by Sonya Weiss
Tana didn’t know it was my fault what happened to her mom and if I told her, she’d never want to see me again. Once it was official and I was part of Chanos’ crew, I could never be near her, could never love her, couldn’t allow her to love me, but until then, I wanted to steal enough scraps to keep me from starving with hunger for her. I wanted to memorize her face. Commit her scent to memory. It would have to be enough. I would make it be enough.
My cell phone buzzed, the vibration scooting it across the work bench. I wiped my grease stained hands on a rag and looked at the screen. Tana.
“Hey,” I said when I answered.
It wasn’t her. “Ryan,” her brother’s voice whispered.
“Is something wrong?”
“I...um...I think so.”
My heart nearly stopped. “Alright, buddy. I’m on my way. Hang on. Keep talking.” I jogged past a car waiting for an oil change and knocked on the office before opening the door. “I’m leaving, Abraham. I need to take care of something.”
He nodded and waved me away. We’d talk about it later, but Abraham trusted when I said I had to go, it was important. I fumbled with my car keys and then the engine fired to life. “Alright, Creature, I’m on my way. What’s going on?”
“It’s Tana.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s calling for me. I have to go.”
“Creature, wait. When you hear me at the door, you make sure it’s me and then let me in, okay?”
“Okay.” The call disconnected.
I blew off speed limits racing to her house. By the time I pulled onto her street, my adrenaline was in high gear. Afraid that Chanos might try some shit, I’d asked friends to keep a watch over Tana’s house when I was at work. I wondered if something had gone down but as soon as I saw the old Pontiac across the street, I relaxed. I gave a nod toward Cooper sitting in the car as I passed him. Once I parked, I took the porch steps two at a time and knocked on the door. After a few seconds, it eased open a little and then Mark reached his hand around it and unlatched the screen. I pulled the door open and saw the trouble immediately.
Tana lounged on the sofa, legs tucked under her, staring at the television. A sitcom played and canned laughter erupted every few seconds. Her unbrushed hair tangled in a mess of curls around her face. She had pale skin and bags under her eyes. She looked like she’d worn her sweatpants and grimy T-shirt several days in a row.
“Tana.” At the sound of my voice, she pulled her gaze away from the television to me. Before, her eyes always danced with an inner light. Today, they were dull, uncaring.
I glanced at Mark. “When’s the last time she showered or ate something?”
“She didn’t eat anything yesterday or today.” He plugged his nose. “No shower.”
“Alright. I’m gonna take care of this, but she might not be happy about it and she might yell at me. So I want you to go to your room, put your earbuds in and play a video game or something okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hey, did you eat?”
“She made me.” Head down, Mark shuffled off to his room.
People get hurt. That’s a fact of life, but I hated that Mark learned the lesson so young and he’d learned it because of me.
I went into the bathroom and started the shower, then searched for a clean towel and washcloth. The laundry hamper was piled full. Not taking care of stuff wasn’t Tana. Letting the water warm, I checked out the kitchen. It wasn’t bad, mostly cluttered with takeout boxes.
Back in the living room, I shut off the television and Tana shifted her gaze to me. Her voice was a monotone. “I was watching that.”
I pulled her up off the couch and she snapped out of it to smack my chest. For a slender girl, she could hit. “Stop. You’re going to take a shower.”
Tana cursed me with words I didn’t know she knew and flopped back down onto the cushion. “What’s the point? I can’t do this. I’m trying to be at the hospital for Mom and be here for Mark. I have to go back to work soon or my boss has to hire someone else. There’s no one left to watch Mark and he can’t stay here alone. He’s hurting and I can’t help him. I can’t help mom. I can’t save either of them. I’ve been trying to do the best I can but it’s all so overwhelming and I just want to be someplace quiet where I don’t have to think or feel.”
I knew the nothingness coursing through her. If she didn’t get off the road she was on, eventually, drugs and alcohol would show up willing to dull the pain and the fear. I’d caved in to it the night I’d revisited the alley and that was the first step. Thankfully, I hadn’t taken the second step into that familiar darkness.
Tana would become as lost as I once was and as willing to do anything if only the high would last long enough to get through the day. But, Tana had me. I would prevent her downward spiral whatever it took. “You’re getting in the shower and then we’ll talk. Now let’s go or I’m going to carry you.”
