“I was… I didn’t mean… Please don’t be mad, Jeremy,” Mooncricket said.
“Why would I be mad?”
“Because… uh… I was looking at your stuff?” Mooncricket ventured.
“It’s not a test,” Jeremy said with a sigh. He sat down next to Mooncricket. “I’m not mad. I like showing people my art.”
“Seriously? ‘Cause, like, you don’t never really show me none of it,” Mooncricket said.
“Because you don’t ask,” Jeremy said. He’d been alone so long that his social skills; his ability—and desire—to share like normal people did, had mostly escaped him. “I don’t mind if you look though. My art is…” He shrugged with an eh sound in the back of his throat.
“Your art is, like, an extension of you or something, right?” Mooncricket asked.
“Sometimes,” Jeremy said. “It’s more like the way I talk to people.”
“But they’re pictures.” Mooncricket nodded like he understood anyway.
Jeremy thought maybe he did, but with Mooncricket he was never sure.
“Right,” Jeremy said. “I’m no good with words really, but with pictures I can say things.”
“I think I get it, yeah,” Mooncricket said, still bobbing his head in agreement or to his own theme song in his head.
Jeremy flipped through the sketchpad, glancing at the pictures, but not really looking at them.
“Did you see any you like?” he asked.
“Uh… yeah. Like, all of them, but there was one really cool one,” Mooncricket said.
“Show me.” Jeremy handed him the sketchpad.
Mooncricket turned the pages slower, really looking at the drawings and rough sketches. “This one,” he said, stopping on a finished colored pencil drawing of a woman with a hibiscus in her hair standing beside a giant white alligator. She was smiling and the gator’s mouth was open, overflowing with tropical flowers and birds; a reptilian cornucopia of paradise.
Jeremy touched the woman’s face and smiled.
“She kinda looks like you,” Mooncricket said.
“That’s because she’s my mother,” Jeremy said. He’d taken the picture of her out of an old photo album and had set out to only draw her as she was. But then all the rest had happened and he liked it better that way.
“Was she an Indian?” Mooncricket asked. “Uh… I mean… Was she a Native American?”
“Native Hawaiian,” Jeremy said. “She met my dad when he was in the Navy. They fell in love, got married and blah-blah-blah, they moved back here when his enlistment was up. The end.”
“I never told you I’m sorry they died,” Mooncricket said. He leaned against Jeremy and rested his head on his shoulder. “That musta sucked balls.”
“Yes. It did suck balls.” Jeremy rubbed the inside corners of his eyes with his finger and thumb then stood up. “You want to go do something?”
“Fuck yeah,” Mooncricket said as he, too, rose from the floor, clumsier about it than Jeremy. He wasn’t totally sober—he never was—and his legs were half-asleep from the way he’d been sitting. He was happy though. “What do you wanna do?”
“I thought I’d let you decide,” Jeremy said. There. That was much easier: take his hands off the wheel and let Mooncricket choose their social activity for the evening. Hopefully it wouldn’t be something like virtual bowling or sitting in the park again.
“Movies?” Mooncricket asked.
“Sure,” Jeremy said. He had no idea what was playing, but he didn’t care either.
“Cool,” Mooncricket said. “Is this like a ‘hang out’ thing or like a… um… ‘date’ thing? ‘Cause if it’s the first one, can Dawn Marie come? You liked her, right?”
“She can come,” Jeremy said. “Go call her and I’ll go get dressed for outside.”
“Adventure!” Mooncricket crowed, arms raised over his head like he’d just won a trophy. Then he stopped. “Wait. Jeremy, where’s my phone?”
Jesus. Who’s a special boy? “Kitchen counter,” Jeremy said.
“Oh.”
Mooncricket called Dawn Marie and when he asked, she agreed to meet them at the movie theater the next town over. Sparrow Falls had a movie theater, but it had been closed for going on six years after a hurricane caused structural damage. The damage wasn’t that bad, but the owners were lazy and didn’t want to spend the money it would take to fix things.
