Faster We Burn (32 page)

She looked away from the TV for a second, her facade dropping for a second. “Well, then I guess you’ll just owe me two. Pick your perp.”

“Okay…Um, that crazy guy who lurked in the alley was definitely suspicious.”

She scoffed.

“Please, it’s obviously the teenage daughter.”

“What? After she cried like that? You’re crazy.”

She turned to face me.

“Wait and see.” She smirked and went back to the television.

Katie

Of course I was right. The teenage girl turned out to have some weird attraction to her dad and when she saw him with his mistress, she snapped. It was sick and twisted, but it was clear from the very beginning that it was her.

“There’s another one on,” I said, getting up and stretching my arms over my head. “Want to lose another bet?” I’d been right in telling Stryker that I was making this up as I went along, but
Law and Order
marathons had always worked for me, so why not him?

There really needed to be a manual for this sort of thing. Sure, there were plenty of self-help books, but I didn’t think they mentioned anything like this.

“What are you doing?” Damn, he was onto me. Not that I was being very subtle.

“Watching you lose a bet, best friend.” I sat back down and looked at him.

“No, you’re trying to distract me, but you can’t do that forever. I have to deal with what I’ve done some time.” He clenched his mouth shut and looked away from me.

“What do you mean, what you’ve done? How is this your fault?”

He started laughing and got up from the couch, going to his bedroom. I followed him. What the hell?

“What are you talking about?” I leaned in the doorway as he pulled out a cigarette and lighter. I guessed quitting was out of the question at the moment, not that I blamed him. He tried to light it, but his hands were too shaky.

“Let me do it.” I hated myself for furthering his addiction to the cancer stick, but he was in such rough shape I figured one more smoke wasn’t going to do him in.

I lit it and he inhaled, closing his eyes.

“What have you done, Stryker?” I slipped the lighter into my pocket. If he couldn’t light them, he couldn’t smoke them.

He shook his head and blew out a cloud of smoke over his shoulder so it didn’t go in my face.

“I tried to tell you so many times, and then I couldn’t…and then you told me you loved me, and I still tried, because you deserved the truth, and then I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to wreck everything. Fuck, I just wrecked everything.” He sat down on his bed and tore the hand not holding the cigarette through his hair.

“Stryker, you’re scaring me,” I said, because it was true. “Just tell me what happened and I can help you.” I crossed the room and sat next to him, touching his shoulder.

“No!” He said diving away from me and getting to his feet. “You can’t do that. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve your compassion. I never did and I never will.” I followed him as he stormed back into the living room.

“Talk to me, Stryker. Just talk to me,” I said in my calmest voice. I refused to think anything, or make any conclusions until I heard them come from him.

He sucked in another puff from the cigarette.

“And tell you what? That I had sex with Ric? That she showed up drunk last night and I told her that I’d hurt her if she told you about us, and now today she’s dead?” I couldn’t move. He crossed the room and stood right in front of me. “Is that what you wanted to fucking hear?!” he yelled.

The air was too thick to breathe; it wouldn’t go into my lungs.

“Oh, God,” he said, putting his face in his hands and dropping the cigarette. I was able to snap out of my momentary shock to stomp it out before it set the apartment on fire.

“Stryker,” I said, taking his hands and trying to pull them away from his face, and also trying not to freak out about what he’d just told me. He raised his head, his eyes tear-streaked and hopeless.

“It. Doesn’t. Matter.”

“How can you say that? She’s dead and it’s my fault. And I hurt you. How can you say that it doesn’t matter? It matters more than anything.”

I held his hands and tried to find the right words.

“Because I love you.”

“How can you say that?”

It was easy. Simple. As clear and beautiful as a cloudless summer sky.

“Because it’s true. It’s true whether you slept with Ric, or whether you got drunk and said something you didn’t mean, or if you smoke too much, or never pick up your socks, or don’t have any money. Love doesn’t come and go. It’s for always.”

He tried to shake his head, but I wouldn’t stop looking at him. I leaned and put my forehead to his.

