Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (5 page)

I’m sweating everywhere.

I do hope the Belieber Mother sends us
home. Because I can think of
so many
better things I could be doing with my and Declan’s time
than playing
Billboard’s Top Pop 100
to a pack of
Bratz
from the
city.

Declan Cox

The
ottoman weighs a ton. The already scuffed and scratched
Hoosier gets a few more scratches as I scrape it against a wall
going around a corner. “Fuck!” I shout. Even the client’s Blu-Ray
feels like it’s filled with gold.

And if it were? I probably wouldn’t give a
shit. It’s too raw. The image replays itself over and over in my
head:
Boom.
Brains. Splat!

I shake my head of it, lift the one-seater
alone, scratch that as well. I give the client a hundred dollar
discount on the move. He’s a young-looking dude with clean-cut hair
who probably still has a starter-level job after graduating from
college three years ago. I’m sure I really made his day.

I also tell him he’d probably be able to
sell the Hoosier for a pretty penny to the nearest antique
store
—or even on
eBay—and pick up a far better (and more modern) cupboard in return.
Judging by the smile on his face, I can tell the Hoosier ain’t no
sentimental heirloom. Or, even if it is, life and its demands have
become more important than any attachments it may have ever
had.

The story of our lives
.

Evening
can’t roll by fast enough. When it does, I drop
off my pickup at my place and Trev and I jump on the M train to
Marcy station, then walk five minutes over to
The Trash Bar
(Blaze’s choice), which is just
past
Merv’s
Auto Parts
(which shares
a street with the
Sit and Read Gallery
and the
Literary Café
).

But
The Trash Bar
in South Williamsburg is neither for reading nor for the
overly-literate. Outside, there’s a neon sign of two back-to-back
naked women. Inside, the seating is comprised of gashed and torn
old car seats, and stools that look like they’ve had more than one
run-in with your local buck-knives. Graffiti tags line the walls
inside, over the gazillion posters and stickers of everything from
a pastel red-and-blue Obama
HEAP
poster (you read that right) to a picture of Charlie Sheen
on the front page of the NEW YORK POST with the headline
“
TRASHED!
”

Trev and I laugh at that one.
“Live
s up to its name,”
he says.

“
Let’s get
trashed
, homes.”

Two PBRs with
Well Whiskey later (five bucks each), I feel a
firm hand on my neck, shaking me. I turn to see Skate’s gleaming
skinhead and his snake neck tattoo. His eyes are red with tears and
sadness. “Sorry, bro,” he says. I get up and give the bad boy a
hug, then call out to the bartender for another spiked
beer.

We grab our drinks and head to the
nearest
available
backseat with armrests. We raise our glasses. Skate says, “To
parents.”

Before I let the tears hit me again, I down
that sucker, then smack my lips.

None of us talks about drinking to my
mom’s death a little under four years ago. Although I know each of
us has that firm and center in mind. That and, for me and Trev, the
image of my father’s head being blown off and spattering us with
sticky blood.

I can still taste the drop of it that fell
on my
bottom
lip...

“
Who’s the band
that Blaze says is playing here tonight?” Trev
asks over the growing noise.

“I forgot. She just said they’re real good
and real underrated.”

“That’s how it goes in the music biz, I
guess.”

I think of her words to me earlier, about
“getting herself out there.” About how pale she went when she said
it. How she paused a moment too long when I asked her if everything
was OK.

Something’s
wrong
, I realize
now.
And I
need to ask her about it because this fear’s ripping into my gut. I
won’t let anything happen to her. I can’t... Because these dudes,
and she, are the only things I have left.

I put my beer down, wrap my arms around my
two boys’ necks and yank them down in a headlock. I bring them both
to my chest. “You guys are all I have left now. You’re my family.
You get that, right?”

Skat
e, on my left, taps my abs. Trev squeezes my right
shoulder. I let them go. “We hear you,” Skate says.

You and Blaze
, I think.

And, as if on cue, she walks in. Looking
more dazzling than any Hollywood starlet that’s ever walked the red
carpet. Because she ain’t no starlet. Not even close.

She’s
so
much
more than that...

Right side of the head shaved, left side
groomed and blow-dried to flow like golden velvet down her
magnificently tatted arm.
Sweater in the hand. Torn jeans at the knees. Pert breasts.
And lips so luscious that all I can think of now is meeting them
with mine.

In an acutely familiar
movement
—like the night
we met, exactly six days ago—I put my beer down. Just like I took
the pill out my mouth and put it in my pocket at the
House Market
party last Saturday. She’s
looking around for me, her jeweled green eyes hunting the walls and
posters and the huge painting of some dude filling up at a gas
station.

I stand.

When she sees me, I
feel like that clichéd movie scene where
four eyes meet across a vast field of brilliant flowers, sun
shining brightly.

I
also imagine her standing over a manhole, holding her dress
down nervously while it billows up madly behind her.
My Marilyn.
Because she is all these things
to me. And, with her in the room, the sun is the fluorescents; the
flowers, the scuffed and stained floor. And the billowing dress,
her aura.

Our love isn’t flowers and roses. It
isn’t
Call me
Maybe
or Taylor Swift or
Colbie Caillait at the
Teen Choice Awards
. It isn’t
The Lion King
staring up at the black sky and hearing his
father—his
dead
father!—calling out prophetically, “Remember!” and the
whole goddamned jungle coming together and singing jubilantly into
the air and...