After some debate over which movie to see, Dawn Marie and Mooncricket settled on a comedy she was interested in. Jeremy was just along for the ride and had no solid opinion on the matter one way or the other. It was a Sunday in a small churchgoing town at around six o’clock in the evening, which meant they largely had the theater to themselves. Most people were still at church, itching to get home and out of their good clothes so they could go buy beer and pick up where they had left off before going to get right. Wipe the slate clean and start over.
Jeremy thought the overpriced popcorn he bought at the concession stand was the best part of the whole experience. Mooncricket didn’t get it at all and Dawn Marie thought it was hilarious.
“That movie had a really bizarre story plot,” Mooncricket said as they left the theater.
“Uh, no,” Dawn Marie said. “It was about the hilarious misadventures of a woman who was accidentally enrolled in the space program. How is that bizarre?”
“Because, like, how does that even happen?” Mooncricket said. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s just a movie, man,” Dawn Marie said as they walked across the parking lot toward the Denny’s on the same lot. “It doesn’t have to be realistic.”
“Yeah, but…” Mooncricket frowned as he trailed off and scratched the inside of his left arm. “Yeah.”
Dawn Marie gave him a huge smile and a one-armed hug from the side. “You’re so pretty,” she said.
“Heh,” Mooncricket said with a little smile. “Thanks.”
That was something Jeremy did find funny and he laughed. Dawn Marie gave him a strange look then laughed as well because they were both in on the joke. It was a nice thing to say when what you really wanted to say was, You’re such a fucking dumbass.
“I vote that we have cocktails after we eat,” she said. “And by cocktails, I mean shots of whiskey. All in favor, say, ‘Aye!’”
“Arr!” Mooncricket said in his best pirate voice.
“Close enough,” Dawn Marie said. She looked at Jeremy.
“Aye,” he said dutifully.
They made it to the restaurant, ordered their food and drank large amounts of coffee while they waited. Mooncricket excused himself to go to the bathroom and when he came back, his eyelids were drooping and his pupils were tiny little islands floating in a sea of blue-blue-blue. He smiled lazily as he plopped down then propped his elbow on the table. He started to put his chin in his hand, but his elbow slipped and he nearly hit the tabletop instead.
“Oops,” he said with a soft laugh.
“How much of that shit did you do?” Jeremy asked.
“Uh… like, you know,” Mooncricket said. “I put the spike back in my pocket though, so it’s cool.”
“Great.” Jeremy sipped his coffee. It wasn’t the drug use that bothered him. It was that Mooncricket had the shit on him and then he’d gone and dosed himself pretty hard by the looks of him. “It is not cool.”
“What’s not?” Mooncricket blinked slowly, eyes staying closed a little too long.
“You know what.” Jeremy’s foot jerked before he could tell himself not to and he kicked Mooncricket under the table.
“Ow, Jeremy, shit,” Mooncricket said with a wince. He turned in the booth to reach his ankle and rub it. “Why’d you do that for?”
“Why do you think?” Jeremy asked.
“I dunno,” Mooncricket said. “But it really hurt.”
“Wah,” Jeremy said. He took another sip of his coffee and that was when he noticed Dawn Marie glaring at him. He’d forgotten all about her for a minute there.
“You—” She took a
deep breath that whistled through her clenched teeth when she let it out. “You’re a dick head.”
“I know,” Jeremy said.
“Stop fucking hitting him,” Dawn Marie snapped. “He looks like he owes the mob money on gambling debts or something all the time. You think people don’t know you beat him?”
“You think I fucking care?” Jeremy snapped back.
“Hey, guys, c’mon,” Mooncricket said. “I’m okay. It’s cool, Dawn Marie. He doesn’t hit me. I told you, I fall down a lot.”
“Yeah, you’re really clumsy,” Dawn Marie said. “Uh-huh. And you just kicked yourself under the table, too. Right.”
“I am,” Mooncricket said. “I run into shit and bump into stuff and fall over things, like, all the time.”
“You’re—” A junkie, is what she started to say and Jeremy knew it, but she pulled herself back at the last second. “No one is so clumsy they beat themselves black and blue at least once a month.” She jabbed a finger at Jeremy. “It’s him and I know it’s him.”
