How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (15 page)

“I
didn’t mean to say that Tough would,” I said. “That’s just what—”

“You
don’t understand,” Jax said. He cleared his throat, then stood up. “I need a beer—energy
drink—something.”

I
felt like I should follow him into the kitchen, but my feet wouldn’t move. Jax
came back with a can of Red Hot.

“You
can’t blame Tough if he did try to fuck Jason up,” he said. “Really. He doesn’t
have shit. His parents are dead, sure—all of ours are—but Sissy and Ryder and
Colt are gone, too. And Tough can’t leave Halo, ever. Not even for a day like
the rest of us. He’s essentially a POW. And people are shitty. They act like
they’re better than him sometimes—like bleeding for a vamp or raising cattle
for a werewolf to hunt is so different than what he did.” Jax grimaced down at
his Red Hot as if it had left a bad taste in his mouth. “Music was like… You
saw. When Tough’s playing, he’s a fucking rock star and he sure as hell doesn’t
live here.”

I
looked up the stairs again, listening to the last dirty, sweaty growl of the
guitar fade away.

Jax
thought I didn’t understand, but I did. My dad thought he needed a girl three
years older than me and a vintage Charger to feel alive, so he left us. Mom
stopped wanting to eat and talk and be awake. She couldn’t hold down a job and
Tempie wouldn’t get one, so I did. And over the last two years of school, I’d
felt Tempie pulling away until just her body was there. When Tempie finally physically
left, Mom locked herself in the bathroom and downed a bottle of pills. It had
been just one thing after another until things were so out of control that I
couldn’t take it anymore. I’d done the only thing I could—chase Tempie down and
try to make life livable again. Tough had done the same thing—tried to make his
life livable again. That had to be why it felt like we knew each other so well.

I
turned and jogged up the stairs.

I
was in the hall when Tough started another song—the one he’d played the other
night at the bar, but with a double-shot of bitterness today. Hearing it made
me smile. It felt great to know that someone else was as angry, churning,
life’s-not-fair ticked off as I was. I wanted to run into Tough’s room and kiss
him on the mouth, but the sight of him stopped me in the doorway.

He
was lying on the bed in just his jeans, hair damp like he’d taken a shower,
banging on a beat-up acoustic guitar decorated with faded, old-school tattoo
art. His lips moved along with the words and he rocked his head to the rhythm.
An ancient mp3 player in a blue and black skin lay beside him.

Tough
had the earbuds in and his eyes closed. It felt as if I’d walked in on him
doing something really intimate. The shields were down, and I didn’t want them
to go back up because of me, so I stayed still and listened.

Tough

Rowdy
used to let me use the back room at the bar to record stuff I wrote. What I got
done before the whole thing with Jason—sixteen songs—is on my old mp3 player
under “Trash.” I’d been listening to “Trash” on repeat since I got back from
the Matchmaker’s. With it turned up all the way, I could play and pretend to
sing along and tune out the rest of the world, almost like I used to.

Then
the song I wrote for Harper back when I was still pretty sure I loved her came
on. This time, I didn’t play along, just thought back. I’d had it in my head
that I could make her see how right we were together and how wrong her and Jax
were, but I couldn’t. For a while I had been sure it was killing me, her not
wanting me. Listening to “Harper’s Song” now just made me laugh. I was a really
stupid teenager.

I
raised my head up to spin the dial to the next song and stopped. Desty was
standing in the doorway, watching me. I hit pause and took out an earbud.

“Must’ve
been a funny song,” she said, trying not to look embarrassed that I caught her.

I
nodded. I stood Mom’s acoustic up against the nightstand, scooted over and
patted the bed beside me. Desty came over and laid down on her side with her
boots hanging off the edge.

“Seductive,”
she said.

I
gave her a look like
What the hell?
and pointed at us laying on the bed
together.

“Just
because I felt bad for spying on you,” she said.

My
ass.
I leaned forward until I was almost touching her lips and I
could feel her breath on my face. She smelled like blueberry pancakes and girl
sweat. Her muddy hazel eyes kept looking back and forth between mine and she
was barely breathing. I licked my lips, brushed her hair away from her ear—

Then
I put the earbud in and laughed at her.

Desty
slapped my arm.

“Jerk.”
But she was trying not to smile. She took a deep breath through her nose. “You
smell like toothpaste and showers.”

I
must’ve made a face.

“Not
like that’s a bad thing,” she said. “Just weird.”

In
the middle of the day it was weird, she meant. Not much I could do about it,
though—I hadn’t felt like seeing her with trick on my breath.

