Bleed Like Me (11 page)

“Where are we going?” I asked after too much silence.

“My place. We both need some sleep.”

Brooks's house was a tiny green bungalow in desperate need of new stucco. A pile of newspapers littered the porch, and the front door had scuff marks like someone had tried to kick their way in. When we walked inside, I gasped at the number of books stacked everywhere in the house. They were piled on tables and chairs and crammed in bookshelves. I couldn't see any surface not covered in them.

“Foster mom's a reader, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“That's cool.” I didn't know what else to say. Was I supposed to state the obvious—this house was two months and ten cats away from being a hoarder's palace?

“I'm eighteen in a few months,” Brooks said, answering a question I didn't ask. “I'll be out soon.”

An older woman in a robe wandered out of the kitchen. She saw me and immediately tightened the robe sash and stood taller.

“Who's this, Michael?” Her gaze narrowed on him, an unspoken reprimand. The gray curls on her head were slightly matted, but she seemed almost regal, standing before us with her arms crossed.

“This is Gannon. Gannon, this is Sue.”

“Amelia, actually. Nice to meet you.” I stuck out my hand, but she just nodded and looked me over. My hand dropped
and I eyed the stairway. How much time did I need to spend with her? I clearly didn't have Brooks's ability to charm moms.

“It's your night to cook dinner,” she said, turning to Brooks. “If your friend is staying, you'll need to buy more chicken.”

“I'm—” I started.

“She won't be staying,” Brooks interrupted. Not that I wanted to, but he didn't have to be rude about it. “We're working on a school project. I'll drive her home before I make dinner.”

She nodded and turned back to the kitchen, her robe sash dropping as her feet shuffled along. Maybe not so regal after all.

Brooks grabbed my hand and steered me into a small windowless room at the top of the stairs. He flicked on a light and I surveyed the space. Single futon mattress on the floor with an itchy-looking striped blanket thrown over it. Posters of football players on the walls. Coffee can with cigarette butts next to a pouch of Indian Spirit tobacco and some rolling papers. Black duffel bag stuffed in the corner.

“Football fan?” I asked, settling myself on the mattress.

“No. But I guess the guy before me was.”

“No windows?”

He shrugged. “I think this used to be a closet.”

I nodded as he sat next to me. He grabbed the rolling papers and started to roll himself a cigarette. I watched in fascination as his hands moved over the paper. The same hands that had moved over me. The same long fingers that had traced all my scars.

He lit the cigarette and handed it to me before rolling a second one. I took a long drag and then coughed.

“Not exactly filtered menthols,” he said with a laugh.

I took a smaller drag and felt the buzz of the unfiltered cigarette swirl around my head. Brooks lit his cigarette and the two of us sat without saying anything, tapping ashes into the coffee can. I couldn't tell if he was angry about the whole sex thing. He seemed like the same unfazed Brooks, but I was beginning to wonder how much of that was show.

Before I could ask, the door to his room banged open and a pale guy with a shaved head and no shirt stood in the doorway. He glanced at Brooks and then moved his gaze to me, staring so long my skin began to crawl. I shifted back on the futon.

Brooks placed his hand on my knee. “Gannon, this is Ray. Ray, this is Gannon.”

Ray's skin hung off his bones and his eyes had deep purple circles beneath them. The smell coming off him made me want to bury my face in Brooks's T-shirt.

After a final appraisal of me, his gaze zeroed in on Brooks. “I need you to talk to Kenji for me.”

Brooks drew on his cigarette and shook his head. “Talk to him yourself.”

“I can't. I owe him money. You got to get him to loan me something.”

Brooks scoffed. “Loan you something? Are you planning on giving it back?”

“Fuck you. Just talk to him, will you?”

Brooks stubbed out his cigarette. “No. That shit's between you and Kenji. I did you a favor once, but I'm not about to make a habit of it.”

“I need this.” Ray's face had the same desperate look I'd seen on the meth heads at the Punkin' Donuts. I shifted closer to Brooks.

