“That wasn’t why,” I said, my lips stiff. “And now that you’re bending over so his family can fuck you in the ass, you should be happy I didn’t kill him.”
I turned and walked out on him before he could answer. When he starts fighting his own battles, he can lecture me about how I fight mine. I did fuck up with Preston, but I’d never admit it to Dad. We could have gotten him, but he got to me. He’d been watching too closely, figuring shit out even when he’d left school and hidden away, taking his classes online like a pussy so he wouldn’t have to face us every day. But he knew the one person I’d stand down for, so he went after her like a fucking rat instead of standing up to us.
He walked at graduation, and he breezed right the fuck out of school and disappeared back into the sewer he belongs in. And we didn’t touch a hair on his head—because he didn’t touch Gloria.
I shut off the water, my skin the color of a sunburn. Gloria doesn’t know about that, and I intend to keep it that way. She’s got enough shit to worry about. I’ll worry about Preston.
I leave the bathroom. Walking out is always the worst part, avoiding their eyes, knowing they know what you are under the pretty package.
I pick up the signed documents she left for Dad, and I leave the room. Gloria is outside, already smelling like smoke. I sit down beside her on the steps. I can tell she’s been crying.
“You okay?” I ask, pulling out the little wooden box where I keep my joints. I’m glad we have something to talk about, something to fill the air besides the weight of unspoken secrets.
She lets out a shaky laugh. “You’re asking me that right now?”
“Yeah,” I say, lighting up. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She accepts the joint with trembling fingers and inhales, holding the smoke in and closing her eyes, letting her head fall back against the stone wall. She exhales slowly before handing it back. “You’re a good friend, Royal,” she says. “Better than I deserve.”
“Just what every guy wants to hear.”
“You don’t want to be more than that,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I don’t, and I can’t. But I do want to make her life easier.
“Worth saying just to get you to stop looking like someone kicked your puppy.” I take another hit and pass it back to her. “So, you gonna tell me what you’re crying about?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Just feeling emotional. Period blues.”
“You think that’s going to scare me into silence?”
She grins. “Maybe.”
We sit in silence for a while.
“You thinking about your dad? Or that guy?” I ask.
“What guy?”
“You know what guy,” I say. “The guy you left behind. Whatever his name is.”
She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Why would you ask that?”
“Those are the two things I’ve ever known you to cry about.”
She shrugs and rests her elbows on her knees, tapping the joint like a cigarette. “What if I told you it was some other guy?”
“And he made you cry?” I ask, drawing back to look at her. “Then I’d ask for his name and pay him a little visit.”
“You’re silly,” she says, pushing me with her shoulder. When I don’t fall over from her tiny weight, she rests her head on my shoulder. So, this is what it would be like to have a sister. Sometimes, I almost forget. Not her—I’d never forget her—but me. The way it was for me when she was here. I hate Dawson for not knowing what he has, and what it’s like to lose it.
We finish the joint in silence.
“You know what I think?” she asks.
“What do you think, Lo?”
“I think I’m going to get in trouble for taking the longest smoke break in history.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
I sit in the car waiting for Lo and thinking about someone else. About a girl I shouldn’t be thinking about. A girl who would never touch me again if she knew what I was doing. She has a right to know. But I won’t tell her. I’ll take all the precautions, the protections, and I’ll tell myself it’s enough. Just like I tell myself that it’ll stop, that Dad won’t ask me to do this again, every time. Like I tell myself it’s no big deal, that it’s not hurting anyone.
It’s different now, though. Now, it would hurt someone if she knew. And because I’m a bastard like that, I tell myself that keeping this from her is the right thing to do, that it’s protecting her from that hurt. I tell myself that I don’t care if it hurts her. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t think of her at all.
I want to go over to her shitty little shack, though, crawl in her tiny window, and lay down beside her on her twin bed. I want to tell her every shitty thing I’ve ever done, like she’s my confessor, and I want her to tell me I’m absolved.
But I know she wouldn’t lie to me.
I know she wouldn’t give me what I want, let me roll in her sheets, breathe her in, cover myself in her scent to erase the memory of today and all the other days in room 504. I wouldn’t ask that of her. I may be a monster, but even I haven’t sunk that low. Even if she called right now, if she invited me over, and I pretended I hadn’t just been where I was, if she let me into her bed and her body, I wouldn’t go. Not tonight. Not even a Darling deserves that.