by Jo Raven
“That’s a long list,” I tell her, “and a long story.”
She bites her lip, and I exhale, remembering her teeth scraping against mine as we kissed, her pussy gripping my cock like a vise as she came, my name on her lips.
Fuck.
“Save it,” she says, “I don’t want to hear it,” and it shouldn’t fucking hurt, but it does.
“Suit yourself.” I light up, and limp over to the couch. I wasn’t really offering to tell her my life story.
Was I?
I throw the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the coffee table before sinking down on the sofa with a sigh. God, my knee’s fucked. “And here I thought you came here to talk to me.”
“Now you remember that?”
“What the hell do you want from me, Gigi? Just tell me.” Fuck, and now my eyes burn like I’m about to cry like a little girl. Fuck my life. “Make up your mind.”
“Funny you say that.” From the corner of my eye, I see her yank on her dress and sweater. “You’re the one in a gang. You’re the one ignoring me when your friends are around. And you’re the one asking for sexual favors to help my friend, and to keep me safe.”
I shake my head. “You think that fucking low of me. You really think that’s why I’m helping your friend and keeping you safe?”
“What… what do you mean?” She walks around the couch to face me, hands on her hips, her long blond hair falling in her face. She’s beautiful. “Explain, Jarett.”
“I only ignored you to protect you. And…” I flick the ashes of my cigarette, and take another long drag, hoping my eyes will stop burning. “You know what? Fuck that. Christ.”
She takes a step back as if I slapped her. Her brows dip. “Stop… confusing me.”
“I’m confusing you? What the fuck are you talking about?”
I’m really fucking lost here. I gave her my number, for fuck’s sake. Went down on her. Kissed her. If there’s a girl I’ve ever cared about… it’s her.
And because of that, I can never have her.
She’s still watching me, as if she can see behind my words, behind the smoke from my cigarette. She’s always been able to see me where others couldn’t.
Or so I thought.
“Just… nothing.” She walks over to where her jacket is on the floor, picks it up and puts it on. “Nothing at all.”
She’s leaving again, and this time she’s not coming back. I fucking know it.
She’s walking out of my life, just like she did two years ago, and this time I know I shouldn’t invite her back in.
Things are going downhill, with the gang getting deeper into dangerous jobs and Seb flying off the handle more and more often. Better if she’s not nearby. I can’t drag her down with me, even if letting her go is the last thing I want.
Suzie was right.
I got fired from the bar. Too many missed shifts, and with her not willing to cover for me anymore, I was handed a pink slip and shown the door.
Fuckers.
It’s my fault, I know, but with Angel and Mav riding my ass for not joining the gang activities enough and getting all suspicious about anyone I hang around, like Gigi, it’s not as if I had much of a choice.
So now I’m checking ads on my phone, trying to find something else, and wondering where the hell Sebastian has vanished to, again.
I’m worried, even if I hate the guy. After all, he’s my charge. He’s probably getting high somewhere, or coming down, shivering and sick. He may be lying dead from an overdose, and I’ll never know, not until the police find him.
I rub my forehead, trying to erase the headache tightening its hold around my skull. His mom will ask me where he is, how he is. Once more I’ll have to lie to her. You’d think after two years of this, I’d be used to it, be good at it, do it without a second thought.
Yeah. I wish that was the case, too. Would’ve made my life so much easier.
Letting out a long breath, I lean back in my rickety kitchen chair and look around me. Since Gigi has been here, I’ve been seeing my apartment—hell, my life—with different eyes. Cold, bare, empty. A hand-me-down, old and worn and unwanted.
Like me.
I look down at myself, my ratty sweats and bare feet, the ink on my chest. At the empty bottle of scotch on the table. Look at my package of cigarettes and reach for them but let my hand drop on the table, empty.
If I light up now, I’ll go up in flames, I’m so soaked in alcohol. I stink of it, and sweat, and grime.
Why the hell do I care, though? There’s nobody here to smell me, or see me, or talk to me. Nobody to get offended, or upset.
Nobody to worry about me.
I make myself get up anyway, to take a leak and splash some water on my face. It’s late, the time when I’d normally be working at the bar or following the gang around. Ironic that I was fired just when gang activity eased a little.
Then again, what did I expect? Just my fucking luck, and fuuuck, I’m so drunk. The bathroom tilts in my eyes as I piss, and I end up splashing urine all over. I find myself on my knees, snickering, wondering what Seb will think if he finds me like this, if he finds the bathroom covered in piss.
And then get angry, because why the fuck should I care? I’ve been cleaning up his messes for years, worse messes than a little piss on the tiles, and what the hell am I doing with my life?
I curl up on the floor, and close my eyes, fighting a new wave of depression. Dammit, getting shitfaced was supposed to make me forget, not drag me down deeper.
If I left the gang, if I moved away… if I became someone else, would I stand a chance with a girl like Gigi?
A chance with Gigi, dammit, cuz there’s no other girl like her, and now I’m shaking with cold on the wet floor and cursing.
Something’s got to give. This ain’t no life. It’s a lie I’ve been telling myself.
