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Walking in with a celebrity like Rhett is an experience. He waves like he’s the damn king, looking like he stepped off the cover of GQ. I look like I’m from every episode of Sons of Anarchy with the hangover to prove it. All I’m missing is the bike. I have one, but it’s one I don’t ride.
For some reason, people are staring at me too. I’m not as comfortable with the attention as Rhett is. I’m used to keeping to myself and my crew. Maybe the rumor mill will tell the internet that Rhett and I are an item after this. That’s all it takes to start shit and Rhett and Logan always seem to be involved in some kinda internet shitshow.
We grab coffee and my leather jacket creaks as I sit in a booth too small for guys like me. I’m a fucking sardine in this thing.Whatever. A quick coffee to get through this interrogation with Rhett and then I’m out of here. I have to be on a plane in two days, which leaves two more nights of boozing, and I’m gonna live it the fuck up.
“Your mother called me,” Rhett says.
“Fucksakes.”
“She couldn’t get a hold of you for a week.”
“Yet you’re the one barging into my apartment.” It’s not like she doesn’t have a key fob. She made me get her one. Not an uncommon thing for a mom to have, but our reasons are different than most. I’ve been fine for a long while now, but she worries about me. I haven’t gone off the deep end since I was in my teens, but it’s natural for her feelers to rise when I’ve gone radio silent.
“She didn’t know what she would find.”
“God. What did she think she would find?” Alright, so I didn’t think her concern would gothatdeep. My fucking bad. I shake my head and whip out my phone.
Me
Still alive, Ma
I also open the string of texts from my sister Isla. I was afraid to open them. I might be four times her size, but size means nothing when you’re up against a woman with Giancola blood. Giancola from my mother’s side but add that to some feisty Puerto Rican from Francisco and you get a feminine wildfire.
L’il Sis
I know you’re alive, but not for long when I get to you. Text our mother.
Oh, add some inclination to violence from Big Brother. Isla’s all of ten years old. If she keeps going like this, she’s destined for jail or running the country. Not sure which.
“I don’t know,” Rhett says. “Is there a reason you’re picking fights with a grizzly bear?”
He means that metaphorically, though, maybe a fight with a grizzly bear would get rid of the unmanageable tension that’s been living in my body. I’m like one of those pressure cooker things with no outlet. I’ll admit that this thing with Casey’s sending me to the precipice.
I’m always one bad day from an explosion, it’s my state of being, but since I wet my dick with fucking Alderchuck, my body’s constantly on fire. A series of continual explosions. I’m agitated for no reason. I’m thinking about things I haven’t in a long time. He’s dredged all the years of buried and fermented torment to the surface.
The only cure? Pounding Alderchuck’s ass. Yeah, my poison is my cure. How poetic.
I play with the rim of my coffee mug. Rhett knows me well, but he only knows parts of me. He’s never seen my shadow. But he’s a smart man and he knows I have one. Do I give him some insight to that?
“You remember what I told you about my dad?”
He nods, knowing I’m not referring to Francisco.
I take a deep breath. “I was … I-I was …fuck.” I take a swig of black coffee and let the bitterness sting my tongue. “I was there. Under the bed. Saw the whole thing.”
Red. Rust red. Sickening squelches of knuckles sinking too deep into flesh.
“Fuck, Mitchell.”
Rhett’s the only friend who gets to call me Mitchell without getting punched in the face. My full name makes me sound like I’m a junior accountant.
“That’s why all the therapy … when we could afford it, that is.” I run a rough hand through my hair, forgetting about the bandana I’m wearing, knocking it off, so I rip it off. “But therapy only gets you so far, the rest I had to put into this box. Not a real one, understand? Like a … like an imaginary one in my head.”
That’s where all the terror of that night lives, a monster trapped in a cage, pacing, waiting, dying to get out.
He nods, his face resembling stone.
“I’ve had a tight lid on that damn box since I was a teen.” Does it get rattled now and then? Sure, but the lid never, ever comes off, locked with more locks than I have on my doors. I rub a hand over my chest, where my heart is, wishing I could rip the damn thing out. “Fucking is just fucking, understand?”
