Page 44 of Missing Piece
The thought of that cold tongue exploring his was insane at best, obscene at worst. But he wanted to do it. So, so bad.
“I’m not most people,” he said.
Vincent smiled again, that genuine, not cocky smile that made his lower abdomen tight and nervous. “No, you certainly aren’t.” He reached up and brushed Adam’s bangs away from his forehead. “Even with your face like this, you still look like you could take on the world. What made you like this?”
He furrowed his brow at the phrasing. “I don’t know,” he began. He could think of a dozen reasons he had certain reactions to certain stimuli. He understood why he was such a relentless douchebag in school. He understood the medical reasons his brain constantly sought out instant pleasure over delaying gratification. He even understood his refusal to acknowledge his lack of wholeness. But what exactly made him the human embodiment of bad decisions? That wasn’t something he bothered to reflect on.
“Bullshit.”
Vincent may as well have punched him in his bruised rib. He stared straight ahead, trying to find the best way to phrase what he could say. But what could he say?
Try the truth.
“My family fucking sucks,” he blurted out. Then the words kept coming, once again finding his mouth before they found his brain. “My dad was starting a law firm, my mom was miserable as a stay-at-home mom, and my little sister died of SIDS. Mom had a bunch of stays in the hospitalbecause she couldn’t stop drinking and taking Ativan, and my dad just worked longer hours so he didn’t have to deal with her. I didn’t get good grades or want to do anything great by the time I was in middle school, so I thought that if I got into the same things my dad liked, he would at least show some affection. And for the year that I played golf with him, he did.”
“He’d take me to work with him and tell everyone there that I was going to be the boss one day, and then we’d go golf. I hated golf. It’s a stupid, stupid sport for rich assholes and it’s boring, but at the end of the day, having my dad not be disappointed in me for a few hours a week was better than dealing with my mom. So I pretended to love golf until the day I stepped in a sink hole and fucked up my leg.”
His throat tightened, like he had swallowed a ball and it was trapped in his throat. He took another swig of rakija, grimacing as he continued, “I had two surgeries to fix it when I was fourteen. That’s when I started taking pills. And those pills were the answer I didn’t know I needed. They didn’t solve my dad being shitty or my mom being a mess or my sister being dead, but they made me not care about any of that shit. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was staying fucked up. And that was okay for a while. I hid it well, or they just ignored it. And then the accident happened…”
He shook his head, pulling up the pajama pants so he could look down at his prosthetic. “I went to a party with some friends when I turned sixteen, and we all got stupid at this older guy’s house who let people party there as long as they brought booze for him. Drinking, random pills, weed, shrooms, the works. Everything was fine. We all passed out. But I woke up and this creep trying to get my pants off andI freaked out. I grabbed a friend I was with and wanted to leave, but we were both too fucked up to drive and couldn’t find the keys to his car, so I called my mom for help.”
His eyes stung with the threat of tears, so he closed them, bowing his head. Vincent squeezed his shoulder, his touch soft and reassuring. But he stayed silent. “I should have known she would be messed up, but she sounded fine on the phone, so we let her pick us up. And right before she drifted into oncoming traffic and hit some family head on, like a dumbass, I popped my feet up on the dashboard and fell asleep.”
He could hear the tone of his voice rising so he stopped. His father’s voice echoed in his ears,‘Real men don’t cry. Strong men don’t lose control. Never show you’re weak.’
Well, he was feeling pretty fucking weak. He was more than a little tipsy, more tears threatening to break free from his closed eyes, his entire chest spasming as he fought the sob building in his chest at the memory of crawling through broken glass across the asphalt, watching his mother stumble away from the scene and leaving him there as the few cars on the road at five in the morning stopped to help.
His eyes popped open when he realized the enormity of what he had just confessed. “Shit, I’ve never told anyone that my mom was the one driving that night,” he said, swallowing hard. “Vincent, you can’t tell anyone. No one is supposed to know.”
“It’s okay, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Vincent said softly, grabbing his hand. “I’m not exactly the type to run around telling secrets. And you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Clenching his fist, his chest tight and his face on fire as the tears finally began to roll down his cheeks. “I did. I let myparents blame the whole thing on my friend. They said it wouldn’t be that bad for him because he was a minor, and my mom already had one DUI. A-and then there was the other car.” The sob escaped and he tensed. It was that kind of sob that would keep going if he let it. “I-I-I was being a selfish, reckless piece of shit and I ruined lives that day, and instead of being thankful that I only lost my foot, I just g-got angrier and—”
“Adam, stop—”
“—every time I saw the kid from the other car, I was terrible to him. Just seeing him at school—I couldn’t take it. So I’d do more drugs and say horrible things. I did horrible things. Because it made me feel less shitty. I tricked myself into blaming all my fucked up shit on other people, and for all I know that dude killed himself because of me—”
“Adam, you’re hyperventilating, you need to—”
He knew just needed to shut the fuck up and drink until he passed out, but the floodgates were open and he couldn’t stop. “I deserve this shit, all of it. I’m a useless fucking junkie, just taking up space. I should have just died in that accident, but I guess I couldn’t even do that right. I don’t even know why you’ve kept me alive this long. You should just do everyone a fucking favor and kill me already.”
“Adam, STOP.” Vincent grabbed his face and kissed him.
Vincent’s cool lips on his stopped his racing thoughts so suddenly he was pretty sure he heard brakes squealing. It was a painful kiss, and Vincent’s grip on his face was anything but gentle, but he closed eyes and just breathed through his nose, his chest heaving. Had he really been hyperventilating like that? His head swam, all of him off balance, but the longer Vincent’s lips lingered on his, some semblance of self-controlreturned despite his heart threatening to burst through his chest at any moment.
He pursed his lips as more tears rolled down his cheeks as Vincent pulled away. “Adam, look at me,” Vincent whispered, loosening his grip on his face.
He couldn’t. Not after he let that out. No one was ever supposed to know about all of it, and yet he just word-vomited all over his own lap. He didn’t want to see the reaction to his weakness. But when he heard a small, barely audible, “Please”, he forced his eyes open.
“Don’t say anything like that ever again,” Vincent said in a low voice, his eyes wide. “You’re not just the worst thing you’ve ever done. No one is. I won’t kill you, because I don’t want to kill you.”
He opened his mouth to say something. Anything. But nothing came to mind, mostly because he hadn’t expected Vincent to react so strongly. But even as his bubbling panic faded into the foggy alcohol haze of his mind, he couldn’t stop staring at Vincent, even as his chest spasmed as it attempted to bring that sob back to his lips.
Vincent’s thumb swiped over the tears still drying on his burning cheeks, his lips parting slightly as he took in a shaky breath. “I’ve done things I regret too. I’ve been the reason people died. I can’t go back and fix it, and neither can you. Hurting yourself with drugs doesn’t fix what happened. It doesn’t make their lives better.”
He shook his head in Vincent’s grip, trying to push away the idea of kissing him again and the idea that maybe, just maybe, he had buried himself in a misery he didn’t deserve. He did deserve it. He deserved every torturous craving, every painful symptom of withdrawal, he deserved the injuriescovering every inch of him. This gentleness, the kindness radiating from Vincent in waves…he wasn’t worthy of that. “Why? Why do you care? You’ve kept me here to be your food and beat the shit out of me for no reason. Why do you care now?”
He watched Vincent’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he suddenly seemed at a loss for words. “I don’t know,” he said.
