“Okay,” I chuckled into my mug.
Seven
I tried.
I honestly fucking tried, but in the end, it took my two classes of seniors less than a month to make me hate them.
They were so goddamn spoiled and indifferent that I wanted to wring their necks.
The eight students in my AP class in economics were the exception. Those kids showed up every Friday and were there to learn, to get ahead, and most of them already knew what college they wanted to go to.
But today was a regular Monday after Thanksgiving, and I had my regular students, my regular schedule.
“Welcome back, guys.” I went behind my desk as the last students trickled in, and I started writing on the whiteboard. “How many of you kept up with the news over the holiday? I’m willing to bet some of you have fathers in banking who’re losing a lot of sleep at the moment.”
“Oh my God, how did you know?” one of the girls gushed.
In other words, she wasn’t reading the news at all.
I suppressed a sigh and faced the class. “Buckle up—today we’re going to talk about macroeconomic trends.”
Everyone groaned.
People who loved the fall were the fucking worst.
“Oh, but the trees are so gorgeous.”
Then head up the mountains, fuck a tree, and don’t come back.
Those who loved winter were equally bad, either because they looked past the weeks of rain and sleet and gushed like whores about snow and skiing, or because they acted like Santa’s little helper on crack.
By mid-December, seasonal depression had a firm grasp on me, and I found myself with a housemate who was worse off than me. As fucked up as the situation was, it kept me going. Darius had been crashing on my couch on and off since he’d returned from his assignment, and if I didn’t suspect he’d drink himself into a coma if I didn’t make sure he ate and showered, it might’ve been me who threw in the towel.
Juggling a bag from the store and stack of books and folders, I unlocked the door to my house and stepped inside.
Darius was here.
He came and went as he pleased, and I’d given him a key so he could get in if I wasn’t home. The sight of him dropped a rock into my gut. I’d ask him what the hell he’d been through this summer, but he told me enough through his nightmares. When they grew worse, he didn’t want to be alone.
“Hey, buddy.” I tossed my keys on the side table and kicked off my shoes.
He grunted something and reached for the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table.
Had it not been for his asking if he could stay with me for a while, the living room still would’ve been empty.
The coffee table had been replaced twice, though. Once after Darius drove his fist through it, then, despite the second table being a lot sturdier, when he woke up in the middle of the night, balls deep in a flashback, and kicked it. He’d sent it flying into the fireplace I’d never used—and he’d fractured his foot in the process.
“Let’s get some food in you,” I said.
“Cheers, but I’m not hungry.” He took a swig from his bottle.
Otherwise, he was surprisingly tidy, although I guessed it mattered that there wasn’t much to make a mess out of. Even so… He had an army-green duffel bag by the end of the couch, and on the table he had two bottles of whiskey, a notebook, his service weapon, a folding knife, and his watch. Everything was positioned neatly, including the two pillows and covers he used when he spent the night. They were folded and stacked over the armrest.
“I wasn’t asking, Darius,” I told him patiently. “Come on. I got wings and some other shit from the deli.”
He didn’t seem as angry today.
The anger actually didn’t scare me, because my brother had been the same once we’d been taken away from our mother. When he no longer feared for his life, explosive bursts of rage had been his way to release pressure.
I didn’t know if he still did that. His counselor had emphasized how important it was that Finn found healthier ways to deal with his anger, and he’d been placed with that family in Tacoma shortly after.
Darius didn’t join me in the kitchen right away, but I wasn’t in a hurry.
I had a weekend of grading tests ahead of me, and I could use some downtime and a couple beers before I dug in.
The microwave dinners went into the freezer. The two cases of beer went into the fridge.
While I was reheating the food from the deli, Darius appeared in the doorway.
Considering he was wearing jeans and a tee, I wondered if he’d been out today.
“You didn’t by any chance see your therapist?” I asked.
He nodded with a dip of his chin.
I despised how lost he looked.
“I ain’t goin’ back.” He walked over to the kitchen table and slumped down in one of the only two chairs. “He keeps tellin’ me I gotta open up to my family. And tell them what? The classified shit, the confidential shit, or the secret shit?” He shook his head and scrubbed at his face. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not exposing them to any of it.”
That gave me an idea. “What if you’d accidentally told someone already? Might as well go for broke and talk to them, right?”
Ouch. I withdrew my hand quickly from the plate in the microwave and took it out with a dish towel instead. Hot wings, deep-dish pizza, and mac and cheese.
“What’re you talking about?” Darius asked.
I met his frown as I brought the two plates to the table, and it was time to fess up. “You talk in your sleep.”
He flinched and clenched his jaw. “Do I even wanna know…?”
I wasn’t sure. I had hardly any details to paint me a picture of the circumstances, but when someone groaned about a suicide belt in his sleep, you didn’t need much more information to know that your friend had been to hell and back.
I cleared my throat and grabbed us a couple Cokes and the wing sauce before I took my seat across from him.
“You were trying to get someone called Liman to listen to you,” I said. “You’ve said his name the most. Or yelled it. Pleaded it.”
Darius stared at his plate. His fingers twitched—other than that, no visible reaction.
“On your most restless nights, you’ve tossed and turned and muttered about a suicide belt,” I finished quietly.
He cursed under his breath. “I should’ve stayed at home. I shouldn’t have come to you, man.”
“No, I’m very glad you did.” I couldn’t tell him that enough. “I don’t want you to be alone right now.”
Darius blew out a breath and opened his Coke. “Ironically, none of that played a significant part of my assignment. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, waiting for an informant when… There was another informant, a widowed café owner with two sons. I’d written him off as too suspect, and I guess I was right.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I wasn’t about to push. As long as words came out of his mouth, I considered it a win. Because he needed to talk.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he went on, “say you have the option of stopping someone wearing a suicide belt. This person stands in the middle of a busy street, surrounded by civilians. You can kill him or watch him blow up dozens of people.”