Kate and I never talked about what happened the night my old man crashed my apartment, but I’ve always known in my gut what must have gone down. I could see it in her eyes. When you’re someone like Kate—someone good—you can’t kill a man and stay unaffected. She was never quite herself after that.
Kate got three years for obstruction of justice. Three years of her life gone because I fucked up and didn’t finish my old man when I had the chance.
But it could have been worse.
I testified to what my old man was. I told them everything I remembered from when he found me in Austin. In the end, the jury found her not guilty for the actual murder because she was acting in the “defense of others.”
It’s been all over every fucking place. Internet, news, papers. The media’s made into this big romantic thing, where Kate did what she had to do to defend her lover. I haven’t corrected them, mostly because it doesn’t matter.
I sent Lucky back home right after Kate confessed and they let me out. I haven’t talked to her since. She texted me every day for the first few weeks, so I let my phone battery die. I only plug it in when I need to call for food. And I never check messages anymore.
Last I heard, she’s back in California, living with some foster family. Freddie called me and told me that not long after I sent her back. He said she’d signed with A&M and the girls were recording their shit.
Her eighteenth birthday is coming up in a few months, but that doesn’t matter either.
I am poison. Everyone who gets close to me gets hurt. So I’ve spent most of the last eight months living in one bottle or another and ignoring the world.
Every once in a while, I pull out my guitar and play the last song I wrote. I realize how stupid I was to think I’d ever be able to banish the beast inside. Because the beast inside is me. Everything else is the lie.
I’m on the couch, three quarters passed out, Ironman 2 playing on the TV for the thousandth time, when there’s a knock. The reporters have been gone for months. No one comes up here anymore looking for a story since I threatened to kill the next person who did. The only people who’ve knocked on my door in months are the delivery guys I call whenever I’m on the brink of starvation.
I didn’t call anyone today. I’m thinking of just letting it happen this time.
“Open up, Tro,” a woman’s voice says. I know it, but I can’t place it.
I drag myself up and open the door. On the landing is Lucky’s friend Lilah. As I stare, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, Lucky materializes from behind her.
She’s all in white, tank top and skirt, and her copper kinks are full and loose, like a halo around her head.
My heart thuds to a stop in my chest. Sending her away was just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t even stay to see her go. “What are you doing here?”
She steps forward. “You don’t answer my texts. You don’t answer your phone. No one’s seen or heard from you in months. I had to know you were alive.”
“I’m alive.”
Her eyes run over my body, clad only in boxer briefs. “Barely.”
I’ve stopped eating. I’ve stopped working out. It’s been at least three days since my last shower and I can’t remember the last time I shaved. I can only imagine what she sees when she looks at me.
“You should go,” I say, swinging the door closed. I can’t keep looking at her, because seeing her here, this perfect fucking angel in my own personal hell, that’s going to be the thing that actually kills me.
She slams a shoulder into the door before it closes and it flies open again, banging sharply off the wall, where the knob leaves a hole. She’s through it before I can stop her.
“You need to pull your fucking shit together. I get that things went sideways with Kate and you think you ruined her life, but I’m not going to let you curl up and die in here.”
“Too late,” I say, going back to the couch for my bottle. I take a long drink, then hand it to her. “Want some?”
She takes it and hands it to Lilah, who goes to the sink and dumps the contents. “You have things to do, Tro. Remember when you told me and Kate you’d wasted the last six years of your life on shit that didn’t mean anything?”
I drop onto the couch. “That was a different guy.”
“Uh-uh,” she says, pushing the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table aside and sitting across from me, forcing me to see her. “That was you figuring out what you wanted to be when you grew up. So grow the fuck up, Tro. Be that person.”
I stare at her. Don’t know why I expected her to go all hearts and flowers on me, because that’s not her style. But this is—right to the point, no dicking around.
“The last time bad shit happened,” she continues, picking up her rant where she left off when I don’t say anything, “you changed your name and ran away. This time, you’re just imploding in on yourself. It’s all just different forms of hiding, Tro. I thought you’d finally figured out that that isn’t what you want.”
“What I want doesn’t matter.”
She gets all up in my face. “What about what I want?”