Page 33 of The Order of Disorder
The high’s gone sideways. The warmth in my veins is too thick, the buzz in my brain too loud. Everything is moving a beat too fast—or too slow. I can’t tell.
And underneath it all, like a splinter I can’t dig out, is Wyatt.
Waiting, maybe. Or not.
Maybe he wrote the note and walked away without a second thought. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it was real.
Maybe I’m a fucking idiot for caring.
Maze grunts, breath hitching, and stills. His cum hits the back of my throat, sudden and choking.
I pull off, spit it into a Kleenex and toss it onto the floor. Then I get into bed and roll onto my side, facing the wall. I close my eyes and try to float again, but the drugs are too thin now, and my mind won’t shut the fuck up.
I picture Wyatt outside, waiting. NotRyan, whose patched vest is still half-buried under this bed, butWyatt, the steadiest man I knew. The one I ate dinner with. Watched TV with. Asked for advice. Trusted.
Until I got dragged to hell and found him dancing with the devil.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.
I’ve been learning that since before I could spell my own name.
People come and go. They stay long enough to make you hope, then they’re gone.
Foster moms. Friends. Every kind of love.
Except Billy. Billy’s the one constant I wish I didn’t have.
I’m following Cash up the stairs to Billy’s room. On the first floor, activity is brewing. There’s a party tonight.
Rox and Maze are gone. Just like that.
Billy came to the room last night, voice clipped and vicious. Maze was saying he didn’t bring the heat, that he didn’t know those guys were looking for him. Rox was uncharacteristically edgy, swearing under her breath and pacing.
“I covered your ass once,” said Billy, “but I won’t do it again.”
Afterwards, they started packing. This morning, Rox cried and kissed me and told me that one day the three of us would get a place together in Nashville, that we’ll see each other again.Maze took the whole locked cabinet with them, carrying it out to the trunk of their beat-up car, but folded a small baggie into my hand before they said goodbye.
“Make ‘em last, though, babe,” he told me, and kissed me on the forehead.
For a while I just sat in the empty room, gutted and disoriented—but peaceful, too. It had been a while since I’d had any time to myself. I took a pill. Then two. Then Cash knocked on the door. I guess Billy finally remembered me.
When we reach Billy’s door, Cash knocks and waits for Billy to call us in. Then he holds the door open for me to walk into the familiar space.
It’s nicer than Rox and Maze’s room. A lot nicer. Bigger, but cleaner, too, with a low, king-sized bed with built-in headboard and strip lighting, and everything put away in its place. Billy’s tidy, I’ll give him that. The room smells fresher, cleaner—and familiar, Billy’s expensive cologne hanging in the air. I hate that cologne. It smells oppressive and cloying to me.
He doesn’t look up from where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed until he’s finished lacing his boots. Then he rests his forearms on his knees and looks up at me with a long, low sigh. The kind of sigh my caseworker used to give me when I was being moved to yet another house when I was in the system. As if it’s my fault when people leave or flake out.
I take it as a good sign, though, that my futon is no longer on the floor.
“What am I going to do with you?” he says, half to himself, shaking his head.
“Send me home?”
“Youarehome,” he snaps, standing up. He’s six feet of power. I’m five-three and pretending not to flinch.
He steps closer, looming, then he sighs again, lower this time. Almost wistful.