“Really,”
Desty said. “I like the shower smell.”

Beats
NP bitch any day,
I thought.

I
hit play and the music started up again. Desty adjusted her earbud and laid her
head down on the pillow. For a while, she listened to the rest of “Harper’s
Song” with me.

Then
she said, “You weren’t listening to this before.”

I
nodded.

“This
isn’t funny. It’s—” She looked up at me. “It hurts to listen to.”

I
shrugged. I guess you had to be there.

Desty
closed her eyes and listened to the next few songs. I put my pick between my
teeth and laid my head down, too, kind of getting off on watching her
reactions. She knew when I was joking and you could tell she really felt the
heavy stuff. I think “Losing Blood” was the one that gave it away because it’s
about Mom and Dad, but Desty let the playlist get all the way to “The Hell
Alone” before she said anything.

In
the pause between songs, she opened her eyes.

“This
is you.”

With
my tongue, I switched my pick to the other side of my mouth and nodded.

“Jax
said you were good, but…” Desty looked down at my mouth, and for a second, the
bottom dropped out of my stomach thinking somehow she might know about the
Matchmaker—you can’t keep a lid on shit in this town—but she just asked, “Do
you chew?”

I
was too relieved to do anything but shake my head no.

“What’s
this about?” She touched Ryder’s Copenhagen-can-ring on my back pocket.

I
wanted to touch, too, so I reached down and traced the outline of a cellphone
on her empty front pocket.

“These
aren’t my shorts,” she said. “Or shirt. Or boots.”

I
shook my head and tugged at the waistband of Ryder’s left-behind jeans.
Mine
either.

“What’s
in your mouth, then?”

I
stuck the pick out like a tongue. Desty smiled and touched it with the tip of
her tongue.

“I
like you, Tough,” she said. “I just had to make sure you didn’t chew, or I
couldn’t like you.”

Hot
damn.
Just in case she couldn’t tell I liked her, too, I kissed
her. She laughed when I slipped the pick between her lips and she pulled it
away from me. Her laying there with that pick between her teeth, the point
making a little indentation in her bottom lip was the sexiest thing I’d ever
seen in my life. All I could do was stare.

Then
Desty took the pick out and held it in front of her face to study it. I always
have three or four picks floating around my jeans pockets, but that one is
agate and shark-finned, with
Tough
on it in silver letters. Colt got it
for my thirteenth birthday, so I don’t take it anywhere but in and out of the
case in my room.

“Last
night a foot soldier told me you tried to kill a guy in Nashville,” Desty said,
turning the pick over so that the lettering faced her. “Do you wish you
would’ve done it?”

That
depended. If Mitzi hadn’t walked in ten minutes into what should’ve been a
two-hour beating and I couldn’t have made Jason give my voice back, I probably
wouldn’t have stopped until I had stomped his heart out.

“My
mom isn’t right anymore,” Desty said, making a motion toward her head. “She
just spiraled when my dad left her. But I’m not sorry I left her to come after
Tempie. I had to try. Even if I can’t get either of them back, I won’t be
sorry.”

That
made me smile because she was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She was one of
those girls who wanted to fix everything and it would probably kill her if she
couldn’t.

“You’re
not sorry, either, are you?” she asked. “About anything.”

I
shook my head.

“And
screw them if they think they can make you sorry,” she said.

I
think I love you.
I wished I could say it out loud because I
knew Desty would get it.

I
kissed her again and that turned into making out. It was kind of awkward—I
think because we were on our sides and she was trying to keep her boots off the
bed—and it was too hot and sticky to be touching anyone, but it felt too good
to stop. After a while I remembered the earbuds. We took them out and sat the
mp3 player on the nightstand so we could get closer.

Neither
one of us noticed it getting dark until the screen door banged downstairs.

“Logan
gave me the night off. We’re going to the bar.” Harper’s voice was loud because
of how quiet it had been in the house.

“I
have one objective left.” Jax’s voice was loud because he was pissed.

“Well,
if you want to finish it, you better do it in the next forty-five minutes
because we’re leaving here at nine.” Harper’s sandals flip-flopped up the
stairs to the bathroom. “I am not missing Tough play two nights in a row.”

“One
objective!”

“Forty-five
minutes!”

The
bathroom door slammed and the shower started.

Desty
laughed in a little puff of breath against my face.

“We
just made out for three hours,” she whispered.

I
need to get ready,
I thought, but I didn’t move. My lips felt
chapped and they stung from sweat. Even as dark as it was getting, I could see
a red spot on Desty’s neck that would probably turn into a hickey. I liked
that. It was like she had
Tough
written on her, like my agate pick.

