Sun Poisoned (The Sunshine Series) (21 page)

“
You were never going to tell me?” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, not even caring that I’ve started to cry.

“
I wanted to.” I see his mouth move, but I don’t hear the words.

“
But you didn’t.” My voice raises, but the volume does nothing to keep it from shaking.

He closes his eyes like I’ve thrown something at him and he’s waiting fo
r it to hit a part of his body.

“
No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

“
So instead of telling me the truth, you brought me here. You brought
all of us
here.”

Myles has no response.

“This place is ‘protected,’ the club is ‘protected.’ How?”

Myles swallows.

“What’s keeping Michael from swiping me off the street and killing me?”

He looks up now.
“That won’t happen.”

“
Really?” I ask, on the verge of hysteria. “It’s a little convenient that the club where I work and the apartment I live in are ‘off limits’ to a psychopath that wanted me dead a few months ago.”

“
I brought you here because I thought it would make you happy.” His voice is weak and fading.

I sniff.
“Right. Right.”

I turn away from him, grabbing onto the door handle. I know the pull in my stomach at the thought of leaving his side is just from the blood and the bite and thinking about how much I wanted it
last night brings more tears.

Maybe that was a lie too. Maybe it all is.

“Please, Sophie,” I hear him say. “We can talk about this. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

I hear him take another step forward. Part of me wants to have that conversation, but the other, bigger part wants to run far, far away.

“I’m out of here.” I fling the door open.

“
You can’t walk, it’s too far.” He has the balls to grab onto my hand.

I spin around, fully intending to punch him in the face, but I doubt he would feel it.
“I’ll take a cab,” I say instead. “I can afford it now.”

Myles seems like he’s frozen in time, but
he lets me jerk my hand away.

The second I slam the door behind me and I’m in the open, I feel like my chest is being crushed; the sweltering heat only makes it worse. I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I manage to keep my breakfast down long enough to hail a cab, ride ba
ck to the apartments, and pay. I even get to stumble out of the cab and watch it drive away before I let my body take over, jolting my head into the trashcan a few feet away from the main entrance.

When I’m done, my body collapses and I’m sitting on the pavement, my back leaning against the stone building where I thought my dreams were coming true, but it turns out they may just be more nightmares. I position my head between my knees, feeling cold and hot all at once, my head spinning with
thoughts, memories, and nausea.

“
Hey,” a male voice says.

Instead of looking up, I stare at the dirty concrete beneath me.

Whoever it is kneels down, but doesn’t touch me. “You okay, Sophie?”

I recognize the low, scratchy voice now: Manny. Looking up only confirms this. His mustache accentuates his concerned frown. Great. The worst day ever can now be made comple
te.

“
I’m fine.” And I could have convinced him if I didn’t burst into tears.

***  

“In my experience, there ain’t nothing that makes the heart feel better than pancakes.”

“
I don’t think my heart is in need of feeling better,” I say, shrugging off my coat, but leaving my glasses on. “Or pancakes. I’m just sick, that’s all.”

Manny looks at me sideways.
“No. That face needs pancakes.”

He didn't even ask if I wanted to come here. He simply helped me up, lead me down a few blocks to the Denny’s, and we sat down at a booth without any fight from me. My stomach lurches at the thought of eating, but when the waitress comes I order a stack anyway.

We don’t say much until we get our food, and then it’s still quiet until Manny is halfway done with his waffles.

“
I’m gonna tell you a story,” he announces suddenly.

I take a sip of the flat coke I’ve neglected since the waitress set it down.

“When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a girl I went to high school with. We spent every waking moment possible together. We got jobs at the same record store together. We were inseparable.” Manny reaches across the table to grab some sugar packets.

“
We were dating for two years when she got pregnant. She was a senior then, and I had dropped out my senior year to work as a mechanic at my dad’s shop. She didn’t want the baby, but I did.”

He lines up four sugar packets in his hand
and rips the tops off of them.

“
We knew everything about each other.
Everything
. We never kept secrets.” Manny slowly stirs in his sugar before moving onto the cream. “When she broke up with me, she never returned my calls. When I showed up at her house time after time, her father threatened to call the police. Then she moved away. Called me a few years later saying she had taken care of our baby situation. I didn’t know what to do. It was like part of me was gouged out, torn from the roots.”

Manny pauses, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“You aren’t eating your pancakes?” He asks.

I take my knife and fork in my hands, but I can’t bring myself to eat just yet. Instead, I dig my utensils into the stack in front of me, breaking them up into smaller pieces.

“Then a few years ago,” Manny continues. “She came to one of our shows wanting to talk. It was then I got to understand.”
              He takes a small sip of his coffee, makes a slight face, then grabs two more sugar packets.
“She explained to me that she wasn’t ready for it. That she couldn’t do it. That most importantly, she was afraid that when I saw that she couldn’t do it, I’d hate her for lying to me about what a caring and selfless person she was.”

I stare down at my plate, deciding to put the silverware down before all that’s left is pancake dust.

“So. What does this have to do with me?” I ask.

“
I’m just telling you a story. It may be relevant, it may not.” His tone hints that he might know more than he’s letting on.

