Page 52 of Burning for Alexander
“Yeah, uh. Okay,” I said. “Thanks for dinner. It was amazing.”
Within moments, he was gone. And I found myself staring at the empty doorway and the empty driveway beyond.
It was for the best, really. Because being with him had reminded me painfully of the man I’d lost. The one I still desperately wanted to find.
An hour later, when I couldn’t get thoughts of either man out of my head, I dialed my friend Max.
“You remember how you said I owed you one, but we both know you owed me one instead?” I said after the pleasantries.
“He saves me one time from getting beaten up for borrowing Anthony Varrasso’s headphones without his permission when I was fourteen,” Max grumbled, complaining good-naturedly asusual. Which was fine since he would do just about anything for me, and I’d do just about anything for him, too.
I heard background noises like he was out with friends, but he hadn’t hesitated to take my call, and even now, his voice turned serious as he asked, “What do you need, Judd?”
Ordinarily, I might have told him it was no big deal and to call me back later, but my mind was whirling. So instead of giving him an out, I continued. “You said you had a friend who was a private detective, right?”
“Few of them, actually. One was a detective on the force and retired early to go into the private sector. Then there’s the woman he hired on. Frannie. She’s a hoot and smart as shit. Also hot as fuck in bed. Oh, and remember that guy Buck we went to school with? He’s with a security firm that does background checks and shit. Not hot in bed, though. What are you looking for?”
I hesitated. How far was I willing to go to find someone who didn’t seem to want to be found?
Max knew what I was thinking without me saying a word. “This is about the forum guy, isn’t it? Are you finally gonna take my advice and try and run him down?”
I blew out a breath. “I don’t know. Might be nice to get closure.”
That wasn’t really true, and Max and I both knew it. What I really wanted was to find him.
“Alright, I’ll send you the name of an investigator. But Judd…”
I steeled myself for the lecture about falling for a guy I’d met on the internet. He’d already given it to me once or twelve times before when I returned to Philly from Germany after the mortar attack that had cost me four months of my life… and my relationship withDrunkenPoet.
“You deserve better than someone who gave up on you that easily. You’ve been all over those forums for years now, makingyourself as visible as possible. If he wanted to find you, it wouldn’t be hard.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I gritted out. “I told you already. We didn’t have a defined relationship or any kind of understanding. I would never have expected him to wait four months for word from me. Wouldn’t you have given up on someone after four months of no word?”
“If I didn’t care about the guy? Sure. But I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to avoid those forums for years, J.”
Max’s words weren’t intentionally cruel. He was trying to help me move on in his no-bullshit way. But I knewDrunkenPoethadn’t moved on because he hadn’t cared about me enough. I suspected he’d moved on because hehad.
And that wasn’t something I was willing to walk away from easily.
“Send me the name of the investigator,” I said. “And go back to your friends.”
“Okay, but now you really do owe me one, right?” he teased.
“Yes, Max. I owe you one.”
I ended the call with a smile on my face. I may not have had a biological brother, but I was convinced Max Franco was even better than a real brother would have ever been.
And with his help, maybe I would finally find myDrunkenPoet… or put his memory to rest for good so I could move on.
15
ALEX
DrunkenPoet:What if we meet and we don’t click in person? What if this is all just fantasy?
IndexEcho:Then we’ll have had something beautiful for however long it lasted. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
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