“I
guess you need to go, huh?” She sounded disappointed.

I
nodded. I didn’t want to go, though. I had a weird feeling that if I got up,
I’d never get to do this with Desty again. Like when you’re flipping through
radio stations and you hear a song you don’t know, but you can tell right away
it’s good. Even if the song’s almost over, you don’t want to change the channel
in case they never play it again.

*****

The
dance floor stayed packed until the first set was over, then filled back up
again as soon as we started the second. Even though Desty wasn’t dancing, I
could see that she wanted to. Every time I looked over at her, she was keeping
time and moving in her seat. She probably would’ve been burning up the floor
like Harper and Scout if she’d had someone to dance with. I wished Jax would
take her out there, at least for one song, but the only dance Jax had ever done
in his life was when he beat the Legendary setting on this medieval game he
had.

Sometime
during the second set, I started daydreaming about dancing with Desty. I could
hook the speakers up to my mp3 player and we could push the bed over and dance
in my room. With legs like that, I bet Desty could move like a stripper. And
since the bed would already be in the room anyhow…

“Free
Bird” has always been pretty high on my list of songs to have sex to, and Dodge
and Owen both knew it. When I played the intro, Dodge looked over at Owen and
shook his fist back and forth in the international sign for jacking off. I took
my middle finger off my pick and gave them the international sign for “Mind
your own damn business and play what I tell you to.”

Dodge
was still laughing when he had to start singing. It didn’t sound right with the
tone of the song, but that turned out not to matter because in the middle of
“tomorrow” Dodge stopped singing like someone had cut his throat. Owen and
Willow dropped off, too. I palmed my strings and looked up.

Kathan
had come in first with Desty’s sister hanging on his arm in this short blue
dress that showed off tits and ass to spare. Mikal was right behind them,
wearing a shimmery red dress and strappy hooker heels. The light from the stage
sparkled off of her dress and onto the leash.

Shit.

Colt.
Dressed in some fancy suit, acting like it wasn’t no thang to be on a fucking
leash where everybody could see that he was Mikal’s first-prize coon dog.

I
swallowed. I felt sick. I wished I didn’t know him or that everybody in this
fucking bar didn’t know he was my brother or that— Dammit, the least he could
fucking do was look bad, tore up and starving, like he was fighting for his
life, not going out with his dominatrix girlfriend. I knew Colt didn’t get a
choice. I knew that, but seeing him… It was like the night the Tracker brought
me back from Nashville. I knew Mikal was doing it, but I blamed Colt.

Someone
was talking. I could hear the voice buzzing around. Then Dodge bumped my arm
and I snapped out of it.

“I
was just saying, Tough, that we didn’t want to interrupt anything,” Kathan
said. “We heard you were back at Rowdy’s and we wanted to catch a show.” He
looked around at the crowd. “For those of you visiting Halo, Tough Whitney is
our local star. You’ve probably already been enjoying his music this evening.
He used to sing, too, but from what I understand, his wild youth came back to
bite him. Now he just plays.”

Mikal
smiled at me and made a big show out of scratching behind Colt’s ear.

“Colt’s
especially been looking forward to hearing you,” she said.

“Yeah,
Tough,” the thing that used to be Colt said. “Play something.”

I
tried not to look at the collar. Colt had Whitney-eyes—all us kids did—kind of
blue-green, but Colt’s were always the darkest ones, like Dad’s.

Dad
had never liked Southern rock or country, so he probably wouldn’t have cared
for my stuff. Other than Christian, Dad didn’t really like any music but Mom’s,
even though when the Lost Derringers, her band, were popular they were playing
some pretty dark songs. Christian rock and Mom’s hardcore battle-punk. Kind of
a weird combination, but I knew Colt—the real Colt, not Mikal’s fucking
dog—would recognize it because it came from back before he got so obsessed with
Soldier of Heaven crap that he forgot about things like music and movies and
non-tactical books.

While
I was standing there wishing music was actually powerful enough to reach down
into someone’s brain and dig out anything that was left of them, my favorite
Derringers song came back to me and I started playing.

The
guitar part to “Out of Spite” walks the line between pissed and laughing. When
I was little, I thought Mom was the only person in the world who could make a
guitar sound like that, but this time I hit the tone dead-on. Getting it right
really pumped me up, so I kicked my distortion pedal until the amps were
buzzing like metal bees, screaming,

Now
you can all talk about

How
close you were to taking me out.

Just
wanted to let you know

Cyanide
never tasted so sweet,