Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (27 page)

And I lie.

Because I don’t wanna burden her...

I think she knows I’m holding back, and I
feel the sharp blade of tension running across our relationship
like a newly whetstoned Ginsu over the thumb—slow and dry. Why am I
not telling her these things?

Because I’m scared. There, I admitted it.
I’m scared of losing her. I fee
l on edge. Too much has changed, and too fast. If it hadn’t
been for Blaze, I woulda dropped a mother-lode of Es last week
Thurdsay when pops got shot. And I probably woulda been smoking up
Queen Green with Skate all the way until now. I’ve moved plenty
furniture while baked on grass before.

Blaze kept me away. Don’t get me
wrong
—it wasn’t hard
staying off the shit with her around. I hadn’t even thought of it.
But that’s the point. Because isn’t that
real
rehab? Never having to think about the dope again?
Now you go find me one AA member who doesn’t fight the urge every
moment of every day, with shaking hands and a dry mouth.

Right, you’ll find
zero
.

Will my hands shake for Molly if Blaze is
gone? I don’t plan on finding out.

This relationship is raw. It’s real. But,
most of all, it’s
new
. I’m old
enough to know this is the kind of shit that you feel when you’re
sixteen. And, yet, I’m feeling it at twenty-two. What does that
tell you? Does it tell you it’s a dream? It’s bull? I think
not.

I
f I go to Blaze and I tell her I’m having nightmares
because of “my old girlfriend” and that I can’t stop thinking about
work “because three extremely attractive women took their clothes
off in front of me,” do you think this early-blooming romance will
continue to feel the sunshine? I ain’t willing to risk it. I ain’t
willing to risk
anything
when it
comes to losing Blaze.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s
that
that
cannot
happen. No matter what, it must not happen.

I feel it’s the only thing I’m holding
onto in a world that’s turned upside
down for me in so short a time.

Two days before...

On Tuesday
I visited Trev’s mom (“Deck, boy! Why you been
avoidin us!?”) and I even touched fists with Tramone, Trev’s
brother. Me and him go back a bit—more than Trev in a way. Trev’s
always been the straight-up guy, the one to keep people in line
when they’re about to fall off the tracks. Me—I’ve been a little
wilder. I never gangbanged with Tramone, but I smoked it up with
him. A
lot
. He’s
changed, I notice. His eyes are darker—or maybe it’s his aura.
Prison does that to folks. He expresses his condolences for my pops
while we share a smoke outside on the balcony (Queen Green for
him,
Lucky
Strike
for me.) He asks
me why I’m not sharing a spliff with him, and I tell him I’m done
with that shit. He finds it hard to believe, sort of like how Randy
found it weird I didn’t drop at
House Market
the night I met Blaze. But I tell Tramone it’s
possible. Sometimes it just takes a life changing event to
stop.

He starts laughing, and it’s not entirely
the weed making him do that.
I wanna sit him down and tell him there’s more to his life
than what he’s doing. Only problem is, I’m having trouble believing
it myself. I want Tramone to go straight because I think, if he
gets in shit, it’ll hurt Trev. And I think Tramone knows that, on a
deeper level, the older brother lives in the shadow of the success
of the younger. Tramone’s always being told to look at what his
little brother’s done.

It doesn’t help. The dude needs to find
some pride in
himself
. That’s
the only thing that’ll get him to change his life around. So all I
end up saying is, “Tramone, you gotta consider where you headed,
homes.” I put a hand on his shoulder, squeeze. “There comes a time
we all gotta give up this shit.”

His eyes struggle to meet
min
e. He sucks in
another whiff of the high quality White Widow (winner of the
Cannabis Cup in 1995) and then stubs the spliff. He smiles. “You
know I ain’t never gonna give up the ’erb, nigga.”

I also get into the gangsta talk.
When in
Rome...
“You know I
ain’t talkin about no fuckin weed, homes.” Although I am, but I’m
focusing on the greater of two evils right now. One step at a time.
“I’m talkin about other shit, you dig?” I look down at his belt. I
can see he’s packing: A big fat glock judging from the
bulge.

He pulls up his belt. With a darker frown
on his
brow, he says,
“You know it ain’t that fuckin simple, Deck. Blood in blood
out.”

I see
that flick of the eyes again. The one that says,
But if I could, I
would. I swear it.

I slap my arm around him and we head
inside where a bucket of thirty Crown Fried Chicken buffalo wings
is waiting for us...

That was the last we spoke of gangbanging
and drugs.
But Tramone
never took his gat out of his belt. And when I left, he went back
out on the balcony. When Trev and I got downstairs, I looked up,
and thick white smoke poured from Tramone’s mouth. I feel like
Tramone didn’t hear a word I said.

I wonder
if Trev ever felt the same way talking to me about
this shit.

Blaze’s online advertizing starts gaining
ground and we get three deals hooked up for
February
—seven hundred
bucks a pop. Which she tells me is good for private parties. But
that seems like it won’t be so necessary, because she told me about
this private forum she had access to and things seemed to be going
nuts on the subject of her mixing. “It’s a good backup plan,” she
says to me about the ads. “And the main plan is moving forward as
well.”

And what about my plan?

I never want to feel all hesitant and
watching my words around Blaze again, like I was on Monday
night.
Never again. My
business idea is good. “Brilliant” was Skate’s precise statement.
But not when it’s done for people who are as audacious as Tatiana
and her callgirls. So I put up my own ads—for the new biz,
the
Sexy
Movers
. I don’t need the
likes of Dalya D-Cup and Samantha Red-All-Over to make it work.
There are plenty of non-slutty fish in the moving-business
sea.