“You and me. No space. Always,” I whispered to his lips. He opened his eyes and finally saw me. Saw that I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I love you so much, sweetheart. So much that sometimes I can’t breathe. I can’t think. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, even before I knew I wanted it. I don’t deserve you, Katherine.”

No, it was really the other way around, but I decided that I’d kiss him instead of arguing. Kissing was always better than arguing.

It was a slow kiss, a burning kiss. The kind of kiss that promised of forever. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed the first and last boy with a lip ring I was ever going to love.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Stryker

I let her kiss me, and she let me kiss her back as I cried, bitter tears and regret tears and happy tears. There were so many emotions flooding my mind that I was afraid I was going to burst with them. The world felt like it was about to end.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I said, finally pulling away from her sweet lips. I had to get this all out. It had been slowly killing me.

“Shh, there’s nothing to be sorry for. Granted, I’m not thrilled you had sex with her, but it’s not going to make me stop loving you. And it’s not your fault what happened to her. How could you possibly think that was your fault?” She shook me a little, as if trying to shake the thought out of my head.

I led her to the couch and sat her down, telling her the whole story. About how I’d slept with Ric and the entire time I’d thought of Katie, and how Ric had been threatening to tell on me and how she’d showed up and the awful things I’d said to her and…now she was dead. I could never take those words back. They were the last I’d said to her, and that would never change.

She stayed in my lap as I talked, stroking my hair and listening in silence. It felt good to hold her, to have something to ground me while I talked, slicing the words out with the sharpest of knives. They came, little bleeding chunks that left holes, and pain behind. Finally, I was done and we both listened to the silence that filled the room.

“Blame is easy, isn’t it? Blaming yourself, blaming someone else,” she said, resting her head in the perfect spot on my shoulder. It felt like had been made just for her.

“I wouldn’t say it was easy.”

“Maybe easy isn’t the right word. Maybe…it’s like you want to do something, and blame is the easiest path to find. It’s simple, and it gives you something to do. Something to focus on, because the reality is harder.”

“I think you’re right.” I pulled my fingers through her hair. “Thank you for saving me.”

“I didn’t save you. If anyone has gotten saved, it’s me. That day in the hospital, you were…you were everything I needed. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for you.” She took the hand that wasn’t in her hair and kissed it.

“How about we just agree that we saved each other?” She tilted her head up.

“Deal?”

“You and me,” I said.

“No space.”

“Always.” She kissed my lips and I believed her. Believed in us.

***

For the second time in two months, I attended a funeral. Ric’s was smaller than Mr. Hallman’s, and there were significantly more piercings and tattoos present. This time, though, I had a beautiful girl by my side, her hand in mine.

Things are always sadder somehow, when someone young dies. Trish was a wreck again, but she had the whole gang holding her up, and I saw her chatting with some guy in the parking lot afterward. She was smiling and not crying anymore, which was what made me look, even more than the fact that she was talking to a guy.

“Who’s that?” Katie whispered to me.

“Um, I think that’s Ric’s stepbrother, or cousin or something.” I remembered seeing him with her family.

“He’s cute,” she said, looking him up and down. He had electric blue curly hair, which clashed with the crisp black suit he was wearing. I watched Trish talk to him, putting her hand on his arm and laughing.

“Oh my God, is she laughing?” Simon said, letting his eyes leave Brady’s for one second.

“Should we call someone?” Will said, putting his coat on Audrey’s shoulders, despite her assurances that she wasn’t cold. “Like, maybe there’s radiation in her apartment and it’s caused a brain tumor that is altering her personality. Or maybe it’s aliens.”

“You always think it’s aliens,” Lottie said, rolling her eyes. “Have you ever thought of the fact that she might just be attracted to him? That has been known to happen every now and then.” She gave Zan a wink and he gave her one back. “I think it’s romantic, in a weird way. Has Nicholas Sparks written a book where the couple meets at a funeral?”

“No, but I think there was a movie. You made me watch it once,” Will said, snapping his fingers. “You know, with that British guy and the hair.”