“You don’t know shit,” Jeremy said. He was getting mad, but he kept his voice calm. Who the fuck was she to tell him what he could and could not do to Mooncricket? Obviously Mooncricket wasn’t that upset by it or he would have left by then. Even as he thought it, in the back of his mind Jeremy knew he was rationalizing and lying to himself. He was trying to condone his own behavior. If he didn’t know it was a terrible thing to do then he wouldn’t try to stop doing it.
“I know enough, motherfucker,” Dawn Marie said. “You’re a beater. End of.”
Jeremy very calmly flipped her off and ignored Mooncricket’s wide-eyed, frantic look as he glanced back and forth between them.
“It’s all good, seriously,” Mooncricket said. “Can we just chill?”
“Yeah, we can chill,” Dawn Marie said with a smile.
A second later the toe of her boot connected with Jeremy’s shin so hard he grunted at the deep throbbing pain of it. Coffee sloshed over his hand as pain rocketed up his leg, the spot she’d kicked pulsating in time to his heartbeat. He glared at her and her smile only got wider.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” she said.
Jeremy only shook coffee off his hand then took another sip. After he swallowed, he laughed and it was genuine. She had moxie, little Miss Dawn Marie did.
“Point taken,” he said.
“Y’all, please quit,” Mooncricket said. “You’re killing my buzz and like, it sucks that you’re being mean to each other.”
“We’re done,” Dawn Marie said. “Right, Germy?”
“Yep,” Jeremy agreed. He didn’t bother asking her not to call him “Germy”; it would only encourage her to do it more. She was one of those people and it was no great feat to figure that out. Mostly because Jeremy was also one of those people.
He smiled at her over the rim of his coffee cup and she smiled back. She looked like a really cute shark when she did. Jeremy kind of liked it.
“Food’s here,” Mooncricket said way too loudly. He was trying to break the tension and they let him do it.
Mooncricket looked up into the waitress’s face and smiled when she put his plate down. He’d been picking at a scab beneath the sleeve of his shirt when she took his order earlier and had mumbled what he wanted to the tabletop he’d been so into his excavation. He’d been working at that one spot for a couple of days now even though Jeremy slapped his hand every time he caught him at it.
“My Lord, child. You have got the prettiest durned eyes I’ve ever seen,” the waitress said, smiling back. She was a short, matronly woman wearing support hose. Her hair was bleached so blond it nearly glowed. It was done up in an outdated style that was half French twist and half beehive (or at least it wanted to be) that was held together with so much hair spray it could have withstood an F4 tornado.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mooncricket said, beaming at her.
Jeremy had noticed that he responded well to older women who were kind to him. He must have had a favorite aunt or maybe even his mother that doted on him because when a nice older lady said anything to him, he reverted right back to the clean little rich boy he had once been; all perfect manners and good teeth. It always mildly shocked Jeremy because it was so easy to forget that Mooncricket had once been someone else.
Mooncricket had lived in a fine home, gone to the best private schools and in the summer, he and his family had traveled around Europe or vacationed at his father’s villa in Tuscany, where he was originally from. He’d gotten a Mercedes for his sixteenth birthday that he got loaded in and totaled before his seventeenth. Back then, Mooncricket hadn’t existed; he’d been plain old Tristan Jacob Acerra. That was before the drugs and several failed stints in rehab. Before his father gave him an ultimatum: Your family or heroin. The horse had won and Jeremy had no doubt that it had been an easy choice to make. That was when Mooncricket had truly been born and Tristan Acerro was buried without any fanfare. By the time Mooncricket was twenty two, he had mastered the fine art of fucking up his life and seemed okay with it.
But oh, how old habits died hard. Jeremy watched the waitress’s smile grow even larger as she patted Mooncricket’s pale cheek.
“Here now, you kids eat up,” she said. She pointed at Mooncricket. “You especially, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mooncricket said as he looked down at his dinner of stuffed waffles with a side of sausage links.
“Y’all need anything else?” the waitress asked.
“Another pot of coffee,” Jeremy said as he picked up one of his chicken tenders.
