We're quiet for a moment. I'm leaning into him, my right side against his left, and even though I've got homework and studying tonight, a full day tomorrow, and a test on Friday that I'm only half prepared for not to mention my parental apartment problems, I don't want to move. I just want to stay there, warm and safe and tucked against him until everything I don't like disappears.
Somewhere, a phone buzzes. Gavin sighs.
"You or me?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says, so we both sit up and reach for our pants.
It wasn't my phone that buzzed just now, but I've got a series of texts from my sister Sandra, all apartment listings. Then, at the top, I've got three missed calls from her.
I frown. That's weird. Sandra hates the phone.
"Bugger me with a dirty spoon," Gavin mutters, and I look over at him as he holds his phone up to his ear and stands.
"Eleven missed calls and four voicemails from a number I don't-"
He goes quiet, listening as the voicemail starts, and as he listens his jaw tightens and something in his face hardens. He listens to another voicemail, then another, and pulls the phone away from his face and takes a deep breath.
"That was the security company," he says, his voice flatter and harder than usual. "Seems someone's broken a window into my house."
My mouth drops open, chest squeezing.
"Did they take anything?" I ask, standing as well.
Gavin swallows, not quite looking at me as he pulls his boxers and jeans on.
"Not that they can tell but I don't know yet," he says. "Whoever the wanker was that broke in has left a good amount of blood on the floor and the sofa, though."
"Did they cut themselves on the window?" I ask. "Did they know it was your house? Was it just a burglary gone wrong, or a crazed fan, or...."
"I really don't know yet," he says, pulling on his shirt. "It sounds as though the police are there now, but I've got to call them on the way back."
I nod, still naked but dumbstruck. Gavin walks over, finally looking me in the face as he pulls me to him.
"Sorry," he says.
"Gavin, your house got broken into," I say. "Go."
He gives me a long, lingering kiss on the lips, then strokes his thumb over my cheek.
"I'll call you," he says.
"Good," I say. "Now go talk to the police."
I get one more peck on the lips, and then he's out the door. I shake my head, trying to clear the fuzz out of it, and search for my underwear.
33
Gavin
I shouldn't have lied to her, I think as I walk down the hall. I should have just told her the truth.
There's time. Go back and confess. She'll be disappointed but that's not so bad, right?
I keep walking, hit the button for the elevator, and wait. It comes. I get on and head down to the parking garage, guilt gnawing away at me.
I can handle this, I tell myself. After this, I'll boot him, it'll be like this never happened, and I'll never have to tell her anything because it'll be over.
You didn't even lie.
You just didn't tell Marisol the entire truth. That's different, isn't it?
The heavy, prickling sensation in my gut right now says no, not really.
"Thanks," I say aloud in my car, my phone on the passenger seat, connected somehow to the speakers. Wizardry, I think.
"Not a problem," says the professional-sounding man on the other end. "Glad we could get a hold of you, Mr. Lockwood. Have a nice day."
We both click off the line, and I expel all the air from my lungs, gripping the wheel as hard as I can.
Fucking Liam.
Of course it wasn't a random burglar or a crazed fan who broke the window. Apparently, the police found a "very inebriated man with a strong British accent" bleeding all over the sofa, and he's being attended to by paramedics.
After which he'll likely be hauled off in handcuffs, though it sounds as if that depends somewhat on what I say.
I half hope it happens. If Liam's in jail at least I won't have to deal with him for a day or two, and he's been getting worse lately. Despite my no alcohol in the house rule I did find a plastic jug of cheap vodka far in the back of the pantry the other day. I poured it out, but God only knows what he's hidden in the guest room where he's staying.
I don't go in there. I don't want to find it.
I spend the rest of my drive seething and coming up with what I'm going to say to him.
There's an ambulance parked in my driveway, so I pull up on the side of the road next to my tall wooden fence and walk in. It's nearly ten o'clock, so the rotating red lights are bright against the dark houses and trees, and I'm quite sure all my neighbors are perfectly aware that there's a spectacle in progress.
Liam's sitting up on a stretcher, white bandages encasing his arm from bicep to wrist. He's pale and nearly gray, the color of concrete or something, and his clothes are covered in huge splotches of blood. There's two policemen standing to one side, a paramedic on the other.
He looks up at me as I walk over, lifting his bandaged arm.
"Lookit," he says. "Now I've not got to worry about running out of toilet paper while I take a shit."
And he's trashed, his northern accent thick as mud, his words slurred together. The police both turn in my direction as I close the distance, but I don't pay them any mind.
"Are you fucking joking right now?" I ask, my voice rising.
"You do look like you could use a laugh-"
I grab him by the front of the shirt, sticky with his blood.
"You fucking dickhead," I say, my voice rising.
"Whoa!" says one of the cops.
"You move into my house, then you trash the place and fucking bleed all over half my fucking furniture and now you're here telling me jokes about taking a shit?"
"Calm down," says a cop. I ignore him.
"Who's gone and rammed a stick up your arse?"
"This is why you've got no one left, you stupid twat, because you don't give a shit about-"
"-Did you let your fake girlfriend stick it up there? Heard a rumor you liked that-"
"-Anyone else, so you've got no choice but to crawl back to me but I've fucking had it, Liam-"
"Hey now," says a cop.
"-Forgot I was talking to fucking King of Everything Gavin, maybe you could punch me now and I'd be famous again for ten minutes-"
A siren sounds for a split second, and we both jump. One of the cops is standing next to the car, his finger on a button.
"You need to unhand the suspect," he says.
I do it and step back, not looking at Liam. I'm afraid I'll punch him in his idiot face, and I don't need to do that in front of the police.
"Now," the other cop says. "If you could please come with me I'll show you the scene and then I've got a few questions."
It takes ages. I knew it would, but three hours later I'm still there, still describing my relationship with Liam to the police, confirming for the millionth time that yes, he is currently residing on the property. For his part, Liam passes out on the stretcher, and though the paramedic occasionally looks over at him with some concern, the rest of us leave him alone.
He's clearly not an escape threat.
When they're finished asking questions, the cops get in their car and then sit there, filling out a report. The paramedics wake Liam, push him off the stretcher, get into the ambulance, and leave. I sit on the front steps of the house - which is a rental, so now I've got to call the company I'm renting from and explain this fucking mess - and just wait.
Liam totters over, still drunk, barely awake, and certainly worse for the wear.
"I've got nothing to say to you," I tell him.
He sits next to me anyway.
"I'm sorry, mate," he says.
There's a raw note in his voice. I flex one hand into a fist, as if I can fight it off.
"I've fucked up again," he goes on. "Things here were going so well and I went off and ruined everything."
I don't respond.
"I fuck up everything I touch," he says, his voice barely a whisper. "It's like I want to be better but I don't want to be better at the same time. I'm dragging myself down and I can't stop."
He takes a deep, shaky breath.
"I'm so fucking sorry, Gavvy," he says. "You're right. You're right about everything, I've got no other friends because I've fucked them all over sooner or later, I haven't got any work, the band hates me and they're bloody right to hate me-"
"We don't hate you," I mutter.
"- it was the best thing that's ever happened to me and I threw it away and now I've got nothing."
I look over at him from the corner of my eye. His bandaged arm is hanging at his side, he's got his face in his other hand, his elbow propped on his knee, and he's crying.
"I can't stop myself," he mutters. "I fucking killed someone and I still can't stop myself."
I swallow hard. It's tempting to think that Liam's just faking to manipulate me into feeling sorry for him, but I've known him for more than half my life and Liam's not got a manipulative bone in his body. Everything he does is pure id, driven by whatever he's thinking or feeling at the moment.