She glared at me and crossed her arms, her eyes narrowed in a challenge.
I hated playing the tough guy with Tana when all I wanted to do was hold her in my arms, but I knew she needed to fight back, especially once I wasn’t around. I picked her up and tossed her across my shoulder. She beat the hell out of my back with her fists and called me more names. Holding my hand around her legs, I shoved aside the shower curtain and put her in the tub. I blocked the way when she tried to get out. “No, Tana.”
Turning from me, she beat her fist against the tile. “I’ve always fixed things for my family, Ryan, and I can’t fix this! Everything is all messed up. Including us.” She glared at me. “I could hate you. For how you treated me after we had sex.” Her face scrunched with remembered hurt. “Do you remember what you said to me? ‘Thanks for the fuck’ that’s what you said.”
The expression of loss on her face tied my gut up in knots. “I remember, but as long as you feel something, I don’t care if you hate me.” I pointed to the soap. “Take off your clothes and shower or I swear I’ll do it myself.”
“Go away,” she moaned. “I just want the night to come so I can go back to sleep. When I sleep, I don’t think and I don’t remember all the blood. I don’t worry. I don’t have to feel anything.”
I’d been there, too. “Get undressed. You have five seconds.”
She huffed at me, then pulled off her wet shirt and flung it onto the floor. Water seeped around the edges. Wrapping her arms around herself, she put her forehead against the tile. “It’s not fair. Mom’s a good person.” Anguish mixed with tears leaked from her eyes to track down her face.
I unfastened her bra, slid the straps down her arms and tossed it onto the floor.
Smacking her chest with her fist, she said, “I’m being ripped apart every time I see her lying so still in the hospital bed. She won’t wake up. She has to wake up.”
“I understand.”
Her eyes blazed. “You understand? How can you understand my pain? Nothing gets to you, Ryan.”
I didn’t really want to take a trip back to my screwed up childhood, but if it would help Tana, I’d give her all I had. Even the stuff no one else knew. “I know what it’s like to be ripped apart. My father killed my mother.” I swallowed at the image of all the blood and of the little boy I’d been who’d sat holding his mother’s hand pleading for help. My throat worked but I forced the words out past the lump. “I was a little kid and when I tried to stop him, he beat the shit out of me, and I nearly died. I was in the hospital almost a month. Seeing someone you love get hurt and not being able to help is the most fucked up thing in the world.”
Tana looked horrified. “You never told me that,” she whispered.
“It’s not my favorite bedtime story.” Patting her leg, I said, “Lift.” When she did, I took off one side of her pants, then the other. Her underwear followed. I hated being tough on Tana but if I pissed her off, she’d come up fighting and she needed to fight. I knew she’d need that fire again and again. “You don’t have a choice abo
ut going on. Life’s a bitch, but you have to get your shit together for Mark’s sake.”
“You should put that on a greeting card. You know? Life’s a bitch, get your shit together.”
I grinned. “Romantic, isn’t it?”
She wiped at her eyes. “We made a mistake sleeping together, didn’t we?”
No. It was the best night of my life. Holding you was like holding the sun and for the first time since I was a kid, I was warm. Being with you was feeling safe, finding a place to belong, and I wish I didn’t have to give that up. I said none of what I was thinking. Instead, I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I do,” I lied without blinking. The last thing I wanted was to hurt her more, but if I didn’t push her away from me, Chanos would figure out what she meant to me and he’d use her as leverage to get me to do whatever the hell he wanted. And I would do it. I’d do anything for Tana. Things that were twisted and dark, things that no guy should ever have to do. I would auction off my soul for her. Before I rejoined Chanos, I would make Tana see me as the worst asshole in the world. I would lie and convince her to believe that she was just a fuck and nothing more. She would grieve the loss of our friendship probably as deeply as I would, but by pushing her away, I would push her away from Chanos.
Tana turned her face under the spray of water, then smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “It was really stupid of me to ask you to sleep with me. If Mom gets better and I am able to leave for college as planned, I guess we’ll lose touch and what happened between us won’t matter anyway.”
The need for reassurance was there in her voice but I couldn’t give it to her. Let her think I was self-centered. Let her cringe when she looked back on her time with me. Let her get angry, let her dislike, and then hate me. Let her move on with her life, but let her be safe. I could live with the pain of losing her as long as I knew she was happy and moving on. “Yeah, it won’t matter,” I finally said.
