. Suicide.”