“No, sir.” I drop my gaze to the floor. Pop and I have the same boots. The toes are pocked down to the steel and stained with oil from years of repairs. He’s come so close to me that they’re almost touching.
“Do you make the schedule here?”
I shake my head. “No, sir.”
“You want Saturdays off?”
I don’t say anything, swallowing against a lump in my throat that threatens to cut off my oxygen.
“Sure, son. Take Saturdays off.”
His voice is deceptively silky and would sound friendly to someone who didn’t know him. I jerk my head up to look at him.
“In fact, why don’t you take tomorrow off, too?”
My stomach clenches. “No, I—”
“Do you make the schedule?” There are razor blades beneath the silk.
“No, sir.” It comes out as a whisper.
He nods once. “I don’t want to see you tomorrow.”
I EASE the Beretta into the Youth Alliance parking lot, wincing as it practically bottoms out on the half curb, just as it has on every dip and bump on the drive over. Frankly, I’m lucky it started at all.
I feel fucking rough.
Yesterday was a misery. When my alarm went off, I started getting ready for work as usual, until my brain woke up and I remembered that Pop kicked my ass out. I hadn’t had a weekday off in… I can’t even remember, and I had no idea what to do with myself.
I did laundry, scrubbed the kitchen floor and behind the refrigerator, scoured the grout in the shower, and cleaned the toilet tank. I rerolled my socks tighter so they took up less space in the drawer, rearranged my shirts by color, and lined up my shoes with military precision.
Shelby started rocketing around my bedroom like a furry missile trying to get at my shoelaces, so I took one out of my boot and let her chase it all over the apartment. I wiggled my fingers for her the way I saw Rafe do and she worked herself up into a frenzy, finally launching herself off the ground and grabbing my left hand in her mouth, front paws anchoring it there and back paws raking my forearm as she scrabbled frantically to dig in and bite down. When I ripped my hand away, there were bright red lines standing out on my arm and scrape marks from her teeth on my hand. Once I got over being startled, I enjoyed the pain—sharp, stinging evidence of what happens when you give something the chance to get a good hit in. By the time she got bored and scampered away to lick herself in the middle of the couch, my forearm and hand were a mess of bright red scratches and welts.
I ran until I was exhausted and then lifted weights until my cut hand throbbed and my muscles gave out and the dumbbell dropped to the floor with a reverberating thud I could feel in my knees.
By the time Brian called after work, I’d done a thousand sit-ups and taken two showers.
“Dude, what the hell?”
I knew the second I heard his voice that I shouldn’t have answered because the fire of fury had slid over me, and there was no way to combat it except with ice.
“What the hell, what?”
“Um. Well, you’re… you weren’t here.”
Yeah, no fucking shit, idiot. “Yeah, Pop told me to fuck off.”
“Why?”
“I don’t fucking know, Brian. Ask Pop.”
“Oh. Um, are you coming in tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
All I wanted was for Brian to hang up and leave me alone before I said something to really hurt him. When I feel like that, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t be nice; I can’t chat; I can’t even end the conversation. There is only one way out: to clench my jaw and my fists until it ends on its own, a wall of ice between me and anything that might delay that end.
“Um. Monday?”
“Yep.”
“So, uh, do you want to hang out? The game’s on.”
“Nope.”
I was physically incapable of getting more than one word out—like my whole body’s energy worked and worked and worked and all that cranked out was one syllable.
“Oh. Okay, no problem,” he stammered. “It’s just Florida State anyway, so it probably won’t be that good.” He paused awkwardly. “I mean, not like you can’t watch the game without me. You probably will. So. Okay.” He floundered on the end of the line and it was my fault because I’m a shitty brother and basically an asshole. But I couldn’t muster another word. “So, then, I guess I’ll see you tomorr—or, I mean, Monday.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay, well, bye, bro.”
I hung up, relieved to have him off the line, and immediately wished he were there so I wasn’t alone.
By ten, I was three whiskeys down, and for some stupid reason, I put that fucking gladiator movie on again. I just really liked the soundtrack—score—whatever you call it. I was feeling the whiskey more than I usually would have because I hadn’t eaten anything but cereal when I woke up. But something about my exhausting workout and how hungry I was combined to make my breathing not so bad, so I was afraid to eat. Except then I went to take a piss and saw blackness at the edges of my vision, so I ate a sandwich, cursing each bite that seemed to soak up the warm, tipsy feeling.