And what’s one more fucking lie, right? Until you realize you don’t know what is the truth anymore.
Macy, the receptionist at the nursing home, gives me a critical look. “Rough night?”
I shrug. “I’ve had worse.”
Waking up on the bathroom floor, frozen solid and covered in piss is a new fucking low. Even worse is the weight on my chest that won’t let me breathe, a weight coming from the inside, from my dark places in my mind, from the pit. Digging myself out is getting harder every time.
I’m not even sure I made it out. My skin is crawling, my thoughts are full of shifting shadows and patched-up holes.
Sometimes I’m not sure how my mind doesn’t come apart at the seams. It feels like it’s held together by a thread that’s slowly unraveling.
“Jarett?”
I blink. “What?”
Macy is glaring at me. “You spaced out. What’s the matter with you? I’m not letting you inside if you’re high.”
“What? I’m just tired.”
“You sure?” She gives me a long look, and it annoys the hell out of me.
I mean, shit, I know I look like roadkill, but I’ve been coming down here for two years. Just because I won’t fuck her, that doesn’t give her the right to keep me out.
“I’m sure,” I tell her, and head toward Mrs. Lowe’s room before Macy can try and stop me, or send the bored guard standing by the entrance after me.
Goddammit.
My knee is killing me, and my head is pounding. Today is pure misery. Which is why I need to see her face.
Mom’s face.
Even if I don’t get to call her that. Even if she’s not really my mother, or will ever be. There’s no one else who can replace her, and today I need her.
When I open the door and step inside her little room, she’s sitting at her usual place in front of the TV, and my heart gives that funny twist it always does when I spot her.
Gray hair pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail, her face more lined than it was a year ago, her kind eyes hooded. On the table beside her, there’s a plastic plate with a small cake, like every Th
ursday, brought by who knows who.
She turns them on me, and a faint smile spreads on her lips. “You came.”
It’s a moment frozen in time, a moment from the past, and I don’t wanna move in case I break it. In this stolen moment, she’s my mom, and we’re home, and everything’s fine with the world.
Then she starts trying to get up, and her gaze turns anxious. “Sebastian?”
My heartbeat falters. “No, I’m not—”
“Seb. You’re here.”
My jaw clenches, and sadness washes through me. This happens sometimes. She thinks I’m him, and today it hits me harder than ever.
“Seb. Gonna make you those meatballs you like.” She’s still trying to get up, but her motor skills are shot, and she’ll never make it up on her own.
I walk over to her, put a hand on her frail shoulder, gently push her back down. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m not hungry.”
It’s ironic that these are the only times I allow myself to call her this, call her Mom, out loud. When it’s all pretend and lies.
So many fucking lies. They’re getting too heavy to bear.
“You’re a growing boy,” she says, voice slurring a little. She tries to catch my hand but misses. “You need food.”
“I just ate,” I reply, and swallow hard.
She thinks she’s back at home. She thinks I’m her little boy. She has returned to the past, and I guess it was a good time, before her husband passed away and she got sick, so who am I to begrudge her that return?
Even if back then she hadn’t even met me.
“Sit,” she says, or I think she says, and then something I can’t make out. Cold fear seeps into me when I realize her speech may go soon. “Siddown, lemme…”
I go to my knees beside her, grab her hands. “I’m here. No need to go anywhere.”
Her eyes fill up. “You’re never happy, Seb. Why?” Her words are garbled, but they’re still clear, and they stab me. “What did I do?”
“It’s not you,” I tell her honestly. I know it’s not her fault.
“You need a brother,” she says.
“Yeah.” What else can I say?
“To keep you safe. When I won’t be around no more.”
“Stop, all right? Stop.” She hasn’t said anything like this before. “Is that why you took me in? To make Seb happy? I can’t…”
I release her hands and shoot to my feet.
Not sure what I expected. I mean, she’s been waiting for Seb to show up for two years now. Of course she loves him. Of course she’d do anything for him.
And if I thought she’d decided back then that she wanted one more child, for herself, for me, that was all in my mind. I had those romantic fantasies where my mom would show up and take me in her arms, say she was sorry she left me and wanted me back.
Only my real mom is dead. That should have been a real fucking important clue, right? An indication that there’s no going back. That fantasies remain fantasies.
And I can’t do this today. Fuck. Glancing at her, I find her staring blankly at the mute TV, and I know that if I stay longer, I’ll break down. I’ll beg her to see me, to realize who I am, to tell me she’ll be okay.
No fucking way. Upsetting her is the worst thing I could do, and for what?
Wiping a hand over my face, I turn around and leave. It’s the only thing I can do.
“You need to sign out,” Macy tells me as I storm toward the exit of the nursing home.
“You didn’t tell me she was getting worse,” I snap, and double back to scratch my signature in the visitors’ book.
“She’ll keep getting worse, Jarett. I thought you were aware of that.”
Of course I knew this, I’ve read all I could find on the disease, but somehow I thought she’d stop deteriorating.
Stay with me. But nobody ever stays.
“Look, sorry I asked if you were high earlier.” She turns the book back around, smooths the paper, not looking at me. “I know this is hard.”
