Page 32 of Wandering in Darkness
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says.
“I can’t. I can’t deal with you.”
My chest is tight and I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m crashing. When I look down, my hands are shaking, and I can see that blood spray out. I can hear the sound the round makes when it goes through the skull and into his brain.
Suddenly, there’s a hand on me, and I look down as Antonio squeezes my thigh. “Hey, stay with me. Yeah? We’re just going to do this thing and then snatch up Lane and Felix and get the fuck out of here, yeah? I’m going to call my mom, and she can deal with Ned. Okay? Let’s do that. That’ll be fun. You’ll like my mom. She’s a delight for sure.”
My chest is so tight that I can’t figure out if it’s going to stop working or realize that I really do need to breathe to live.
A phone appears on my lap and I assume it’s to call Antonio’s mom, since we don’t have our phones any longer, but when I pick it up, I see it’s a compilation of Traveler doing doggy things. He’s such a goofy dog.
My fingers are shaking so much that I struggle to flip to the next picture, but somehow I accomplish it.
“I really didn’t mean to draw you into this. You were supposed to take Traveler and go home. I don’t even know how you ended up here,” Grayson says.
I ignore him, refusing to tell him that we purposely came here, and why? I knew it could lead to seeing him, so did a part of me want to see him? Did I want answers? My stomach tightens as I stare at the phone until I hit the end of the pictures. By then,the shaking in my hands has diminished enough that I can hand it to Antonio, who then stares at it.
“Umm… I… don’t actually know my mother’s phone number,” he says with a grimace.
“Do you know anyone’s phone number?”
“Uhh… my home phone that my mom got rid of once cell phones became a thing. I’m not sure it’ll help us much. Ha… haha.”
“Give me that back, then,” I say, taking the phone and going back to pictures of the dog.
Grayson leans forward. “Once we get to the location, you two stay in the car, do you understand?”
“Let me guess, the order was that you stay in the car and send the two of us in?” I ask.
Antonio looks over at us. “I mean, we all understand that we’re not going there and handing off a box of marijuana, right? I’m not sure whether Ned’s operation is legal or not, but it doesn’t look like it’s a huge drug operation. So are they using the marijuana as a cover-up to get involved with something? And then the most important question… what’s in the fucking box?”
He eyes the back of the SUV where the box we’re supposed to deliver sits, but neither of us can see it from the front seat.
“I bet it’s a head. We could put Grayson’s head in there and then it would betwoheads. And then the dog would be mine forever,” I decide.
“If you forgive me, we can coparent him,” Grayson says.
“Putting your head in the box sounds significantly easier,” I admit, even though everyone in this vehicle is well aware that the threat is absolutely ridiculous. Would I seriously reach back and pluck his head off? Obviously, my threats need some work.
“So, asshole motherfucker tiny dick,” I say. “How’d you become a drug dealer?”
“The less you know, the better,” Grayson answers, which irritates me even more.
“You’re right. I will never speak to you again.”
“Cal, please. That’s not what I meant. Why are you so stubborn? Were you always this stubborn?”
“Sure was. I only pretended I wasn’t because you were hot and I wanted to have sex with you. And now I just give no shits. I don’t care what people think of me. I have no one to impress.”
“You impress me,” Antonio says.
“Says the drug-running, car-chasing ex-con,” I retort.
Antonio waves it off like it was nothing. “They’re exaggerating.”
“So you didn’t steal a policeman’s car?”
“I… did.”
