JEREMY’S NEIGHBORHOOD IS Beverly Hills compared to my slum, but nothing that my highbrow mother would have approved of. Small cottages built in the ’40s or ’50s, the trees have taken over, dwarfing everything, casting heavy shade on anything and everything their large arms felt the need to cover, the homes barely visible behind decades of overgrown hedges and small yards. In my haste I miss his house, circle the block again, and examine the numbers again. Recognize his truck and pull in.
Marcus is dead. He can’t be waiting behind door number Jeremy, a knife in hand, ready to assault me as I walk through the door. But I am still cautious, my turnoff of the engine heavy and slow. What if he is dead? What if this man killed Jeremy just to hurt me, then came to my apartment? I never let Marcus speak, I got too fucking excited and killed him too soon. If Jeremy is dead, I will kill Mike. It doesn’t matter that this is my fault. Fuck him for blabbing. He should have lost his fingers like a man. Share my money but don’t share details that endanger an innocent person. I open the car door, take a deep breath, and close my eyes. Say a quick prayer that he is alive.
My eyes are still closed when the house explodes.
PART 5
There are no lights. There is no pink.
CHAPTER 109
YOU WOULD THINK that ash would be hot. Floating through the air, coming off of a fire. But it’s not. It’s like whispers on my cheeks. Like gray snow, slightly damp in its arrival. I open my eyes and try to understand its presence. Try to understand why I am on the ground, a strange ground, looking up at oak trees that flicker in the light of a fire. I take a shaky breath and hear the crackle of wood settling, the crash of something falling.
Fire.
Ash.
I jerk to my feet, the world tilting briefly, and the sound of sirens starts, muted. The sound growing louder. Closer. An ambulance. Cops. I find my bearings, reach a hand out, grab hold of the side of my car and stare at the furnace before me. A kindling square of home, crackling into the night, Jeremy’s truck silhouetted before it. I drop to my knees and scream his name.
My scream. It is so familiar that I try to stop it, the sound ripping me back into my childhood kitchen, the howl of anguish and regret so similar in pitch to my mother’s that I am sick. Is this how she felt? When she looked around and saw the destruction that she had created? I try to close my mouth, try to stop the sound, try to block out the fire and the blood and my sister’s face and the man that I love and all I can think is that I turned him away. Jeremy wanted to come with me and I pushed him away in the parking lot. I pushed him away and now he is dead. He is dead and I can’t stop the scream. I repeat his name, screaming it to the fire, to the gods above, to the man that I hope is alive to hear it.
CHAPTER 110
IT IS UNLIKELY that Mike will ever again sit in his empty house and not think of those hours. The hours he was chained to the bed. The hours he waited, unsure of his future.
Now, the emptiness haunts him. Reminds him too clearly of those hours. Of, for the first time in a long time, how alone he feels. Jamie left a few minutes ago, life and work calling, plants somewhere needing to be tended to. Without her, this house feels empty. Like he is not a soul. As if he doesn’t, in some way, breathe life into this space.
He doesn’t have to stay in this house. People in wheelchairs go out—have normal jobs, live normal lives. But truth be told, leaving? Forcing himself to participate in daily interactions with normal, I-walk-around-on-two-legs people? Doesn’t interest him. Never has. Everything he needs is here. A job he loves. Freedom, inside these walls. Fuck what society thinks is needed to be happy. He doesn’t need the sympathetic looks of the public, their chips and pokes. He can read their looks. One hooker just spat it out, without hesitation, saying what he can see in so many of their eyes. You’d be so hot, she drawled, popping her gum and crawling on top of him. If you weren’t in that wheelchair. Does it bother you?
His dick wouldn’t cooperate after that.
Being alone is better than being with someone who is there despite the handicap. The worst is the constant waiting—expecting that crestfallen look, that moment where the girl will be caught with her guard down, with a look of pity she doesn’t hide fast enough. Fuck that.
The outside world doesn’t care if he has paraplegia or is paralyzed. It’s all the same to them. Wheelchair boy. Wheelchair boy with an “isn’t that a shame” pretty face. Crestfallen looks of apology accompanying any introduction or passing greeting. So Mike will keep his life indoors. His world online. There he’s a king. There he’s popular and beautiful and the captain of the motherfucking football team.