I nod, toss the pen on the counter and make to the door. I don’t care about her apology. All I want is to get out, breathe some fresh air.
“You can talk to me, you know!” she calls out after me, and I roll my eyes, because, really?
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I mutter as I step out into the cold, pulling my jacket closed.
There’s nobody I can talk to, nobody who has any faith left in me, not even Gigi.
Especially not Gigi.
And if there was one person I’d have spilled my guts to, explained why I do the things I do and asked for forgiveness, for understanding, it’d have been her.
Always her.
So it makes perfect fucking sense that she’s not the one offering to listen, and that she doesn’t give a shit about my story.
Chapter Nineteen
Gigi
It’s Saturday afternoon. Sydney has been calling me, but I’m ignoring her.
The house smells of sugar and apples as Mom is baking downstairs in her kitchen, the aroma drifting all the way up to my room. She’s probably talking on the phone at the same time to her sweetheart, or one of her friends, and has the TV on.
Mom likes noise. She likes human contact. I’m usually like her, but today I’m perfectly content to lie on top of my bed and listen to music, while my mind spins and spins in endless circles. I don’t want to talk to people right now.
People are complicated, and I’m tired of trying to figure them out.
“I want you to want me.”
What did he mean?
The way he pushed into me so carefully. The way he moved inside me, holding back, making sure I came first.
That sheen in his eyes when he sat down on the couch and asked me if I thought that low of him. If I really thought he’d helped me in exchange for sex. A sheen like tears.
All those things that fled my mind when later he told me to go, so coldly, callously.
So what does that mean? Why did he have sex with me? Was I just convenient, or… or is there something more? Am I imagining it? Is it all in my mind?
He’s slowly driving me mad, tearing me between desire and doubt, anger and sadness and hope.
I can’t stop thinking about kissing him, and touching him, and having sex with him.
Can’t stop thinking about him, period.
So much I wanted to ask him that night last week. Who his real parents were. Where he came from. Why he always looked ready for a fight. Why he got his tattoos and what they mean.
Why he limps. Why he smokes. Why he went and joined a gang, for God’s sake, in a town choke-full of gangs and violence. I thought…
I thought he fought because he felt he had no choice, but joining a gang, staying in a gang is a choice. He made it.
He’s sticking to it.
How can I still want a person like that? He’s a criminal. He hurts others for his own gain. And eventually…
Eventually, he’ll be thrown behind bars, or get killed. Gunned down, or stabbed.
God. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up, or scream. Smash my fists against the wall. As if that could make a difference.
Sticking my buds into my ears, I close my eyes and hum along to the opening bars of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, lifting a hand to jab at the air to the rhythm.
That’s what I want today. I want to lose myself. I want to vanish for a while, and not have to think, and doubt, and wonder. I’m fed up with second-guessing myself and then wallowing in misery. Maybe I should go out—but that would mean calling Sydney back and… no.
Just no.
I’d rather be stuck at home, smelling Mom’s baking and listening to music, mapping the cracks in the ceiling and recalling the green and gold of Jarett’s eyes.
There’s no escape, is there? No way to get him out of my mind.
Distant banging breaks through my thoughts and the music, and I sit up just as my door swings open.
Merc appears in the opening, blond hair sticking out in
all directions, his headphones around his neck. He nods at me, and then his mouth starts opening and closing without a sound.
I frown. “What? What are you doing?”
His shoulders heave. Then he comes around the bed and pulls the buds from my ears. “I said, Sydney is here.”
“What? Where? I was trying to…” I stop, because she enters the room.
Crap, crap.
Merc glances from her to me and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll leave you gals to talk. I have an assignment to prepare for my English class.”
He passes Sydney on his way out of my room, and then he’s gone and I’m alone with my bestie.
Ex-bestie.
Maybe?
Syd sits on my bed, smooths her short plaid skirt over her legs. Her red hair falls in her eyes. “You’re avoiding me.”
I shrug and fiddle with the hem of my sweater. “Nah. You saw. I was listening to music, didn’t hear you call.”
“But you knew I called. Gigi, you were listening to music on your phone.”
I bite my lip. “Okay, so I wasn’t sure what to tell you. You’ve abandoned me and left I don’t know how many times by now. You hang out with drug dealers, and won’t even talk to me about it, and I had to ask Jarett to look out for you—”
“You did what?” She’s looking at me sideways from under her curls, and she looks equal parts shocked and dismayed.
“What did you expect me to do, Syd?” I tuck my hair behind my ears. “I was worried. Heck, I’m worried even now.”
She looks away and chews on her lower lip viciously. “Don’t be. And you shouldn’t have asked Jarett to be my bodyguard.”
“Really? Are you shitting me, Syd? He saved your hide more than once. And in case you were wondering, no, I’m not going out with you tonight.” I pick up my earbuds and prepare to shut her out.
Enough is enough.
Her hand on top of mine stops me. She leans in. “Listen to me, Gigi. I want to tell you everything, but this isn’t only about me.”
“Whatever.” But it comes out weak. “You said that before, and it’s not good enough, Syd.”