Page 12 of Rock Bottom

Let’s hope so. I saw him blush earlier and almost died.

Jake

Pics?

Fuck no. He’s mine. Get your own fantasy man.

Or sorry… woman. I forgot you were boring and straight.

Jake

Just ‘cause I’m straight doesn’t make me boring. I like spice.

The Spice Girls don’t count as spice.

Jake

Ok, but they’re all still hot.

Only if you’ve got mommy issues.

Jake

Seriously though. How are you doing?

I chewed on my bottom lip and stared at the screen, not sure how to answer. The truth was…complicated. I wasn’t exactly jonesing for a drink or a pill twenty-four seven, but I still wasn’t convinced I was better off without all that. Being drunk and high was like living life on easy mode. Who wouldn’t want that?

But I couldn’t tell my best friend the truth. He didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to hear that I was okay, that I was getting better, and that I’d be back soon.

All good, man. Counting down the days.

Jake

Me too. It’s not the same here without you.

I lowered the phone and cast a longing glance out the window. I could just barely see Church pacing in the trees. I couldn’t lose sight of why I was there, even if he was a nice distraction.

I texted Jake back:

Same bro. See you in a month.

The grounds were too large to patrol. It was the one weakness of the location. I couldn’t walk the entire perimeter and keep an eye on the house, so I settled for a few yards out. As long as I could see the back porch light, I was close enough to respond if anything happened.

Going back inside was the last thing I wanted to do until I cooled my head.

My initial assessment of Dante had been that he was a typical party boy celebrity who spent his days having everything handed to him, and his nights drunk or coked out with hookers. I thought I would be babysitting an addict with a god complex.

In a lot of ways, I was, but Dante was also quite different from what I expected. He seemed more lost than anything. He reminded me of myself when I was young, before the Army made a man of me. Rudderless, lonely, and without purpose.

I shook my head before I could dip too far into thoughts of the past. That way lay madness. I had to let the past go and learn to live in the present.

Picking my way eastward through the forest, I scanned the trees, but all I saw were squirrels and deer signs.

I would’ve missed the old campfire if I hadn’t nearly tripped on the charred remains. Scattered around them were other signs that someone had been there in the last few days: a cigarette butt, a granola bar wrapper, a dented tin cup.

There wasn’t anything unusual about the campsite except where it was located. Whoever had camped there would’ve had a perfect view of the back end of the house. That didn’t mean anything, since the house had been empty. We were in the woods at the height of summer. People camped. The bloke who’d been there probably just wandered across the property line without realizing it, made camp, and then packed up when the sun came up.

I’d keep an eye on the woods for the next few days just to be on the safe side, but I expected it would amount to nothing.

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