Page 89 of You're so Bad

Shauna’s one smart lady, and she thought I should. Ultimately, that’s the thought that makes me sit back with my beer. I will abso-fucking-lutely be draining all of it.

“Well, Burke, it’s some story…”

“Don’t I bet,” he says, but his smile is strained. So is mine, I’m sure.

And I tell him all of it. I tell him about my dad making me into a thief, about turning him in and changing my name for the first time. I tell him about struggling to find a job as a high school dropout with no skills except for sticky fingers, and how it turned me back to thieving and working for thieves, right up until Gidget died and I left that life behind. Changed my name again.

I wanted to get out, but I still didn’t know how, so I decided I’d pull a few big con jobs to save money to start over somewhere. My second stop was in Asheville, where I tried to conhim.

“And this is why you thought I’d turn my back on you?” he asks slowly. He’s been watching me through all of it, quiet mostly, and even though I started out slowly, I’ve been babbling like a damn fool.

“That’s about the shape of it,” I say lightly, acting like panic’s not still clawing at my chest like one of Shauna’s monster mugs.

Maybe that’s part of why I’m so drawn to her.

Shauna understands panic. Unease. Anxiety. The feeling of being too big and small for your skin. The wriggling worms that fill your head and body and tell you it’s all going to end, and it’s going to be because of you.

And you’re trying to turn your back on her.

“Leonard,” he says, leaning forward and clasping his hands. We both finished our lunch beers at least ten minutes ago. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’d already figured that bit out. I would have told you if I’d known it was weighing on you. I didn’t think I could bring it up without sounding like a dick.”

Relief pats me on the back and offers to buy me a cigar. Still… “Are you fucking with me?”

“No. I mean, I didn’t realize that was what was going on at the time, obviously. But thinking back on it, it just made sense. I mean, you were never as into the outdoor stuff as you said. The day we met at the bar; you said you wanted to do the Pacific Crest Trail. That’s serious.”

“I never would have made it. I’m allergic to pollen.”

He laughs, and suddenly I’m laughing too, the relief making me as dizzy as when I went on the Scrambler five times in a row at the fair when I was a kid.

Giving me an amused look, he says, “You think I haven’t had other people come at me for my money?”

“No, but I was hoping I was the smoothest.”

“Yeah, because you never went through with it.”

“It would have been too hard to rip you off after I took a job with your folks. That’s how a guy gets caught.”

“I’m sure that’s what you told yourself,” he says, trying to hold back a smile. “For years. When did you accept that we were just your friends?”

I rub my chest, where there’s still some tightness. “It took a while,” I admit. “It wasn’t easy for me to let anyone in.”

“For me either. There’s a reason why all of my other friends are people I’ve known for decades.”

“Thank you,” I say, even though it’s such a small thing to say for everything’s he done for me—for everything he and the other guys have been to me. They saved what little was left of me back then, and then they did it again a few months ago.

“You left Asheville because my parents threatened you?”

“They found out who my father is. I guess they hunted my mom down too. She’s always happy to tell anyone who’ll listen that I’m the one who took him down even though I’d been doing jobs with him since I was six.”

He winces. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

It’s easier to shrug now, to pretend it doesn’t matter. “We both have shitty parents. It’s not your fault. But I figured if they told you you’d put two and two together and make four. I thought you’d side with them over me. I should’ve known better.”

“So you ran.”

“I figured I had to, but I couldn’t seem to make myself do it. Until they hired that guy to follow me around. It made me jumpy. I’ve always been a little jumpy since—”

Since I got all the way to Atlanta from where we were living in Greensborough, North Carolina and my father broke into my motel room at night and beat me with my own baseball bat until I pissed myself and passed out, then threw me in the back of the car. My best guess is that the people at the front desk didn’t buy my ID—hisID—and ran a check. I was fourteen, so even though I looked like the old man, I wasn’t a man.

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