Page 10 of Necessary Cruelty

My bad attitude and general viciousness make sure of that.

“Maybe you need a few more hits, man. You look tense as hell.”

The vape hangs loosely in my hand, and I realize I haven’t taken a pull from it in several minutes. It’s gone cold, so the heating element has probably shut off. I don’t know where my head is right now, but it definitely isn’t here.

I study the room through the haze of smoke, wondering how soon I can kick most of these assholes out of my place. There are even a few people I don’t recognize, more evidence of how off my game I am tonight.

Maybe I should screw Sophia like she so desperately seems to want. If I make her do something depraved enough, I might actually feel something.

“You looking for anyone in particular?” Cal asks, following my gaze as it tracks around the room.

“Nope. I pride myself on keeping chicks interchangeable.”

“You’ve always been all heart, Cortland.”

That is the pot calling the kettle an asshole. Cal has been combing pussy out of his hair ever since he came back from a year abroad with his father’s family in Italy talking with a slight accent. I guarantee he hasn’t been keeping a catalogue of their names, and I’m almost certain he wouldn’t recognize most of them on sight. “You’re confusing my heart with my dick.”

“Tell that to Sophia.” Cal slouches further down on the couch as a random brunette straddles him. He brings a beer to his lips and takes a swig, barely looking at the girl on his lap. “You’ve had that fish on the hook for months, and you still haven’t reeled it in. What’s up with that?”

Girlfriends. Permanence. Commitment. Those might as well be four-letter words to us and a great way to mess up a good thing.

But it’s all starting to feel empty.

I shake off the disturbing thoughts as Cal continues to stare me down. The look on his face might mean something to me if I hadn’t smoked enough weed to kill off an acre of farmland, but I know I don’t like it.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, okay.”

His expression turns musing as he surveys me. I can tell from his expression that he’s about to say something to get under my skin. Cal is one of the few people on planet Earth that I let give me shit, and he takes full advantage of the privilege. “Unless there is someone else that you’re thinking about, like Zaya Milbourne maybe.”

No one says her name. No one acknowledges her presence. No one so much as speaks to her without my permission. Those are the rules that have been in place since freshman year when the kids from the Gulch funnel their shitty middle school into Deception High.

Anyone else would be flying through the plate glass door, but Cal is one of my closest friends.

Instead, I pluck a still lit cigarette from the ashtray on the table. Moving fast enough that Cal doesn’t have a chance to react, I press the end into the exposed skin of his knee just below the line of his shorts.

“Jesus Christ, man.” Cal leaps back with a curse as he frantically brushes ash from his leg and inspects the mark on his skin. “This better not leave a scar, you psycho.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” My voice is pleasant and easy as I take another pull from the vape and blow cool smoke out through my nose. I know I look like a raging bull from a cartoon strip, but deliberately keep my voice mild. “What was it you said?”

“Fuck, that hurts.”

“Don’t be a baby, it’s just a little burn.”

“Not all of us enjoy getting burnt up, or cut up.”

Idly, I stroke the scars on the inside of my bicep. There are four of them, cut straight across in a row like hash marks scratched into the wall of a prison cell to mark the days passing. All but one are old enough that I barely feel anything as my fingers pass over the puckered skin. But I tease at the edge of the newest one, feeling it burn as my nail catches on the edge of a fresh scab.

I’ll miss the pain when it heals. I’ll think about the feel of a blade cutting into the sensitive skin, because I know what it represents, but I’ll get another chance. Probably soon.

One for her, and one for me.

“Then watch your damn mouth next time,” I say, no hint of an apology in my voice because there isn’t one there. “It’s out here making promises that you’re sensitive skin doesn’t want to keep.”

My preoccupation with Zaya Milbourne is the stuff of local legends, but no one knows the whole truth. Sometimes I wonder if I even know the truth, as if my mind has manufactured pieces of my own history to make them fit together, even though they’re made for different puzzles. I know Cal likes to tell people the situation is complicated when he thinks I can’t hear him, but my relationship with Zaya is the simplest thing in my life.

She gives, and I take.

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