Page 79 of Body Count

Then Darnell made a sleep-soft noise, and I remembered.

“Sorry,” I said thickly.I patted his arm.“Bathroom.”

He settled back again, his breathing already evening out.

In the dark, with the door shut, I splashed water on my face and then stood there, dripping over the sink, shaking.It had been a long time.It was a dream.It always ended that way.In real life, I reminded myself, I’d just about knocked his fucking block off with that broom.Put him in the hospital.He’d told everybody he’d gotten jumped, and the doctors and nurses had taken one look at me and Mom and known.The police had known too.One of them, an older guy with a handlebar mustache, had pulled me aside and said if it happened again, to give him a call.Not 911, he said.Him.But it hadn’t happened again.He’d never touched either of us again.And it was just a dream.

I stood there for a long time, eyes squeezed shut, hands clutching the vanity so hard my hands hurt.

Eventually, I pried myself free and showered.I dressed in my room; I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the tank and shorts.I carried the photograph and my vape out to the patio, and I sat and vaped.A cricket chirped steadily toward the back of the lot, and a breeze rose and fell, stirring the soupy summer air.I pinned the photo to the wrought-iron table with one finger.

Ten minutes later—maybe fifteen—the door opened, and Darnell emerged from the house.He’d pulled on a T-shirt and his boxers, and he looked the way he did Saturday mornings.The way he used to.Hair sticking up in back.Eyes still sleepy.He was scratching his side as he looked around, squinting against the day’s brightness.

“What’re you doing out here?”he asked.

I hit my vape and raised my eyebrows.

In a tone straddling serious and playful, he said, “Uh oh.Are you going to put that in your log?”

“Maybe,” I said and hit the vape again.

He took one of the chairs.He still hadn’t noticed the photograph.Plucking at his shirt, he glanced around again.“It’s hot.”

The cricket sounded louder.More insistent.Frantic.

Darnell leaned back in the chair, and the metal frame squeaked.“Do you want to go inside?I’m starting to sweat.”And then: “What’s that?”

I pushed the photo across the table to him, but I kept my finger on it so it wouldn’t blow away.The confusion on his face changed to surprise.And then color rose under his beard.He leaned back again, arms folded across his chest, and finally managed to look me in the eye.

“You want to say anything?”I asked.

“Not really.”

That made me smile.“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”But he spoiled it by adding, “We’re in an open relationship, Gray.We agreed to be in an open relationship.And we agreed that we weren’t going to ask each other questions.”

I set down my vape and angled my chair to face him.The sound of the metal scraping across the concrete raised the hair on the back of my neck.

“How did you get this?”Darnell asked.“Do you have cameras in my room?Because that’s really invasive.That’s not okay.Maybe we should revisit this whole idea of an open relationship—”

“You fucked a boy who was found dead in this house.”I didn’t shout.I didn’t raise my voice.Darnell cut his eyes away.“Fuck agreements.Fuck rules.You didn’t think you needed to tell me?”

It took him longer this time to strike the right note.“No.It was one time.And it was a mistake—I knew it was a mistake.”

“You’re goddamn right it was a mistake.”

“I don’t appreciate that tone—”

“You are a suspect.”In the wake of the words, the afternoon had a hot, crushed stillness, like every other sound had been flattened into nothing.The breeze lifted sweat-damp hair off the back of my neck, but that was silent too.Or maybe it was me, because I felt like I couldn’t hear anything.“Do you understand that?They think you did this.Or that we did it together.I don’t care that you were throwing it to some stupid kid.”But a part of me thought, In our bed.“I don’t care if you go out and find every fucked-up twink between here and Kansas City.But how fucking stupid do you have to be not to tell me about this?”

The change, when it came, was strangely familiar: the way he straightened, the tension in his body easing, shoulders opening.And then I recognized it.He’d been doing it for a year.No, I thought.For a lot longer.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.“They don’t think we did anything to that kid.Not really.You’re dysregulated, and you’re not thinking clearly.Let’s go back inside—”

“Don’t do that.”

He shifted slightly, as though I’d slipped out of the frame somehow and he was trying to get a better view of me.“When was the last time you—”

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