All four of us
go past
Tom’s
on Thursday (today) and I tell Clarissa I’ve been seeing
Gina, and that the Doc confirms that me being there might actually
help her. Her face lights up. Occasionally, her eyes meet with
Skate’s, and the darkness falls on her again. But, hey, the dude
has a point: If he doesn’t love her, being with her would be even
worse. At least he doesn’t keep her on a string and lead her
on.

“So, what’s the deal with Blaze’s friend?” I
ask him.

He blushes. And Blaze answers for him.
“She...uhm...told him
—”

“Hey!” Skate holds a finger up, telling her
to stop talking. “It’s between me and her.”

I was just pushing his buttons, because I
know damn well what the deal is. Blaze told me earlier. Mizz
Viktoriya Golovkina (“Who has a rack to make you slaver,” says
Skate) won’t go near a dude who drops. But, according to Blaze, she
is also an extremely seductive woman. And she’s told Skate he needs
to be free of anything other than booze for at least four weeks
before she gives him a “taste” of her. Blaze is not so sure if
“taste” was meant as literal or figurative.

One thing I’ve learned about users, they
all want to quit, but always need some excuse to do it. Dumbo and
his feather. Viktoriya is the feather. And I’m cool with
that.
Because it’s about
time Skate lets that shit go. In my case, Blaze ain’t no feather. I
never needed a reason to stop dropping. I was pretty damned happy
doing it. I just didn’t feel the need to do it after I met her. And
when she laid down the law about how she feels about it, well,
decision made. I ain’t gonna risk losing her for
anything.

Dino Molotov Moretti, you ask? Not a sign
of him. His parents are freaking out. He’s not with his uncles in
Jersey. Just gone. Along with his blue Hyundai Accent. Disappeared
off the face of the earth.

And the
fuzz still have nothing to put him at the scene of
the arson crime at Blaze’s place.

It makes me nervous
. But I don’t tell Blaze this. I don’t
tell Blaze anything that might worry her. I only realize when it’s
too late that this has been an insanely fucking stupid thing to
do.

Rearview
mirrors
.

Blaze Ryleigh

Thursday night.
Red Lipstikk’s
playing at
Goodbye Blue Monday
—a grungy place with vinyl records on the
walls and collages of the most random shit in the bathroom
cubicles. We watched
Red Lipstikk
last night as well, and the more I hear Vikki’s music, the
more I love it. Their sound is heavy, filled with passionate
vocals. Raw, jagged. Tell-It-Like-It-Is.

Trev’s leaving back to PSU on Monday. I
can tell there’s a darkness surrounding the boys, like their
family’s being torn apart. Trev bobs his head to the music, and
Deck grooves with it as well. But their eyes are heavy.

Deck lights up a smoke. “I only smoke when
I’m stressed,” he says. He’s tapping his leg furiously, not really
letting the music fill him, just hearing it as if it were coming
out of a tinny radio somewhere. I ease my arm around him, bring him
closer. Rub his chest a little. Just to let him know that I get it.
Because I do. I
so
do.

We start boozing, because that’s
what
they do when they
mourn. And Trev leaving for a few months is the equivalent of
mourning to them. Even to me. Because he’s as much my new brother
as Skate is.

“
But we’re also celebrating!” shouts Skate,
a bottle of
Brooklyn Lager
in his hand. “Because he’s the only motherfucker out of all
of us doing something with his life!”

Red Lipstikk
’s doing easy tunes for now, not too loud
yet. So we can still talk. Skate looks over at Viktoriya—torn
fishnets, pale skin, dirty blonde hair frazzled up like she’s stuck
her finger in a socket. Thick black mascara. Every time she looks
at him, she smiles. Seductively.

Eyes back on the table, it hits me that
it’s not so much that Trev
’s leaving for college in a few days, but also that he’s
only got a year and a half to go. And after that?

I ask him if he’s gonna come back to New York
after graduating.

He shrugs. “If I can. But I’ll go wherever
the work
is
at.”

Declan taps his finger on the table, calls
up the waitress and orders a Jameson on the rocks. When it arrives,
he downs it in one gulp. Orders another one.

Viktoriya bends the mic pole down and
howls a mellifluous call. The band plays louder and it becomes
harder to talk.

We drink. A lot.

Toasts are made and soon the booze makes
the boys smile and laugh and forget about life and their fears—and
the loss of a friend. Two hours later, Vikki’s still rocking it,
people are dancing and hugging and holding bottles while the
rafters shake with stomping feet and clapping cymbals. Deck puts an
arm around Trevor and slurs, “Too my fuckin
bruvva
! I freaking love you, homes!”

He holds his beer up. Trevor laughs,
staggering. They bump into a redhead who scowls back (she looks
like she needs a few drinks herself.) Skate puts his arm around me.
We sway. We swing. We somehow land at the bar counter.
Red Lipstikk
moves onto a cover:
No Woman No
Cry
. The crowd goes
wild. The clinging whiff of Mary Jane billows into the air from
outside.

Declan stumbles, laughs.

A cold breeze rakes my sweaty back and makes
me turn to the door, shivering.

There’s a guy there. Large and bulky, two
guys behind him.
He
looks a little like Tolek—but his nose is different...
Sharper.

He’s holding a chain in his hand.

And
then he’s charging.

Toward us
!

“
Declan!” The words are barely out of my
mouth when the chain comes down on Declan’s head. I see his eyes
roll back,
and blood
pour from his scalp. It mars his shirt.

His beer glass falls and shatters.

He falls.

His head hits the
counter—
thud
—then a
stool—
thunk
—and
finally it hits my shin before it lands on the
floor—
sku-dunk.
On the
broken beer glass.

The music stops.

My howls fill the room! I’m screaming like
that chick from
Psycho
! My hands
are to the sides of my cheek, trembling there.