Page 87 of Body Count

He followed me to the door.And when we got there, he surprised me with a hug.It went on longer than I expected.And it kept going.After a few seconds, pins and needles started dancing through me, and I had to stare at the wall behind him.

“In case you didn’t hear me earlier,” he said, and it sounded like he was fighting to keep his voice normal, “I love you, bro.”

A wobbly laugh escaped me; it was better than crying.“You said bro.”

“Yeah, dumbass.”He let me go, and then he gave me a gentle thump on the side of the head.“Because you’re my brother.”

I couldn’t look him in the face, but I managed to say, “Your much younger brother.”

“Yeah, well, your much smarter brother is telling you not to rush into anything while you’re emotional.Please, Gray.Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

“Bro,” I said as I let myself out onto the porch.“Look who you’re talking to.”

28

I drove a couple of blocks and pulled over again.My head was buzzing, and I had no idea what to do, but I knew if I sat in front of John-Henry’s house and vaped, he would have come outside, and then there would have been more caring and concern and talking, and eventually, I would have lost my nerve.I wondered if I should have said something else at the end, something better.He had told me he loved me twice.This, I thought, was why it was so fucking difficult to stay angry at John-Henry Somerset.I wondered if I should have told him, in the middle of the hug, I was getting a chub.

My phone told me my fight with Darnell had barely been an hour ago.That seemed impossible; it felt like it had been days.Long, sleepless days.In the heat of the car, the aches from the fight with John-Henry were making themselves known again, and when I settled back in the seat and closed my eyes, I felt myself on the verge of slipping into sleep.

I forced myself to sit up, peel my eyes open, adjust the vents.I needed to do something.I needed to talk to Darnell.A real talk.Maybe the first truly real one in our relationship, if you didn’t count the ugly things we’d said to each other in the fight.But John-Henry had been right about one thing: not yet; we both needed time to cool down.

A notification on my phone showed a voicemail from Peterson.Waiting wasn’t going to make it any better, and it was strangely reassuring to know that John-Henry dreaded these phone calls as much as I was starting to.I played the message, and Peterson’s voice filled the car.

“Detective Dulac, call me back as soon as you get this message.Better yet, get over to the station.I want to look you in the eye while you explain to me why two of the sheriff’s detectives are screaming that you blew up their investigation and scared their lead suspect into running.If you know where Jordan Hodge is, you need to call that boy and tell him to come back to Wahredua right now.”I thought that was the end of the message, but it turned out Peterson had only stopped talking because—it sounded like—he was so angry he actually couldn’t speak for a moment.“And why,” he finally continued in a buckled-down voice, “am I getting calls from a very expensive law firm accusing you of assaulting a citizen in his own home?”He had to stop again, and his voice was a slap when he said, “Get over here right now.”

I deleted the voicemail.The air conditioning was starting to catch up with the heat.I vaped for a while and stared out the windshield.In the mid-afternoon, the sunlight had such a fine edge that I felt like I could see every detail—like each blade of grass had been cut with a diamond tip and pressed neatly into place.I thought maybe I needed to get high.

Something was nagging at me.Something I couldn’t quite pin down.I vaped some more, got comfortable in my seat again, and tried to chase it.It was something John-Henry had said.At the end.Not the part about not doing anything stupid—a little late for that, and what kind of fucking big bro advice was that anyway?No, something else.You’re my brother.

That was nice and sweet and all that, but it reminded me of something I couldn’t put my finger on.Something from the case.I tried to run through it in my head.I still hadn’t had time to think about what Jordan had told me—about his fight with Tip, about the lie they’d cooked up together, about how they’d fucked up this whole investigation from the very beginning.And how they’d accidentally put Darnell—and me—in the hot seat.

It was an accident that the killer had been more than happy to take advantage of.Darnell and I had been the perfect fucking patsies.We’d been so caught up in ourselves, we did most of the work for him—Darnell with his lies, doing whatever he was doing; and me tripping over my own dick every time I turned around.

And while I believed Jordan when he said he hadn’t killed Tip, I also recognized that my own judgment wasn’t exactly trustworthy right now.

Rory.That was part of what was bothering me.Jordan had told me that Rory and Tip were…what?Rivals?Not exactly.Competing with each other.That stupid body count thing.And that was interesting, because Rory hadn’t mentioned it.He’d told me that he and Tip were like brothers—that’s why John-Henry’s comment had sounded familiar.Maybe scorekeeping your sexual encounters wasn’t the kind of thing you brought up when the police were interviewing you about your roommate, but then, most interviewees didn’t fall ass-up on a couch halfway through the conversation either.The competition added a new angle to the relationship between the boys.Maybe it hadn’t been friendly; maybe they’d argued.It was something worth asking, anyway.I needed to talk to Rory, I decided.Hell, maybe he knew where Jordan had gone—if I could track him down, maybe Peterson wouldn’t shit-can me.And if nothing else, I wanted to get that fucking picture of me off the body count board.

I honestly couldn’t bring myself to think about the fact that it had been Rory and his buddies who’d taken me upstairs at Sunny’s house.Talk about rock bottom.

When I parked outside the single-story U of apartments, I didn’t see Rory’s car.That was okay; I didn’t have anywhere else to be.

It was mostly autopilot when I opened up Prowler—something I did because I was bored, the way sometimes, when I was scrolling Twitter, I tried to open Twitter frominsideTwitter, because my feedwas boring and my brain thought there was some other, second-dimension Twitter that would be even more interesting.Not that I was going to go hook up with anybody.Not today.I mean, not right now.

The middle of the day wasn’t exactly the peak time for digital cruising, but I scrolled through faces and torsos and, yes, the occasional peen.The same old stuff, really—the guy whose profile only saidtaking loads, andvers for raw—bb vers looking, and the one who had chosen, as his pic, a cake pop.I stopped on unicorn_vomit, whose profile listed his major accomplishment as being permanently barred from ever entering a T.J.Maxx again.

It was cringey enough—and cute enough—that I sent the message without really letting myself think about it.Bro, please tell me you’re not for real.

To my surprise, a message came back almost immediately.Nah, banned from all T.J.Maxx’s for life.

I wrote back,So, gay hell.

Basically.

I was trying to think of something to write back.I was also doing some serious moral calculus.Like, a handy wouldn’t be wrong, would it?I mean, it’s not like I was doing it out of some fucked-up need for validation and approval because I had zero self-worth and because I had some seriously fucked relationship models.I was just going for a nut.That was, like, pure.

Before I could, though, a message popped up:This you?

A screenshot came through next.I could barely see at the top what appeared to be the name of the site—BangBoysWiki.It did look like a Wikipedia page—the layout, the fonts, all that stuff.But the title of the page said,BANG BOYS’ REAL NAMES.And then there was a list.My head felt like a drum, my heartbeat trapped and getting louder and louder.

---