“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mutter. The thing is, I’m not myself either, which is one of the many reasons I need her here with me. As it is, another image of her mother lying on the floor flashes across my mind.
I step away from the clear glass doors leading into the restaurant when the hostess struts forward and opens the one on the right side. She motions me in with a tilt of her head. I lean my back against one of the large pillars, averting my gaze from hers when she smiles.
I caught her eyeing me earlier when I came in following the fights, checking me out like she wanted a bite. But based on that grin she’s flashing me, she’s wants more than a nibble now.
“You don’t sound good, Finn,” Sofia says.
My hand drags across my face as yet another image of Sol’s mom pops in my head, this one of her laughing as she’s carried out on a stretcher and placed in the back of the ambulance.
“Finn?” Sofia says again.
Her voice draws me back to reality. I’ve been doing that a lot lately―zoning out just like I used to. Only this time the memories I see revolve around Flor . . . and what happened to me when I was a kid. It should scare me, worry me― and it does― but given what’s happened, I can’t say I’m surprised.
“Finn? Are you okay?” Sofia presses.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, because it beats telling her I can’t shake the image of her psychotic aunt, or that I keep looking down on my arms expecting them to be covered in blood. I don’t want to admit how I still picture the way Sol cried against me―how shitty I felt when I couldn’t ease her pain. I also don’t tell her how bad the experience fucked me up―how I keep dreaming about it, except that in my dreams, I’m the one lying on that floor.
“I’m fine,” I repeat, before I realize I already said it.
“I don’t think you are,” she says. “Look, maybe I can get away―”
“No. Stay with Kill,” I insist. “You said so yourself he’s pissed. You’re the only one he’s going to want to talk to after this whole thing wraps up.” And probably the only one who can calm his ass.
“Finn,” she starts to say.
“You worry too much,” I say, forcing a smile like she can somehow see me. “I’ll be fine.”
I say it because I need to and disconnect. Too bad I don’t believe it. Like I mentioned, every time I close my eyes I relive every detail of the day―the look on Tía’s face when she told me what she found, how the floor felt against my feet as I raced into the house, and Sol’s screams. Shit, her screams. I remember them down to pitch and length. I didn’t understand all her words―not with how fast she was speaking in Spanish. But her pain? I felt that loud and clear.
What it comes down to is that as much as it hurt me, it hurt her a thousand times worse. My pain isn’t the same. I’m not going to pretend like it is. But the pain I do feel is something I don’t need. It claws at my insides, exposing my wounds and spilling my bad memories. All of them. Especially the ones I’ve spent a lifetime beating down.
Come on, why don’t you trust me? the voice of that bastard says. You’re hurting my feelings.
My thumb passes over the screen of my phone as I ram my eyes closed. “No . . . not now,” I mutter.
Come on. Just come in for a little while. I have plenty of toys you can play with . . .
Before I can think, I’m already headed in the direction of the bar. But each step brings another shitty memory: My father yelling at me and my brothers to clean the house as he heads out to see his mistress. My mother crying as she holds me, promising me that I’ll be all right. The agony I felt the first time I had my nose broken. And the look on Angus’s face when he told me Papa was dead. The memories fade in and out like winds of a wicked storm as I slip onto the stool, but it ends with the one I can’t stomach the most. The one of the door slamming shut and trapping me inside that monster’s house.
“What are you having?” the bartender asks.
“Beer―non-alcoholic,” I add quickly.
I think I’m okay. No booze is a good start. But if so, what am I doing sitting here? And if it’s a step forward, why won’t these memories stop?
I reach for my phone again, skimming through the pictures. I stop at the first selfie Sol took of us. I tried to be all cocky about it. After all, there I was with this hot young woman pressed against me. But the way she looked into the camera wasn’t like she was showing off the famous Philly boy holding her. She was just, I don’t know, happy to be in my arms.
I skim to the next picture. Again, she’s beaming. Her arms around my shoulders, her face against mine. Damn, she’s beautiful, too beautiful for the likes of a screwed up sap like me.
That doesn’t stop me from texting her.