“I miss you, Matt.”
I swallow. “You do?”
“Of course.”
I left a little space between us—buffer space—and Stick reaches across to tap me on the back, an awkward bro tap, like he’s afraid to keep contact. I’ve been thinking of this moment ever since the kiss, every day it seems if not every second and I feel it between us, hanging between us, this deep perfect something or an unfathomable nothing and I just want to know what he’s thinking.
“I miss this, you know. The normal.”
He dips his head and I sink into the bed. I was hovering before because I couldn’t be sure but now, I think it’s okay.
“It just sucks now. I don’t even know how to explain it.” The World Is swells through the room, sweeping into my head, loud diving guitar into crunchy percussion. “It’s like everything is the same as the way it was before but it’s not, not really, something’s missing—he’s missing—and I don’t know how to get back to normal.”
Stick closes his eyes and the music breaks, slow guitar or maybe violin, I don’t enough about music to pick out the instruments, but it’s haunting and broken and it’s hard to watch Stick hurt like this.
“I told my mom off today,” he says. “I was like, you can’t come over here and drop off a couple bags of groceries and think we’ll be fine with everything she’s done—I mean, David and Marcus were thanking her, like seriously?” He opens his eyes with his head low and the stubble sticking to his chin. “I hate her.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. The World Is fades.
“And I’m really starting to hate them—David and Marcus. They just get high all the time. And Janice is useless, she’s never around, and no one’s here for Michaela.”
“Where is she tonight?”
“At Sherry’s.”
Stick and Michaela are the only ones underage so officially they’re the only ones in his mother’s custody, but she doesn’t live in the house and she was never around when Stick was growing up so his oldest sisters are looking into taking over joint custody.
“I asked Sherry if I could move in.”
He buries his lip in the can and the liquid dribbles onto his chin.
“I just hate living here now with only my brothers and Mom’s coming around for some reason. I just can’t, Matt. I can’t.”
He’s speaking clearer now and The World Is fills the gaps between his sentences. I take a sip from my can and my wrist starts to sting.
“What did Sherry say?”
“I don’t know. I mean, she said she didn’t know if there was room for both me and Michaela so they’d have to think about it.”
Stick throws down his beer and shakes his head, hard and immediate. I don’t think Sherry lives in Woodbridge, and I don’t know what would happen if he leaves. To us.
“I’m just glad that you came,” he says, tossing his can toward the pile near the cooler and he pulls on my shoulder, pulling me closer. I bought the T-shirt from the band’s website—it spells out a play on their name within a black-and-white sketch of an oversized cat. I’ve worn it so often that the threads are breaking.
“I’m glad I’m here too,” I say, turning away because it sounds too gay and I need to shield my eyes from staring, like I want to reach out and kiss him.
“You like the new record?” Stick says, hanging onto my shoulder and not releasing.
“It’s perfect,” I say. The World is a Beautiful Cat and I Am No Longer Meow Meow Meow. I could stay here forever.
SEVEN
“THAT WAS SAMMY,” Stick says, looking up from his phone. “He’s almost here.”
“Sammy’s coming over?”
Stick nods, grabbing another beer from the stash in the fridge and motioning to me. I haven’t been drinking—I’m still on my first—but I finish the rest with a stiff forced breath and nod. I thought we’d be alone.
“He asked if we have weed,” Stick says, sitting down on the sheets where he sleeps. Next to me.
“I don’t have any,” I say because he’s looking at me and smiling. He knows I don’t smoke, or the one time I tried I almost died, and he knows I’m not about getting high in general—except for the glue—and I was going to ask if he wanted to huff because the last time we huffed it ended with a kiss and he hasn’t mentioned it since.
The World Is swells a bit and I haven’t really been listening but I think this is the moment—before Sammy gets here—where I should bring up the kiss and what’s changed ever since because I need to know where we stand. The wrap on my wrist has nearly fallen off, the brown straps hanging down along Stick’s sheets. I reach out my hand.
Three sharp raps on the door interrupt all at once and Stick’s up off the mattress, opening. A tall girl with thick hair and faded jeans strides past him.
“Umm … hello?” Stick says.
“Yeah, hi.” She moves across to the stolen cooler and helps herself to one of the beers.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know, who are you? Who are any of us really?” She plants herself on Jarrett’s bed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been reading a lot of Sartre lately. And I will freely assume that no one in this room knows who that is.”
“What?” Stick says.
“Exactly.”
Stick looks at me confused but I’m watching the way his shorts cling to his butt from behind, the way the skin teases the fabric as he shifts back to the bed.
“Wait, who are you?” Stick says but before she can answer Sammy steps through the door with a weird wide grin. It’s over. Stick and me. Tonight at least. I take a thick sip of my beer.
“Hey Sammy,” Stick says.
“Good, you know him,” the girl says, opening the beer and leaning back onto Jarrett’s pillow. “I knew he wasn’t ISIS.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your friend here, they thought he was ISIS.” She winces as she swallows.
“Who thought he was ISIS?”
“Marcus and David. They tried to kill me downstairs,” Sammy says.
“Are you serious—when?” Stick says.
I glance at the girl as she crosses her legs, the faded jeans super tight against her calves. She catches me looking.
“Just now. They put me in a headlock and said I had to pay a toll to come upstairs.”
“That’s what they told me too,” I say.
“I’ll kill them,” Stick says, making a move for the door.
“Whoa there, white boy. It’s taken care of,” the girl says. “I broke it up.”
She looks up at the machete, curiously.
“Wait—who are you?”
She laughs, a calm laugh between sips. She seems older than us.
“I’m Cara. Thanks for the beverage. I hate beer but I might have killed myself if I spent another five seconds in that garage without Rhonda.”
“You’re Rhonda’s friend?” Stick says.
“Yeah, she used to be my best friend. But then she dragged me to this party at her boyfriend’s house and she left me alone with a bunch of troglodytes smoking weed.”