“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
Sid knew what it meant to him, but Dante was unlike anyone he’d ever met, so assumption felt dangerous. He pulled on the joint and closed his own eyes. “I don’t know anything once the sun goes down. Smokes and dinner, it’s all I’ve got.”
“Works for me.” Dante plucked the joint from Sid’s outstretched hand. “And to answer your first question, I wasn’t going to come. I figured you were just being polite by asking because it makes no sense that you’d want to have dinner with me after being stuck with me all day.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. A thousand times. Then I saw you through the window and I was halfway here before I knew what I was doing, so make sense of that, because I fucking can’t.”
Sid opened his eyes. Dante was still gazing at the forest. Sid nudged him and blamed the resulting buzz in his arm on anything he could think of that wasn’t the undeniable attraction building inside him. “Do you need to make sense of everything? Is that how your brain works?”
Dante shrugged. “I never thought so until recently, but maybe. That’s kind of what happened to me tonight. I was stuck on a loop trying to understand something without looking at it properly, and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall when I couldn’t do it.”
Sid took his turn on the joint and regarded Dante through hazy eyes. He’d never struck him as violent or so wild with his emotions that he’d lash out. But was that the problem? If one even existed? That Dante simmered and simmered and simmered until something awful broke free? “You should punch the wall next time. Get it over with.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“What were you trying to understand?”
Dante sighed and slid his hand into the back pocket of his shorts. He retrieved a crumpled envelope and held it out, unopened. “My probation officer gave me this. He said it was from my brother, but it’s not.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s not his writing.”
“So? Doesn’t mean he didn’t send it.”
“Why would he send me something someone else wrote?”
“Why does anyone do anything?” Sid took the envelope and turned it over. Dante’s name was scrawled in messy, spiky handwriting, but other than that, the envelope didn’t seem particularly intimidating. It was light and thin, almost as if it held nothing at all. “You could open it and find out.”
Silence.
Sid passed the last of the joint back to Dante and considered his options. Punching a hole in the wall called to his baser instincts—Sid had never worn frustration well—but what if backing Dante into a corner broke him? As much as Sid believed the cool, watchful persona Dante had arrived with, his gut told him there was so much more. That Dante was more breakable than he’d let anyone ever see. “Do you want me to open it for you?”
“Hmm?”
Sid waved the envelope. “I can open it right now, then you can stop worrying about it.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Liar.”
Dante didn’t deny it. He disposed of the finished joint and scrubbed a hand down his face. “That’s good weed, man. I’ve missed this shit.”
“You didn’t smoke in prison? I thought you could get all the good drugs inside.”
“Nasty drugs, you mean. I could smoke all the spice and crack I wanted, but no one bothers to smuggle weed in. It’s not destructive enough to turn a profit.”
I guess you’d know. Sid lost himself a moment in Dante’s reddened eyes and slowly relaxing posture. Then reminded himself that it wasn’t real and whatever turmoil raging in Dante’s complex mind was still there.
Sid found the solid security of the wall behind him and slid to the ground, sitting in the exact spot where Dante had found him, taking the envelope with him.
Dante eyed him, then sighed and sat too. His fingers twitched like he wanted another smoke, but the tin was inside, and Sid knew he wouldn’t fetch it of his own accord.
“What’s so scary about the envelope?” he asked gently. “Would your brother send you something bad?”
Dante twisted his restless hands. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“And you don’t know my brother. He’d never write me an essay on what a cunt he thinks I am. I already know it by his silence—at least, I thought I did until my probation officer told me he’d come up here to see him. I don’t understand why he did that, unless it was . . . fuck.” Dante shook his head. “You don’t want to hear this.”
“Do so.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m selfish and I don’t want our friendship to be all about you helping me up when I fall.”
“Friendship?” A smile reached Dante’s eyes. “Well, as your friend, I can one hundred per cent refute any claim that you’re selfish, so there’s that.”
“Bullshit,” Sid retorted. “But whatever. What I’m saying is I can’t hold you up the way you do me, but I can listen.”
“What if I can’t talk, though? What if I choke every time I try?”
“Then keep trying. Fucking it up a few times won’t kill you.”
“You’re a wise man, Sid.”
“I’m a bit of a knob, actually. Ask my sister.”
Dante chuckled, soft and deep. “Does she look like you?”
“Nope. I’ll show you a photo if you tell me what you’re scared you’ll find in this envelope.”
Dante took a breath and started to shake his head. Then his hands curled into fists and he knocked them hard on the concrete post behind him. “I’m scared Luis got someone else to tell me to leave him alone forever. And I was scared of it the whole time I was inside—that one day I’d get a letter back to the ones I wrote him and it would be over. There. Happy now?”
Sid’s heart stuttered in his chest. He found no joy in Dante’s pain. “Do you think he’d do that after all this time?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I can get up in his face if he stays in London.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed. I have to stay out of London as a condition of my release.”
“For how long?”
“Three years, unless I contest it, but I would never do that to him. I want him to have somewhere he can be without worrying I’m gonna ruin it for him.” Dante turned the volume up in his gaze and pinned Sid in place with it. “Because I did that before—I never gave him a chance when he got out.”
Sid held the envelope up. “That doesn’t mean he won’t give you a chance. You told me before he was different. Let him prove it.”
Dante looked nauseous. “I—whatever. Open it then. I don’t care.”
“Liar.” Sid opened the envelope before Dante could change his mind and scanned the short note as fast as his blurred vision allowed. A breath escaped him before words formed, and Dante blanched, already rising to walk away.