“All right,” the waitress said. She stood by for a second, waiting for Jeremy to acknowledge her in some way other than a request spoken like a soft command. When he took a bite of his chicken and didn’t look at her, she walked away.
“You’re rude, too,” Dawn Marie said as she took the top off her burger to investigate whether or not they’d fucked around and put mayo on it.
“Your powers of observation wow me,” Jeremy said.
“Call me Sherlock,” Dawn Marie said.
“How about I call you nosy instead?”
“Only if I can call you fucktard.”
“Guys…” Mooncricket shifted in his seat as he looked around at them.
“It’s gravy,” Dawn Marie said with a laugh as she slapped the top back on her burger and picked it up for a bite.
Mooncricket gave Jeremy an anxious look and he reached across the table to squeeze his hand. He relaxed then and gave Jeremy a grateful smile.
“Please don’t fight,” he said.
“We won’t,” Dawn Marie assured him. “We’re just prickly old weirdos is all.”
“Prickly,” Jeremy agreed. “Very prickly.”
“And prickish,” she added.
“That, too.”
Mooncricket smiled again then cut into his waffles. Hot cream cheese filling oozed out of the waffle into the plate and he snickered. “Dude,” he said. “It’s like my waffle is full of jizz.”
“Gross,” Dawn Marie said as she looked into his plate. Then she grinned and snorted out a laugh. “I think it likes you, Mooncricket.”
“Yeah, like, a lot,” Mooncricket said as he swiped his finger through the gloopy mess.
Jeremy grabbed his wrist and leaned across the table. Dawn Marie and Mooncricket both watched him, the former waiting to blow up at him for being an asshole, the latter a touch leery and already bracing for it. It was a shame that Jeremy had done that to Mooncricket and just like always, he hated it, but he couldn’t take it back. He could only slowly suck the sweetened filling off Mooncricket’s finger and let it go with a soft pop.
“Whoa.” Mooncricket laughed then licked the end of his finger. “That was totally dirty.”
“Fucking hot though,” Dawn Marie said with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.
“Even though I’m a dick?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah, well, you’re a hot dick,” Dawn Marie said. “Still a dick though, but whate
ver. I’m not blind either.”
Jeremy shrugged and returned his attention to his meal. If he distracted Mooncricket too much he’d forget to eat altogether and he needed to eat. Jeremy did make him eat, but he tended to pick even then and the past week or so, Jeremy hadn’t been in a very good frame of mind himself. He’d once again cut back on his heroin use after Dr. Helen died, but he’d been distracted and depressed all the same; not really able to pay attention to whether or not Mooncricket ate his Wheaties.
When Mooncricket sat back from his plate a while later, it was clean and he looked a little ill.
“Man, I feel all pukey,” Mooncricket said.
“That’s what happens when you don’t eat for fuck knows how long,” Jeremy said. “Then you gorge on fat and sugar. Your body is freaking out right now.”
“My body?” Mooncricket rubbed his full belly and wrinkled his nose. “That is freaking me out.”
“I wasn’t being literal,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah, dude, I know that,” Mooncricket said. “I’m, like, you know, kinda dumb, but I understand some things.”
“Well, as long as you know you’re dumb,” Jeremy said then flinched with instant regret. He had not meant to say that and when he looked at Mooncricket, he saw the hurt in his eyes.
“Fucking asshole,” Dawn Marie muttered under her breath. “Ass. Hole.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jeremy said. “I don’t think you’re dumb.”
“It’s… it’s okay,” Mooncricket said with a shrug, trying to play it off like it was no big deal. “I know it’s true.”
“It’s not,” Jeremy said. It was, fine, but he didn’t like hurting Mooncricket’s feelings like that. It was another piece in the set of baggage called Liking Another Person. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“It’s fine, Jeremy, all right?” Mooncricket said. He picked up the check from the table where the waitress had left it then slid out of the booth. “Let’s just go get drunk, huh? That’ll be fun, right?” His encouraging smile was strained, but bless his heart, he was trying.
“Nice job,” Dawn Marie said as they got up to follow Mooncricket.
“I really didn’t mean to say that,” Jeremy said. “I swear.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 31