“Then, well. I was at the end of the jeep, toward the headlights, and Frankie and Rooster were on the sides, and I got hit in the leg, and both of them got hit.”
I felt a wetness in my hair. He wiped his nose. I stayed quiet.
“I got down and pulled Frankie’s body toward me to make sure. Checked his pulse. Closed his eyes for him.”
I felt lucky to have last seen Frankie laughing, blowing a kiss. That I didn’t have to see him that way. “That was good of you.”
“Yeah. But, you know.” His chest expanded as he laughed. “Those were his last words. ‘Lugia is the best Pokémon because it’s the guardian of the sea.’？”
I laughed with him, fuller this time, now that more of my energy was coming back. “That’s so Frankie. It’s perfect.”
“It is. It is.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I just wish that I had told everyone not to get out. But I was a private, you know? You were supposed to trust your captain.”
I lifted my chin, looking at him. “You did the only thing you could have done.”
“Maybe.” His eyes had become more silver, the traces of tears still attached to the lashes. I wondered if his irises always did that when he cried.
He leaned closer. I knew why, and I knew what was unsaid. His lips found mine, soft and slow. I closed my eyes. Safe, I remember thinking. I feel safe.
Then a hunger burst through it, and I took his shoulders, pulling him closer. He didn’t resist, putting his hands around my waist, pressing, pulling the fabric of my shirt into his fists.
His lips darted to my neck, to my collarbone, to the top of my breast.
I moved my leg over his while his palms fell down my back, over the curve of my ass, and then up, under my shirt to my skin. The sensation of his skin on mine shocked both of us. I heard him gasp, and I stopped.
I thought of Toby, at home, asleep, Lorraine purring on his chest. I remembered the promise I had made to him. Even then, it was a lie. For some reason, I couldn’t find the guilt where it should have been. My body couldn’t yet process what we’d just done. What I’d just done. All I could think about was wanting more.
“Hey,” Luke said, looking up at me.
I moved back to sitting on the couch, breaths still coming quick, brushing the back of my hand across my wet lips. “Hey.”
He was trying to slow his breath, too. But nothing in his eyes held regret.
I smiled at him, surprised and unsurprised at the feeling that had announced itself in me, the same feeling I got when I found the right notes. It was new and not new, the feeling of foraging for something that was already there, never hiding, but newly found.
Luke
When I was sure Cassie was asleep, I shut off the lights in the living room and slipped on my shoes. Mittens hopped up, wagging her tail.
“Not right now, Mitts. I’ll be back,” I whispered.
I was buzzing. High. Clear. The opposite of cloud head.
I still had Rita’s keys. I had wanted to do this right away after I’d received Johnno’s text, but it was best now, now that I knew Cassie was safe in bed and he was back at his house.
I got on the highway, pushing the pedal on Rita’s Volvo as far down as it could go with my left foot, my eyes out for cops. The roads were empty.
He’d gone too far. He’d taken this beyond pills, beyond money, beyond whatever ego shit he’d picked up from the street. And it might have gone on until he’d drained my pockets, until he’d sucked me back into holding for him, until he made my life as empty and ruined as his. Get up, get messed up, take out anyone who gets in the way.
But now that I was almost out of reach, I’d realized he was just playing a game. He was now just fucking with me for the sake of fucking with me. And anyone who was in my life he’d fuck with, too. If what I felt for Cassie was real, that either meant she could no longer be a part of my life or he would have to go. He and his threats and the nonexistent money he wanted.
I chose Cassie. Of course I chose Cassie.
I thought of how I had seen her tonight, wide-eyed with a baseball bat. Marisol, hunched next to her car. They should never have had to feel like that. A beast had risen in my chest, and I didn’t know why, or why now, but when I thought of her sleeping, the idea of him watching her, hurting her, I wanted to eliminate him from the Earth.
I turned down his street in Buda and switched off the headlights, rolling slowly up over the curb, onto his overgrown lawn.
His door was locked. I took out one of my old, expired credit cards and slipped it through the crack, shoving bit by bit until I levered the lock out of its slot, a trick I’d learned, ironically, from Johnno.