Page 116 of Play Fast (Brooklyn Dawn 2)

Okay, minus the drinking. I’d gone out with Coop the other night and had bypassed alcohol for a lime and Coke and a serious discussion about first, saving for retirement—Coop’s suggestion—and second, how to get Daisy to believe I wasn’t a worthless fucknut.

Coop hadn’t been impressed with the couple of extra scratch-offs I’d saved in a jar as a retirement plan. Apparently, five-hundred didn’t get you much in annuities these days. Then he’d brought the hammer down and told me that I should probably make sure I wasn’t a worthless fucknut, if I wanted to convince her.

Not drinking until I passed out was a good start.

I didn’t always have a problem with alcohol. I’d gone weeks and months without touching much of the stuff. But around the anniversary every year, I tended to backslide. I couldn’t do that anymore. My sister was gone, and I missed her every damn day. I always would. But self-destructing in her name was just an excuse.

I had to be better than that.

So, I’d started by cleaning out my cupboards in my apartment in the city. I’d ditched every form of alcohol I had, including the rubbing kind used for cuts. Sarah had watched me, saying nothing, until that particular moment, when she had doubled over in laughter. I think it had tickled her far too much to imagine me consuming rubbing alcohol to see the valiant effort I was making.

“It’s the point.”

“There’s alcohol in hand sanitizer too.”

Didn’t it just figure? “Fuck. Well, that will have to remain on the list. Daisy needs that.”

And I needed her. More with every passing hour.

I’d hoped opening a vein at the show would at least soften Daisy toward me again. I was wrong. She’d split mid show and I hadn’t seen her since.

Sarah was keeping her distance for the most part. She stuck closer when I went out, especially as the date of my appearance ticket neared and the cockroaches—I’m sorry, tabloid journalists—had again emerged from underneath their kitchen sinks to cluster around my building. Or holes in the earth.

She’d come in for a meal now and then during her shift, and I couldn’t deny the company was better than whatever deafening music I put on to pretend I wasn’t alone. Suddenly, that whole solitude thing didn’t hold much interest for me.

In the silence, I found myself flipping through old photo albums. Looking at picture

s I hadn’t touched in years. Most of the books were caked in dust from living in a box at the back of my closet. I’d never been ready to see Kerry or my mom again. Why did I need to? They lived in my memories.

Turned out the pictures pulled something loose in me just the same. I’d been so much younger then. Chronologically, not that much. In reality? Lifetimes.

Daisy had been in a bunch of the snapshots too. Her arm slung around my sister, their smiles huge and goofy like the young teens they’d been. In one, she and my mom had been dancing in our small, rundown kitchen, probably to some soul classic favorite of my mom’s. She’d listened to Marvin Gaye, Al Green, and Teddy Pendergrass from the time the sun came up until it went down. I’d always been too busy to pay attention to much in those days, but Daisy had slid seamlessly into our family.

She’d always taken care, when I’d been so fucking careless.

I flipped through the albums my mom had meticulously kept, laughing at some of the pictures, reminiscing with others, and needing to walk it off a few times when it came to the rest. My life was in those dusty books, and I’d fought so hard to lock it away so it didn’t hurt anymore. But I’d locked away the good too. I’d shoved my mom and my sister into the darkness when seeing them again eased the ache in my chest, just a little.

The last page of the final album had a photo from the last month Kerry had been alive. Somehow it was of the three of us, but Kerry had been more off to the side. I’d had my arm around both of them and was smiling at the camera—shockingly—as was Kerry.

Daisy was smiling too. Up at me.

Her hand was on my chest, her face tilted up toward mine. I didn’t know if I was seeing what I wanted to or if there was something there. If she’d felt for me then what that photo suggested.

If somehow, someway she still felt that way about me now.

I pulled it out from underneath the clear page protector, rubbing away the gummy film on the back from where it had been placed in the album. My sister’s small, precise handwriting hit me like…well, like only my baby sister could do.

Daze and the love of her life. Oh, and me.

2015 was written in a heart.

God, I was an idiot.

Touching the arrowhead around my neck, I released a long breath. “I hear you. Finally.”

I grabbed my wallet and slid the picture inside into the spot where I’d kept the generic family photo that came with the wallet, because I didn’t have a family anymore.

But I did. They were gone physically, but they were a part of me. Daisy was a part of me.

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