Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (32 page)

Blaze is silent.

I turn to her. Her eyes are wide and her
skin pale—fearfully pale. “Promise me, Deck.
Promise
me you won’t do anything
stupid.”

Rage, rage, rage, rage. Burning. Boiling.
Simmering. Pressurizing...

Chain to the head—thunk, crunk,
pop, crash!

I look out the window.

“
Deck, please...” Her voice is soft now,
quiet. I hear the tremor of obvious tears. “Deck, promise me you
won’t do anything fucking stupid!”

Rage
burns.
“I can’t, Blaze. I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.
There ain’t no goddamned justice in the world. And there should be.
I’m gonna take matters into my own hands.”

She starts tearing up for real now. Stands.
“You’re gonna throw it all away then? Just like that?”

“Throw what away?”

“
US! ME AND YOU, GODDAMNIT!”

“I’m not throwing us away. I’m gonna do what
it takes to stop putting us in danger.”

“
By committing a felony!”

I shrug. “By doing whatever is necessary
to stop...
life
...or—
I DON’T KNOW!
—from getting in front of us when we’re trying to move
forward!”

She taps her index hard on her head.
“You’re acting
fuckin stoopid
,
Deck!
THINK
about what
you’re saying! You’re not the law! You’re— URGH!”

I just look at her—me acting all macho and
shit. On some level I realize that’s what this is.
Some very hidden and
crushed-under level
. But
I tell myself it’s not. I tell myself I’m doing the “honorable
thing” by “protecting my girl.”

Real cave-man crap, you dig?

Rearview
mirrors
. Well. Anyway.
You can’t change the past. No matter how
goddamned hard
you try to.

Basically, I end up breaking her heart. I
won’t budge. She pleads with me, begs me, and I think I’m being the
bigger man by not losing my cool with her. But now she’s screaming
at the top of her lungs, absolutely
beseeching
me to not do what I think she’s figured out I’m
gonna do.

Finally, she says, “Deck, do it for me,
baby. For me.
Leave it
be, for
me.
” Her hand is
to her chest. And she waits for my answer.

I give her my answer, and her head
drops.
“Sorry, Blaze. I
can’t. I gotta do this.” Her shoulders rock hard up and down from
the tears. She presses a thumb and an index to her eyes. Then she
steels herself, and raises her bloodshot eyes to me. In real Blaze
Ryleigh Riot Grrrl style, she gives me the finger—hard and sturdy
and taut as hell.

“
You fucking
asshole
.”

And then she walks out.

I stand there—convinced, much as a donkey
is convinced of its conviction to go forward when told to go
left—that I’m somehow “doing the right thing.”

Alpha-Ape crap. I can admit that now, you
see? But I’ve mentioned the mirrors already. So I won’t mention
them again.

I call Tramone. An hour later, he’s at my
place. He says to me, “My bro know about this?”

I shake my head.

“I’ll fucking kill you myself if he finds out
about it. OK, nigga?”

I nod.

“
Deck, I don’t know what crazy shit you
into, homes. But this ain’t the way to solve it. Once you go down
this road, there ain’t no turnin back. Now, you’s a grown man, so
if I don’t give you the gat I know you gonna fucking get it from
someone else. But you can still say no. I’ll turn and leave. No
questions.”

“I want the gun, Tramone.”

He
shakes his head, pulls the piece out from his pants: A
fat
Glock
17
. “17” because it
holds a staggering
seventeen
fucking bullets in a single magazine. “The most trusted
weapon of law enforcement officers” is their slogan. Tramone holds
it out. It hangs mid-air for a second. “It’s not too late,
Deck.”

“
Thanks. I heard you the first
time.”
I take
it.

On his way out, he turns, braids swinging
by his shoulders. He straightens his beanie and says, “Just
fuh yo
infamation
: I
ain’t never shot nobody, Deck. And even
I’m
too far deep into this game to get out of it.
Think about that.”

He leaves.

And I cock the gun.

I’m not gonna kill him. I know
that. But I’m gonna scare him.
I’m gonna scare him till he pees in his
pants.

Blaze Ryleigh

I fall into Vikki’s arms outside my door.
She holds me while the world shakes. I sound like a puppy with its
paw in a
foothold trap.
Somewhere, however, far
far
in
the distance of my mind, I’m thinking,
Maybe it’s for the best. It’s just
too emotional. Too crazy. Too out-of-control
.

“
I
t’s over?” she asks me.

I don’t even know for sure. Technically,
no. It’s not. But can I condone...
What?
What am I condoning? What
is
he planning? My thought as I was standing there looking at
him, face gashed from the broken glass he’d fallen onto, was that
he plans on burning their house down or something. What else would
he do? Take a baseball bat to this Dino character’s
head?

A gun? Deck doesn’t own a gun.

Vikki takes the keys from my hand and
opens the door. As it opens, a manila envelope scrapes underneath
it. I grab it.
My name
is on it—my
Polish
name:
BŁAŻEJ KIELISZEWSKI
. Handwritten. It’s heavy, like it has papers in it. Or
photographs.

I open it. It’s
photos—I can feel by their gloss under my fingers.
Eleven-by-fourteens or so. I still haven’t looked at them because
above them all is a handwritten covering letter—elegant font,
clearly a woman’s handwriting, the same as was used on the cover of
the envelope. The letter says:

From one girl to
another
: I
just thought you deserved to know about this. He’s a heartbreaker.
He broke mine. Don’t let him break yours. I’m so sorry if these
photos hurt you. That’s not my intention. But the photos I got sent
by his last girlfriend hurt me as well. Photos much like the ones
you’re about to see here. Which is when I started searching. And I
discovered he was seeing someone else—you—while he and I were
together. I didn’t know he was seeing someone else when these shots
were taken. Again, I’m so sorry if they hurt you. Please, call me.
Girls shouldn’t have to suffer this alone.

