Page 29 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

“Ow …”

Even after six months of living on the streets, I still haven’t gotten over that collapse-on-my-bed habit. Which would be fine if my bed wasn’t a thin, plaid sleeping bag that rewards my collapses with backaches.

But the pain fades quickly. It’s no match for how freaking excited I am.

I can make some art.

I plop my butt on the ground, unveil the paints and sketchbook, haul over the water bottle that thankfully has a few sips left, and get going.

My hand moves of its own accord, my eyes hardly seeing what they’re doing. It’s all a blur, mixing colors, dabbing, blending, forming shapes—feeling for something, searching. For what this creation is going to be. A flow, matching the image on the canvas in front of me with the image that’s still forming in my head.

It’s a girl—no, a woman—who’s me, but not. She’s smiling in a way I never could. Standing in the kind of house that a desperate vagabond like me can only dream of.

As it forms, swish by swish, bit by bit, a thin smile takes over my face.

Even after everything that’s happened—losing my job, my home, my family—I can’t cut it out. The insidious habit that’s brought me more pain than happiness, but that refuses to be snuffed out nonetheless.

It.This hoping, this believing in something more.

That this isn’t all my life is going to be.

That I can find a happily ever after.

I peel my eyes off the woman I’ve painted in all yellow, orange, and pink swishes. Her laughing, mocking happiness jars too much with everything around me.

I exhale sadly.

Why can’t I just accept it? Get used to this, to what my life now is.

I see them at night, hear them: the other hobos, the addled veterans, the ones who’ve resigned themselves to this, embraced this. Their throats thick with cheap booze and butchered song lyrics, guzzling and puffing and injecting away the last of their lives. The next morning, they’re passed out all over, missing clothes, sporting bruises, sores, and sordid tales, but it doesn’t matter. At least, for a few hours, they forgot. Shut down. Killed the part of them that once cared.

Not me, though. I’m still too proud, too hopeful.

And while I can enjoy it sometimes, the daytime warmth and joking by the fire with Teddy, Wanda, and Chowder, a surprisingly tasty chicken burger and home fries at the soup kitchen, in quiet stolen moments like this, doing art in my tent, I can’t accept it. That this is all my life will ever be.

Not yet. There’s still hope.

7

Joy

The hours pass by like sand slipping through my fingers. By the time I’m supposed to meet Teddy at the fire, my hands are sore, my eyes are aching, and my stomach is turning itself inside out.

I clamber up, shake out the stiffness from my legs from sitting all day, and go to our meeting point.

But Teddy isn’t at the fire. I wait a bit, but five o’clock becomes six, and all that’s changed is the addition of worry cartwheeling in my gut.

Teddy is never late. He’s silly, kind, loyal, but never—not once—late.

Something is wrong.

“Heard about it?” Wanda pirouettes by.

“Huh?”

She pauses, doing apliéso enthusiastically her black and pink tutu nearly rips at the seams. “We’re getting pizza tonight, baby!”

“Oh yeah?” My worry converts to excitement as Wanda switches over to doing the can-can.

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