“Stop thinking about him. Food, Miki, it’s not going to just walk through the door. Get some stuff for sandwiches. That’s easy.” He stopped and tried to think of what one of his foster mothers tried to pound into his head about her religion. “Isn’t that what Jesus made? Sandwiches? Tuna fish and bread, right, Dude? Fuck, I’ll ask Kane. He’s got that God thing down.”
Dude had no opinion other than to flip over to the other side of the couch. Flopping down on the cushions, Miki reached for his Vans and tugged them over his heels. His wallet was missing, then found again, buried underneath the notebook Miki’d been scribbling thoughts down in. There were beaten-up notepads all over the living room, some neatly arranged in a milk crate while others were left to fend for themselves. Only a few were dog-chewed, their corners indented and marked from Dude’s sharp teeth.
All held pieces of Miki’s pain, and now one held whispers of something more… of wanting to be touched and kissed.
Miki flipped through the pages of his newest book. He’d started the first page off with how he felt being alone without the others shadowing behind him. In truth, he’d been their echo, reflecting out into the audience what the three wanted him to be. They understood Miki loved the music and words but hated the noise of being in a band. Having so many eyes on him made him nervous, and he was glad when the lights blurred out the audience and the only thing he could see was the stage and the men who stood by him.
He missed writing songs with Damien. The words that seemed to tear free from his brain were often tinted with how he was feeling, and his best friend had taken his meanderings to turn them into pieces of art Miki didn’t even recognize. The sweet ache of Damien’s guitar created something out of the nothings Miki found inside of himself. He missed spending the hours hunched over a guitar and piano, arguing about how something sounded in his heart compared to the tones Damien’s sharp mind crafted.
They got drunk over words and music, sometimes talking about stupid things until the wee hours of the morning when the moon was no longer visible from the narrow windows of the band’s shared loft. He woke up on egg-crate foam they eventually used for soundproofing, sometimes more hungover from the music than the whiskey they drank the night before. But Damien had always been there, even when the sun was hidden behind the clouds; a brash, self-confident soul mate willing to do battle with the shadows curdling Miki’s life.
“You’d hate him, Damie,” Miki whispered, clutching the notebook in his hands until it was nearly bent in half. “Or you’d both bully the shit out of me. He likes the car you bought me. The cops still have it. Fuckers. I used to hate walking by it, but now I hate them for keeping it so long. It’s mine. Fuckers need to give it back. I’m going to have to ask Kane about that.”
The tears came, as hot as when he’d shot off thinking about Kane’s mouth kissing his neck. Ducking his head, Miki laughed when Dude swam across the couch on his belly and shoved his tongue up Miki’s nose, licking furiously. After shoving the canine lightly aside, Miki ruffled the dog’s back and wiped his face.
He rode the wave of sorrow, letting it wash over him. There wasn’t a need to sink into its darkness, and Miki breathed a sigh of relief, emerging from his memories of Damien and the others with a smile. He made a promise to call Edie later to check on how she was doing, and opened the notebook to a blank page and scribbled down a quick list of things he wanted to eat over the next few days.
“Okay, Dude.” He sniffed, shaking off his melancholy. “I’m going to hunt and gather. Guard the house. Don’t let anybody in.”
The dog was already asleep before Miki grabbed his keys off of the table. Wiping at the tightness in his nose, Miki opened the front door and nearly stepped into the mess left on his stoop.
He was good about keeping Dude inside, taking the dog out for walks every few hours, so he was pretty sure the terrier had nothing to do with what looked like chewed-up meat on his sidewalk. Wrinkling his nose, he looked down again, trying to make some sense of what he was staring at.
The plastic bag it’d been in was from an Asian grocery store down the road. His jaunts with Dude had strengthened his leg enough that Miki’d been debating going over the few extra blocks to grab some things, figuring he could catch a cab back. Something had torn apart the handles of the bag, more than likely another dog or one of the cats roaming the neighborhood. A bright pink, bulbous object was seeping out of a hole in the side, its precarious balance on the sidewalk edge losing to the pull of gravity.
It plopped out of the bag before Miki could head back in to grab something to clean the mess up with, bouncing slightly against the cement before coming to rest in the damp greenscape. Light stretches of fibrous tissue clouded the oval chunk, and curled swirls of darker pink were visible through the filmy patches.