“Tough shit. This isn't my problem,” Brooks said.

Ray glared daggers at the two of us. “I won't forget this, brother. You better watch your back.” He snatched the handle of the door and slammed it so hard I heard Sue's voice yell upstairs.

“He's your brother?” I asked, dropping my cigarette into the coffee can.

“No. He's one of the other guys who lives here. I should have known better than to help him out in the first place. Junkies are always the same.”

How much experience did Brooks have with junkies? Sometimes the reality of his life seemed so far away from my own pathetic existence.

“Are you worried?”

“Not really,” he said, shrugging. “Strung-out junkies are loud and clumsy, and mostly forget every threat they make.”

He pulled me into the nest of itchy blanket and wrapped his arms around me. He was quiet for so long I thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he kissed the top of my head.

“You're the only one who means anything to me. And I'm not mad about the sex thing,” he whispered. “But when you decide, I want your first time to be with me.”

“I'm not exactly interviewing other candidates,” I said, nestling closer to him.

“You better not be.” He plucked at my hair. “This,” he said, sliding his hands over me. “This belongs to me.”

I smacked him. “Such a caveman. You're not exactly sweeping me off my feet here.”

He drew his fingers along the back of my neck. “Yes, I am.”

I didn't answer him. His possessiveness scared me as much as it drew me in. His arms tightened, and even though part of me was terrified of what he was becoming to me, I couldn't make myself pull away. I melted into him, dropping into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Dealing with some shit. Be back in a month. Wait for me.

I searched the hallways of school the morning he texted me. After I'd sent him back a dozen text responses, questions, pleas. Of course he wasn't at school; he'd said as much. I wanted to ask his friends where he was, but it occurred to me I'd never seen Brooks with the same group of people. Everyone knew of him, but no one knew anything about him. All day I itched with loneliness and the stifling weight of not right.

Be back in a month.

Three days in and I felt like I could barely breathe. Mom didn't ask anything when I got home that afternoon. Just like she hadn't the day before, or the one before that. Like she didn't even recognize something was off. She needed help
getting Luis to soccer and Alex to the eye doctor. I sat in the grass, watching Luis mess around and ignore the soccer coach while I waited for Mom to come back. My fingers plucked at pieces of grass, weaving them together, ripping them apart. And I tried to inhale through the pain of wanting Brooks. Too much.

Dealing with some shit.

I reread Brooks's text for the hundredth time. I'd taken to texting him every night, but heard nothing from him. Ten days felt like a thousand. I stared at my TV, watching movies I'd seen and used to love. They were dots on a screen now. Nothing but added minutes to help me pass through the tunnel of not seeing Brooks.

Wait for me.

Nineteen days into the month I started asking everyone if they knew where he was, even people I'd never spoken to in my life, but no one had a clue. They all offered ridiculous explanations that I hoped weren't true.

“The brother of the guy he killed put a hit on him.”

“He's been busted for a gay porn ring.”

“He OD'd and is in a coma.”

I stumbled through each day, checking my phone incessantly. Each patch of blue I glimpsed made my heart thunk
in my chest.
Wait for me.
Every moment of every day was filled with wait. My brain was fuzzy and I spent too much time recounting the hours I'd spent with Brooks, always wondering, worrying. I carefully put my hoops in my ears every morning and pretended it didn't matter. And I hated so much that it did.

•  •  •

Twenty-three days in, I went to his house. Sue wouldn't answer any of my questions when I pounded on her screen door demanding to know where he was.

She pursed her lips at me and said, “He woulda told you if he wanted you to know where he went.”

“But what if—”

She slammed the door in my face and wouldn't open it again.

•  •  •

I imagined the worst. It was Brooks, after all. At home I smoked out of my window and spent too many nights looking at my razors, but I never used them. My fingers played over them again and again. On the twenty-fifth night I got close enough to make a tiny slice on my thumb, but I pulled back. The adrenaline rush was still there, but so much anxiety swirled around it that it didn't feel like the same kind of high. The worry over what Brooks would say if he found new cuts on me overrode my addiction. Somehow the cutting didn't seem worth it. A part of me was aware enough to know I was replacing one thing
for another, but it didn't matter. Not to the need inside me.