Honestly, when someone is always around someone they call their boyfriend, and then one day you find them crying and sick with said boyfriend missing, it’s not hard to figure out what’s wrong. But I appreciate the fact that he’s not mentioning any of it.
 

“
The point is,” Manny continues. “When you love someone and they break a part of you, your soul has a tendency to fill up the cracks they leave behind. No matter how many pieces are missing.”

Manny smiles for the first time since he received his waffles, then it fades
away.

“
It’s not that I’ve forgiven her. It’s not that I even love her anymore. Lies are like poison. If you get a little bit in your system, it spreads until it destroys whatever relationship you had. But I can understand. I can see what her thought process was. Not that it was right. Not that it was fair. Not that it was entirely up to her.”

“
Your soul, huh?” I say. “I don’t know, it sounds like she screwed you over.”

He takes a gulp of coffee before going on.
“Yeah. She did. And I still hate her for it.”

“
So you’re saying that hate helped you?”

“
No. I’m saying that a few months after all this happened, Peebs asked me to front a band he was getting together. A month after that, we were playing at Midnight, then touring all over the U.S.” He pauses, looks me in the eye, and for a moment I can see the sadness that he’s hidden so well. The loss that he keeps concealed.

“
From then on, I found a way to feel better. Singing about monsters and gorillas…that’s all just fun. It’s the fact that when I go up on that stage, people love us, they care. There isn’t anything like that.”

The waitress comes by to refill his coffee and he grabs more sugar packets once she’s left.

“Every time we play a show,” he says. “One small part of me gets set back into place. It’s never completely right. It never feels the same as it did, but it’s better than walking around the way I was before—a shattered man.”

I give him a sympathetic smile as a response.

“So. Does my story help at all?” he finally asks.

Though I’m grateful that he’s shared this really personal story with me, it still doesn’t change the fact that Myles lied, which only makes me wonder about what else he’s lied about. But I nod anyway, becaus
e I can’t imagine not nodding.

“
Thanks, Manny.”

“
No problem.” He gives me a smile and we both stand. Manny lays a ten dollar bill on the table, making it look like I’m thanking him for the pancakes instead of the heart to heart.

“
Let’s get some practicing in before tomorrow, huh?”

“
Sounds good to me.”

Because I have some cracks that need repairing, and there’s only one way I know how to do that.

Avoidance

Chapter 9

“You’re an angel with an amber halo, black hair, and the Devil’s pitchfork.”—Modest Mouse

To say waking up on Thursday morning is hard would be an understatement; to say that the option of sleeping
in
on Thursday morning would be easier is a lie. So I compromise and drag myself out of bed at noon.
              I already have two missed calls from Jade, saying that he and Stevie are on their way and maybe we could hang out before I have to meet Honus at the club. Tonight’s the night I play with them. I should be excited, but I only find myself tired.

I ignore the little red phone symbol that appears next to Myles’ name as I’m scrolling through my contacts. It’s been three days, and we haven’t seen each other, but he calls once a day, I guess to see if I’m ready to talk. I’m not, but
my chest aches whenever I see his name pop up.

Well, I succeeded in not thinking about him for half a minute today.

I send Jade a text to say sure, then turn off my phone so I can take a shower and not have to worry about anyone else calling.

When I turn my phone back on after I’m dressed, there are no missed calls or messages aside from the new one from Myles. I’m thankful he doesn’t leave voicemails. I can say that I wouldn’t
 listen to them, but I’d be kidding myself.

The rest of my day is spent tinkering around my apartment and trying to ignore the fact that despite how lonely I am, I don’t want to be around anyone. I spend hours on washing already clean dishes, doing laundry, not looking at the painting above my couch,
and not glancing down at the Band-Aid at my collar that I haven’t had the nerve to take off.

At five, I go downstairs to the practice space and
lock myself in. I have two hours of piano time all to myself, and I intend to use them without interruptions and without worrying that uninvited guests will drop by. Of course this will probably be the first place Myles would look for me, and of course he could break the lock. But I risk it. If he knows what’s good for him, he won’t show up.

I plug my headphones in and listen to the first song we’re supposed to play tonight. Manny’s raspy voice fills my ears before any of the other instruments kick in, and then the piano starts in the chaotic way he plays it. After about thirty seconds, I think I have the rhythm down, so I start playing the song the way I remember it—fast and pounding on the
lower scale and slightly higher, with more complicated patterns on the higher one.

It goes well for about an hour. I manage to not think about anything other than notes, cords, positioning my hands in the right way, and the order in which to do all of these things. But then I have to pause because my phone is vibrating in my pocket with a call from Boo, who tells me he, Trei,
and my family will meet me at his apartment. After that, my brain is done.

I can’t concentrate on anything else but Myles, why he lied to me, and how I have
no idea what I’m going to do.

I don
’t cry. Thank God I don’t cry.

I slam into the piano for the rest of the time I have, not practicing the songs for tonight, not playing anything recognizable other than confusion and anger and sadness.

When I’m through, I text Boo back that I’m running late and won’t be able to see them before the show. I don’t want them to see
me
.

I head directly into the dressing room when I arrive at Midnight. I’m early, but I don’t know what else to do with myself. They told me to wear a plain white tank and jeans so I wou
ld match the rest of the band.