“Hugh Grant?” Katie said.

“That’s it,” Will said, snapping his fingers again.

“Well anyway, I think it’s great,” Katie said. “There’s a lid for every pot.”

“Do you want to be the lid or the pot, baby?” Simon said to Brady.

“Whichever one you don’t want,” he said, giving Simon a kiss as we continued to watch Trish.

“You think she knows we’re staring at her?” Lottie said. A second later, Trish turned a little, as if to brush her hair back and held her middle finger in our direction.

“Guess that answers that question,” I said, as we all looked in different directions. “You ready to go?” I said to Katie.

“I think so. How you holding up? No new attacks of guilt?”

“Just a little one. Nothing major.”

“I might have something that can help with that,” she said, shoving her arms into my coat and looking up at me.

“Oh, really? A cream, or a pill or something?”

“Ah, no. It involves you…and me…and no clothing.”

“I think I can work with that,” I said, kissing her.

I couldn’t believe how she’d accepted everything with Ric. I knew it bothered her, but she did her best not to let it. We hadn’t really talked about it since, but I knew we needed to. I still had moments, especially in the middle of the night, when I would wake up hating myself for being so happy with Katie, or replaying my last moments with Ric.

Katie suggested I go to her therapist, and I made an appointment. It wasn’t going to solve everything, but maybe it could help make things better. She was still having a hard time dealing with her dad’s death. I knew she carried around the bag of his ashes in her purse because I’d seen it once when she was searching for some gum, but I hadn’t confronted her about it. We both needed more time.

***

Time passed, as it always does. The first snowfall bathed the world in white silence and made driving an even more dangerous exercise, and soon it was time for Christmas.

Katie and I hadn’t talked about what we were doing, or more exactly, what I was doing. It was one of the things we’d been avoiding.

“Are you going to sing tonight?” I asked her as we set out the trays of snacks she’d made for Band. She’d come a few times, but I hadn’t been able to convince her to sing again. Ric had left a hole and no one seemed ready to fill it yet.

“I don’t know,” she said, setting out a few plastic cups. She had practically moved in, but I wondered what she would say to making the arrangement more permanent. Lottie didn’t stay much in her dorm room either, so it seemed pointless to pay for it when they were both living other places.

“It seems…I don’t know.” She shrugged.

“No one is going to think that you’re trying to be a fill-in.”

“It just doesn’t seem right.”

“We’ll put it to a vote.”

“Stryker,” she said, giving me a look. “I don’t want you to make a big deal out of it.”

“And I don’t want you to hide it anymore. You have a beautiful gift and I just want you to share it with everyone.”

She came over and put her hands on my shoulders. “Did you read that off a greeting card?”

“Damn. You’ve discovered my secret. I get all my words of wisdom from Hallmark,” I said, kissing her cheek.

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said, moving her face so our lips met. A crashing sound downstairs announced the arrival of the rest of The Band.

“Showtime,” I said.

Katie

Things had been more than somber with everyone since Ric’s death, but nobody really liked to talk about it. It had hit them all hard, especially Allan.

“Hey, how are you?” I said as he came up the stairs, hauling a guitar case and a bottle of alcohol. Great. That was just what we needed. A bunch of sad drunk people.

“I’m good, Pink, how you doing?” He gave me a one-armed hug and a tight smile.

“Stryker wants me to participate tonight, but I don’t know if I’m up for it,” I said as Perry, Zoey and Theo came up the stairs behind him.

“Why not? From what I heard that one time, you’ve got pipes.”

“I didn’t think it was really appropriate. You know, given the circumstances.” Baxter had left the group after everything with Ric. Stryker had talked to him, and he said it was just too hard. He’d really loved her.

“Oh come on. If not now, when?” He patted my shoulder and went to set up with everyone else.

“You ready?” Stryker said, putting his violin under his chin. He swapped out his instruments frequently, and he’d been in a violin mood as of late. I claimed my spot next to him on the couch as everyone else caught up and set up their own.