It isn’t
Doogie Howser
or
Leave it to Beaver
or
Family Ties
or
any of that shit.

It’s the real deal, baby.

And, yeah, I know I
just used the word
Love
. So there.

Here’s another cliché for you: The world
spins when she holds me. Only problem is, it actually does. I think
they’ve proven this—lack of blood to the cerebrum or something,
brought about by a sudden surge of hormonal response as a result of
the close proximity of a survival factor in one’s
presence.

Pretty damned boring to hear that shit,
right?

So, this is how I say it: She holds me,
and the world spins. And, for a second at least—blood gushing away
from my cerebrum and all—I almost lose my step. Then I catch it
again. And all I can think of is touching my salivating tongue to
her sumptuous lips.

If the room weren’t full, I’d take her
clothes off right here.

Right. The Fuck. Here.

Blaze sits with my boys.

The band’s name is
Minus Ned
. “A band that should’ve made it big already years
ago,” she says.

The sound is funky blues rock, which suits
my mood just right. Especially their song
III
(“Three”) which is about being crazy for
someone.

I clutch Blaze’s hand.

In true Irish tradition—which I explain to
Trev and Skate, is actually in Blaze’s blood, although she’s really
Polish—she downs the drinks with the rest of us. We’re firing shots
and singing along, drunk as skunks on cheap liquor. But it ain’t
cheap tonight. It’s only the best. And it’s all on me.
Because you guys are
all my family. All three of you
. Only, it takes me a few attempts to express that. Because
the words are sloshing in between my cheeks and tongue.

They boot us out
eventually
, at four A.M.
The four of us sing at the Marcy station for a half hour before we
realize the train hasn’t arrived. Confused, Blaze pulls up her MTA
app—a feat which seems to take forever in itself—because she’s the
only one of us who regularly catches the subway. (None of us even
knew the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had an app.) She
sees that the M is not running until six A.M. because of
FASTRACK
maintenance!

We all find this insanely hilarious,
especially once we realize
—again, an endlessly long feat of accomplishment—that, not
only are Blaze and I at the completely wrong train station (we
should be catching the L from Bedford because I’m staying over at
her place tonight), but Trev and Skate should’ve caught the J
(indeed at this station) and not the M—at least three of which have
come by already! An endless number of laughs later—and Trev and
Skate almost damn-near missing the J again!—we part.

My legs feel heavy as I lean on Blaze
while we make our way toward Bedford Avenue. It seems she’s leaning
on me as well.
Leaning on each other.

It’s twilight
by the time we make it to her place. My eyes burn
as I lie on her bed and look at her. Hers are red, the green in
them glowing like something out of
Interview with the
Vampire
. She snuggles
under my arm, falls asleep faster than I can count to five. I join
her quickly after.

Oblivious of any threats that may exist in
the immediate environment...

Neither of us saw the guy sitting
in
the blue Hyundai
Accent GS hatchback at the corner of the street as we entered her
building. A guy who, from a distance, looks uncannily like her ex
boyfriend, Tolek—the big and black-haired dude who brought his
posse over to pay us all a visit at
Slambam
on Wednesday. Only, even if I hadn’t recognized
the dude in the car, in this dim light, I should’ve at least
recognized the car itself. Because Gina Moretti used to drive that
car. ‘
97
model. I
should remember that well, because we fucked like rabbits in it.
And her brother, Dino Moretti—the dude in the Hyundai right
now—slammed my head against the hood of it not once, but twice,
once upon a time.

After Gina lost her mind.

Yeah, we’ll get to that
still...

I’m intimately familiar with that car,
right down to the scar on the right side of my head, visible only
if I were to shave my hair
off.

But, alas, that’s the problem with
chemical pleasures
and
nights of worry-free revelry: They prevent you from seeing shit
until it’s too late. Important shit. (And if that isn’t as poetic a
statement about mine and Gina’s relationship as any, then I’ll eat
my pen.)

A
s I would learn later, not spotting Dino staking out
Blaze’s place tonight would damn near cost us our lives.

Right now
we’re sleeping, and the dude in the car is
waiting. A few minutes later, having attained what he came for—an
intimate knowledge of our movements and patterns, perhaps?—he
leaves.

Of course,
I find out all of this only when it’s already too
late, near the end.

Right now
we’re in the middle. And the middle and the
beginning are always good.

Blaze Ryleigh

In the morning, Deck’s on my yellow
beanbag, under my mammoth wall shelf with the gazillion books on
it. He’s reading my tattered and very second-hand (seventh-hand,
maybe) copy of Stephen King’s
Under the Dome
.

“
Got tired of reading
1984
?”

“
Actually...I didn’t know you had this one.
It’s the one I’m currently reading on my e-reader. You have so many
books on your shelf that it took me a while to find it.” He looks
up, lets his eyes trail the length of the fifteen foot shelves.
“You read all of them?”

“Yip.”

His eyes bulge toward me. “Over how
long?”

I shrug. “The last year I’ve read more
than usual, but I was always a reader.” I think it’s time I tell
him about the last year of my life. I’ve given myself completely to
him, and it’s only fair he knows. “You know, Deck, my friend...
Uhm, the one...who...ODed.”