So I waited for him and chided myself for having fallen hard enough to miss him. It was the touching. I missed touch. His touch.

•  •  •

Ali picked me up from work on the twenty-seventh day. “So it doesn't look like he's coming back, huh?”

I blew a smoke ring at her. “Not one to mince words, are you?”

“I told you I'd heard shit about him.”

I shut my eyes and leaned against the window. “I don't want to talk about him.”

The month was almost up. I could wait. I could hold out a few days more. Alone.

“I'm just saying, it's stupid to pine away for a guy who isn't exactly reliable.”

“I said I didn't want to talk about him.”

I shut my eyes and ignored the voice in the back of my head wondering if he was just stringing me along. If it would be more than a month. If he'd taken off for good.

“Okay, fine,” Ali said. “We won't talk about him. You wanna go to Dark Alley with me? Jace is working. He loves when I visit. He calls it the merging of his two alleys.”

I snorted. This Jace was such a winner. The only time I'd met him, he'd had his tongue in Ali's mouth the second we
walked into the store and barely acknowledged me. Who the hell was I to talk, though?

“No.” I stubbed out my cigarette. “Not today. I've got stuff to do.”

She looked at me sideways, her eyes zeroing in on my stomach. I crossed my arms and stared back at her. She shook her head and sighed.

“You should hang out with us. I talk about you all the time.”

I nodded. “Soon.”

“When?”

“I don't know. Soon.”

“Later this week, then,” she said, and pulled into my driveway.

“Sure. Fine.” Later this week, when Brooks would be back.

My house was mass chaos when I entered. Again. The running-away incident had been leveraged to its maximum benefit and now Mom was back to shrieking at my brothers. Alex and Miguel had tied Luis to a kitchen chair and were dousing him with shaving cream as Mom tried to unknot his wrists.

“Stop it, boys. Enough! I said
stop
.”

Luis wiggled and winked at his brothers. When she finally loosened the knot, he turned to her and batted his eyes. His body was covered in shaving cream, but still he said in a reasonable voice, “It was just a game, Mom.”

She pointed the boys to the back door and they saluted her, then marched out, giggling. She leaned down and mopped
up some of the shaving cream before sitting down and putting her head in her hands.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. “You?”

“Yep.”

“Where's Michael been?”

I knelt and helped her wipe up the rest of the shaving cream. “Don't know.”

She touched my forearm and then pulled her hand back. “Well, don't worry about it. Boyfriends come and go. Another one will pop up, I'm sure.”

Sometimes lying is really the kindest option.

“I'm sure.” I dropped the paper towels into the trash and headed up to my room for another horror-movie marathon. I ignored my homework and stayed up too late thinking about Brooks.

•  •  •

Thirty-five days. Thirty-five fucking days. No Brooks.
Be back in a month
was a cruel joke. I deleted his text and stopped feeling anything at all.

Dennis had concocted a huge after-Thanksgiving sale to get rid of extra inventory. He wanted me to build wooden birdhouses to mark the sale aisles. It was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard, but he threatened to fire me if I didn't do it and I thought he might be serious.

“Why don't you just put sale signs over these aisles?”

“Shut it,” Dennis barked at me.

“I'm just saying, a bunch of birdhouses isn't gonna let people know they can take fifty percent off of all the merchandise.”

“Quit your bitching. You've been in a surly mood this past month and you need to snap out of it.”

I gaped at him. Was I that obvious? “No, I haven't.”

Dennis shook his head and exchanged a look with Ricardo. “Yes, you have. Now just finish putting your tools away and get your head in the game or I'm dropping you.”

I wasn't the only surly one. Dennis had been on his period ever since Brooks had shown up drunk that day.

“You're not dropping me. No one else can work the Skilsaw.”