Page 23 of My Brother's Bad Best Friend

“I’m not ashamed of the shit I did,” he says softly, watching as Don lands another impressive trick and Vinny laughs, throwing his board in the air with fake exasperation. “It’s just, I’m not a fucking role model, and those three idiots are looking for one.”

“Three?” I ask. “Even Don?”

“Especially Don. I’ve been pushing him toward skating pretty hard, but I know he thinks being a dope boy is probably the best shot he has at a good life.”

“Dope boy?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Dealer, whatever. That’s just the life he was brought up in. Where he’s from, the dealers are the rock stars, the guys with fancy cars and girls and nice stuff. Every kid dreams about selling enough coke to buy a mansion like fucking Scarface.”

The picture he’s painting of San Diego is completely unfamiliar to me. Where I’m from, the rock stars are all the mega rich, the ones that’ve been rich for generations and love to talk all about the accolades of long-dead relatives. Everyone wanted to be famous but nobody wanted to work for it, and so the whole culture was built around tearing each other down and bragging about wealth.

“It’s like that where I come from too,” I say. “Not exactly. But everyone wants to be someone else, right?”

He smirks a little bit. “What do you know about that, little rose?”

I wince and he must immediately realize his mistake, because he leans away from me as I draw into myself. He curses softly but I shake my head and look away, out at Don and the boys goofing around, having a good time with each other, ignoring the shitty world around him.

“I didn’t mean anything by that,” he says softly. “I know you’ve been through your fair share of shit.”

“Yeah.” I can’t meet his gaze.

He shifts a little bit closer. “You ever want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

“Thanks. I’m sick of talking about it, though.”

“Good.” He’s closer to me now and I feel his hand on my thigh. “I didn’t want to hear some rich girl whine about how her asshole boyfriend got his dumb ass killed.”

My gaze snaps to him, eyes wide. I can’t believe he just said that, so casually and cavalier. That night comes back to me: Nathan’s eyes, wide but seeing nothing, blood running down his battered and destroyed skull. I pull myself along the ground, screaming, crying, pain lancing through my body as I try to shake him awake and his body just falls onto its back, unmoving, never waking up again.

“The thing is, little rose, pain isn’t special.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” I shift away from hm.

“It doesn’t have to be, at least. That’s how I deal with all my shit. I keep telling myself, I’m just one more suffering asshole on this trash heap of a suffering planet.”

“Real helpful,” I say, standing up. “Where’d you read that, Chicken Soup for the Drug Dealing Asshole’s Soul?”

His grin flickers back and he just shrugs. “You got me,” he says. “Sit back down. Don’s about to do something cool.”

I stare at him like he’s insane. He just insulted me, basically told me to stop being such a little baby about what happened to me, and he has no clue, no clue at all. My legs were smashed and I spent months in bed, and after that, I had to learn to walk without a cane. It took me two years of limping around, and I’m still in pain every day. It gets better, a little more manageable, but it hurts every day. And on top of that, my asshole stepfather decides it’s time to punch me in the fucking face because I think it’s insane for him to make my mom get pregnant at fifty. My whole life’s crashing down around me, my whole future going up in smoke, and he just smirks with that handsome face of his, eyes staring into mine.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a joint. With a practiced and almost thoughtless grace, he pops the joint between his lips and takes a nice, long hit.

“Come on,” he says again, letting the smoke slide between his lips. “You can hate me all you want, but what else are you gonna do? Might as well stick around and have some fun.”

I glare at him, hands balled into fists. What does this asshole know about pain? What the hell does he know about anything?

But just like that, it slowly fades away. Jonas knows about pain, all about it. I’ve heard the rumors about him, and some of it has to be true. The fights he got into, the girlfriends he got pregnant, the drugs he took, all of it. There has to be something there past his asshole attitude, and based on the way his eyes flash at me, I think there really might be.

Slowly I sit back down. He passes me the joint with a wink, but I don’t smoke it. “No, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He takes another long drag and I watch as Don grinds along a low box before landing with his back truck in the air. He wobbles and balances before finally dropping back down with a laugh.

I don’t know what I’m doing here, how I found myself in a skate park with San Diego’s most notorious drug dealing prick. If anyone else had said what he said to me, and with such a cavalier attitude, I would’ve slapped him in the face and bolted as fast as my broken legs would take me. Instead, I’m sitting here with him again as he smokes his joint, watching Don and the boys mess around on their boards, Shrink filming it every time Don goes in for a new trick.

It’s stupid, this shouldn’t be my life, but I’m not getting up. I’m not going anywhere.

He cocks his head at me one more time, holding up the joint. “You sure?”

I hesitate. “I’ve never smoked before.”

“You’ll like it. Just pull some smoke into your mouth then breathe it in.” He holds it out to me. “Go ahead. Just don’t take too much.”

I take the joint from his fingers. I hesitate. I’ve never smoked pot. It was always forbidden, something the low-class druggies at school did. But fuck it, I’m not at school anymore. That old life is gone and has been for a while now.

I put the joint at the end of my lips, suck in some smoke, and breathe it into my lungs, hot and harsh. I cough and Jonas laughs as he moves closer to me, making my whole body vibrate with anticipation, or maybe it’s just the weed moving into my system. I don’t know and I don’t care, because I’m here.

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