Page 24 of My Brother's Bad Best Friend

Jonas

Lizzie’s cracking up as we stumble into the apartment. “The three… little… pigs!” She snorts, shaking her head, her hair flying wild.

“I think you’re stoned, little rose,” I say to her, tossing my keys onto a side table.

“Your fault,” she says, blinking up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“Let’s get you inside.”

She giggles and stumbles into the living room. “Home sweet home,” she says, looking at the couch, and suddenly stops in her tracks.

I follow her gaze. Ezra’s sitting there in the dark, drinking a beer. He glares at the two of us and slowly leans forward.

“It’s late,” he says. “Where have you two been?”

I know that voice. He’s sober right now, or at least relatively speaking, and he’s pissed. I already know how this is going to go, and I better get out ahead of it before Hurricane Ezra can do too much damage.

“I was showing her the park,” I say quickly. “Introducing her to some people.”

“The skate park?” He makes a face. “Why’d you take her there?”

“What’s your problem, Ezra?” she says, although the bite is missing from her tone. She giggles a little bit and I groan inwardly.

Ezra makes a face. “Is she fucking high?”

“Just a little weed,” she says. “Don’t be such a prude.”

Ezra stands up and walks over. “Lie down,” he says to her. “Jesus, you’re baked.” He helps her over to the couch and she curls up in a ball at one end, smiling up at him as he tosses a blanket over her. He straightens and glares at me, motioning for me to follow him.

I march out into the backyard with him like a condemned man going to the gallows. I love Ezra, or at least I used to love him before all this drug shit started, but he has a goddamn temper and he’s stubborn as hell. The two combined means that when he finds offense to something, he never lets it go. You’d better apologize and make it right, or you’re dead to him.

“Why the fuck did you get my little sister high?” he says, whirling to glare at me once the door shuts with a soft clank.

“She needed it,” I say. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s having a tough time.”

“She needs to get fucking high?”

I shrug a little bit, leaning up against the metal wall and slipping another joint from my pocket. “That’s what you’ve been doing lately, why not her too?”

“Fuck you, man,” he says. “I’ve been starting a lucrative little side business, no thanks to you.”

I raise an eyebrow. “How deep into this shit are you, E?”

“That’s not important,” he says, waving me off and standing his ground. I know I’m pretty fucked just based on his body language. “What’s important is my little sister.”

I cringe a little bit. Hearing him call Lizzie his “little sister” is like me calling my mom’s pit bull “my puppy.” That dog isn’t mine, and Lizzie is barely his sister. He’s been ignoring her for years, and only gave her the most cursory of attention after that damn accident. He should’ve been there for her, especially knowing the sort of house she was living in.

But he wasn’t, and I didn’t do shit about it, because it wasn’t my problem. At least that’s what I thought about it at the time.

Now though, I’m livid with this asshole. He has the goddamn balls to spend all his time and money getting fucked up and doing god knows whatever else, and I smoke up his sister and somehow I’m the bad guy?

Fuck that shit. I know I shouldn’t dig my heels in, I know it’s a mistake, I fucking know it, but I can’t stop what comes out of my mouth.

“Maybe if you gave a shit about her, you would actually spend more time with her instead of dumping her on me.”

He narrows his eyes. “I didn’t ask you to look after her, asshole.”

“Nah, you didn’t. But she’s a fucking wounded little bird limping around the goddamn shop, what am I supposed to do?”

---