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“Yes.” A flash of interest danced on the edges of Ken’s always-neutral features.
I did the math in my head and cringed. “Jesus. Like, a hundred bucks.”
“Damn.” Ken shook his head. “If you put that money into a total market fund every month and let the interest compound over time, you could have”—he paused, his eyes looking up and to the right as he crunched the numbers—“around a million dollars by the time you retired.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I exhaled on a cough. “How do you know that?”
Ken shrugged. “Investing is kind of my hobby.”
I snorted. “Investing is your hobby? I don’t think you know how hobbies work.”
Ken’s smile made a rare appearance, softening his serious, square-jawed, all-American face. He opened his mouth, a smart-ass comeback at the ready, but I never got to hear it because, a split-second later, his body lurched forward and slammed into mine.
I yelped and dropped my cigarette as my hip crashed into the side mirror of my car.
“What the fuck?” I screamed into Ken’s chest, which was crushing me against the passenger window.
Craning my neck back, I found him hovering over me with his arms stretched up over his head as if he’d just caught a fifty-yard pass. Only, instead of a brown leather football in his hands, Ken was holding a brown leather loafer.
Following his gaze, my eyes traveled up, up, up the side of the building until I, too, saw the source of the projectile.
Perched on the railing of his fourth-floor balcony was the birthday boy himself. Jason’s head lolled forward. His feet dangled over the edge, and one of them was missing a shoe.
“Oh my God. Ken…”
Ken cupped a hand around his mouth and yelled up to Jason, “Stay there, man! We’re coming up!”
Jason yelled something incoherent back, but we were already gone. Taking the stairs two at a time, Ken and I flew back up to apartment 441 and burst through the door. Techno pulsed, and people danced as Ken and I pushed our way through the oblivious assholes Jason called friends and out to the balcony.
Closing the door behind us, I sighed in relief to see that we weren’t too late. Jason was still sitting on the narrow wooden railing, staring down at the parking lot below. But he wouldn’t be for long. Gravity was tugging at his heels. I could almost see it beckoning him from below. One wrong move and it would steal him from us forever.
As I stood in the doorway, struggling to catch my breath and trying to figure out what the fuck to say, Ken tiptoed toward Jason.
“Stay ’way!” Jason yelled, swinging his arm out in our direction.
Ken froze and held his hands up.
“Jason!” I screeched. “Don’t move like that! You’re gonna fall!”
“No’m not,” he slurred, dropping his hand and returning his gaze to the asphalt below.
“Honey, I don’t know what you took tonight or what’s going on, but this isn’t like you. Come back inside. Please?”
Jason snapped his head around, his glassy eyes unable to find mine in the dark. “Thisss me. Ffffffuckin’ real. You ’on’t know. You ’on’t fuckin’ care.”Jason tried to turn around enough to point at Ken, who was almost behind him, causing his body to slip a fraction of an inch and my heart to stop. “You come-see him.” His head lolled again as he turned back toward the parking lot. “Not me. Nobody c-c-c-come-see-muh…” Jason’s words became unintelligible as his teeth began to chatter, and his body began to shake.
Do something, BB!
“Jason,” I sputtered, my mind reeling as I watched my friend teetering on a tightrope between life and death, “of course I come to see you. You’re one of my best friends. I moved into this apartment complex last year because of you. Everybody loves you. I love—”
Everything happened in an instant, yet it felt like I was watching it unfold in slow motion. Before those three words could even leave my mouth, Jason spun around, ready to argue. I watched his face morph from enraged to terrified as the force of his spin caused him to lose his balance. As he realized a moment too late what he’d done.
What he would never be able to undo.
I leaped forward and reached for him on instinct, my mind refusing to accept the fact that I was too far away to save him.
But Ken wasn’t.
One moment, Jason’s frightened brown eyes were begging me for help as his hands grasped at nothing, and the next, Ken was grabbing him by the arms and pulling him to safety. Ken yanked Jason over the railing so hard; they both tumbled backward and landed in a heap on the cement floor. I held my breath and watched in horror as Jason thrashed and kicked and fought against Ken, but Ken didn’t let him go. Not until his body went limp and his face crumpled in defeat.