All my love,

Tatiana Watkins

917-
555-6399 - Call anytime.

Underneath the number is her address, a new
condo just off Pier Six of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

I remove the covering letter.

I see the first photo.

I feel my
lunch rise up to my throat.

Too much.
Have you ever felt that way? Too much work. Too
much tiredness. Too much sadness. Too much pain. Too much
stress.

Just...
too much
.

And what did you do? Did you sit at a
window? Did you drink a glass of wine? Did the wind blow across
your hair and make you feel, just for a moment, a little better?
And, after it did that, did the thought of that
Too Much
return and kick you in the
teeth?

Too much
.

That’s what I feel now.

I’m on my bed, looking out at the setting
sun. Wondering where Deck is—driving somewhere in Brooklyn, looking
for Dino? “Protecting” me? I’m in a sweater, too large for me.
Chewing a nail. Photos are scattered on the floor. Vikki’s moved my
beanbag over to the front of my bed. She’s looking at the shots
now.

Trying to
figure them out “because it just doesn’t make
sense,” she says.

Doesn’t it?

But I can’t think about that. Because it’s
just
too
much
. And the
thing
Too
Much
does, is it stops
you from thinking. As if thinking itself is a form of torture and
pain.

I don’t want to think, don’t want to feel,
don’t want to cry, eat, drink, sleep, breathe...

I. Just. Want. To. Sit. Here. And.
Rest
.

Vikki looks at one particular photo from
several angles. Left, then right, then up. She’s gotten herself a
glass of
Dreambird Pinot Noir
(nine bucks a bottle at
Henry’s Wine and Spirit
on Central Avenue.) Vikki’s a real Red
Wine drinker, and several bottles of it have found their way into
my cupboards since she and I have started hanging out
together.

She’s frowning, and making “M-hmmm?” and
“Ahhhh” and “Uh-uh” sounds. Eventually, it pierces the armor I’ve
started erecting around myself and I say, a tad irate, “What!?
You’re drivin me nuts over here.”

Her eyes peek at me from over one of the
mammoth shots. I mean, eleven-by-fourteens!? If this Tatiana really
had my interests at heart, did she have to pick such
gargantuan
photos?

Whatever! Too much! Stop thinking about
it!

“
He’s not naked in any of them,” Vikki
says, then drains her glass. Her eyes disappear back under the
photo, and it starts going into various angles again.

I try to ignore her statement. I try to
think about something else. I figure, if it’s true, then this is
the end of Deck and me. And I don’t wanna think about what that
means.

But there’s something more I don’t wanna
think about:
Hope
. Because
that’s the other thing
Too Much
teases you with: Taking all your hope away. I’d even
venture as to say that that is the very definition of
Too
Much
: When there’s no
more hope available, and none of it in sight either. Whenever hope
appears, it’s not too much anymore.

I don’t want to hope. Because what goes up,
must come down. Inevitably.

But like a wasp to a cupcake, Vikki’s
statement buzzes around in my head and won’t
fucking
let go! Irate (again), I say, “What? What
do you mean by that?”

Her eyes appear again
. “He’s not naked. Isn’t that strange?
Wouldn’t she want to show you his cock inside her freaking wet
pussy or something? I mean, because she is being so much of ‘a
friend.’”

I run my hand down my face. “Whatever,
Vikki. I don’t wanna think about it. I just don’t care—”

“
You do care. You can say anything you
want, but you
do
care.”

“I don’t.” I look at the window, and wait to
be taken by the next wave of apathy.

“OK, fine. I’m just saying, he’s not
naked.”

Angry now: “So what!? He’s in a room
with
three
naked women
! And the
date on that photo is when he and I were already
dating.”

She huffs, rolls her eyes. “I admit, being
in the room with three naked women is, well, hard to explain away.
Especially if he didn’t mention anything about it to you. It
is
fishy.” She looks at the photo
and smirks, then taps it. “
Red Herring
to be precise.”

“
Thank you very much. I appreciate you
being
so sensitive to my
emotions at a time like this.”

“
It’s
because I think it’s a joke. I don’t believe it. I think
you should confront him with this and find out the truth. The truth
might hurt. Maybe he fingered them all and he has a fetish for
keeping his clothes on. I don’t know. Or maybe
it’s all just a big fucking
lie!
”

Hope!
“You sound convinced of it.”

“
I’m convinced that there
is
a lie here. I’m not convinced
of your boyfriend’s innocence. But he deserves at least a
conversation about it. Or maybe he doesn’t deserve it—but
you
deserve it! ‘Girls’—as this
Watkins puts it—
don’t
just
randomly stick together. Most of them are downright backstabbers.
Especially when a panty-dropping boy is around. Deck is
hot
. I think
certain women could go a little crazy trying to get
him.”

“
You
exaggerate.”

“
He’s
hot
!
Like, Adam Levine and David Beckham hot!”

“You’re not making this any easier.”

“
Making what easier?
You’re
the one who’s making it difficult, Blaze. Look,
I
know
that thoughts of losing the
people you love unexpectedly puts you into cold sweats. The
nightmares you woke up from at my house while Declan was in the
hospital have shown that to me. I’d hate to live in your mind—sorry
to say it. But I imagine you are a very strong person to even be
able to look at the world with any sort of hope. I think you’ve
built too many walls around you. I think Declan got through those
walls—by mistake maybe. I think you might’ve fallen in love a year
ago, or six months ago, if you’d allowed people in. Or maybe Declan
is really meant for you, and he wiggled his way in because
he
is
meant for you.