Her lip trembled but she firmed it and said, “I can’t understand why someone would want to shoot my mom.”
My chance to tell her to the truth. To point the finger at myself and see the disgust in her eyes. “I can’t understand, either.”
“I’m going to find out who did it.”
Chapter Fourteen
TANA
As soon as I said the words out loud, I knew that’s exactly what I needed to do. I’d figure out who did it and then maybe, I could stop feeling so helpless if I could make sure that whoever did it was caught. Ryan didn’t like what I’d said but I didn’t care. Someone had grabbed a thread from the tapestry of my life and unwound it. I needed to know who and why.
He crossed his arms. “What are you going to do if you find the person?”
“I don’t know. Maybe figure out a way to make that person pay for what happened.”
Ryan swore. “You want revenge? Want to shoot someone?” His eyebrows rose and the expression on his handsome face turned intense as his eyes blazed into me. “Have you ever held a gun before? Fired one?”
“No.” I held my head under the water spray again and let it flow over me¸ wishing I could wash away the pain rat chewing on my heart. Gripping the shampoo bottle, I looked at Ryan as the thought dawned on me. “Have you?”
He didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, and his voice was perfectly flat. “Yes.”
Apparently there was a lot about my best friend that I didn’t know. “Yes to both questions?”
He didn’t answer.
“You must have been just a kid.” I lathered the shampoo in, not caring I was naked in front of him. Not like he hadn’t seen all of me before anyway. After I rinsed out the shampoo, I wiped my eyes on the towel he held up. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about me.”
“I’ve noticed that you don’t talk a lot about yourself, especially your past.”
“Leave it alone.”
His sharp answer only made me more curious, but I rinsed out the shampoo and began to soap my limbs while I changed the subject. “I called my so-called father yesterday. I wanted to talk to him about Mom.”
“He ran right over with emotional support.”
“Right,” I scoffed. “He said he couldn’t talk right then because he and the new wife were leaving for a cruise and he didn’t want to be late.” Remembering his self-centeredness pissed me off all over again. “I asked if he was going to pick up Mark and he said there was no reason to change Mark’s living situation because his new wife didn’t really like kids.”
“Knocking a girl up doesn’t automatically make a guy a father. You’re better off without him in your life.”
“I know. I asked him about the personal injury policy he had on Mom because he never cancelled it. He said not to look forward to getting any financial support from that. The policy would pay out fifteen thousand dollars. It’s not like he doesn’t have the money to help. I know he still has money in hidden accounts.” Even part of that would help keep me and Mark afloat until like Ryan said, I got my shit together.
“He can be forced to be financially responsible for Mark.”
I shook my head at Ryan’s suggestion. “I don’t have the energy to deal with it or the money for a lawyer or a court case. What if he decides to take Mark and not let me see my brother just to get even? ’Cause he’s like that. Then my brother would be stuck with the jackass father of the year and his anti-kid wife.”
“Who said anything about involving lawyers or the court?”
“You said he could be forced—oh.” Finished with the shower, I shut the water off. “Street justice.”
“It’s pretty effective.”
My mood marginally improved now that I was clean, I took the towel from Ryan and started drying off, pleased with the desire I saw in his eyes. He might have said that our being together was a mistake but he couldn’t hide that he wanted me. I wrapped the towel around me and tucked the end across my breasts. “Thanks for coming over.”
He nodded, looking so far out of reach emotionally that it made me want to cry all over again. “I don’t know how to talk to you now, since everything.” I couldn’t afford to lean on Ryan, to feel more for him than I already suspected was miles past friendship. I had to make sure I didn’t fall for him. The brink of love was a dangerous slope to be on when the other person didn’t intend to be anything other than a friend and maybe not even that. “Everything’s changed.” I almost held my breath waiting for him to lie to me, to tell me I was wrong.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath and forced a smile, a bright, phony one that I’d used often in the past when my parents had given lavish parties filled with people who were too important to give a shit about anyone who wasn’t as rich as they were.
I clenched my hand to keep from reaching for Ryan. Seeing him, being this close to him made me feel stupid and girly and want nothing more than to fling myself into his arms. I wanted him to hold me against his chest and keep my new, ugly world at bay. But unless I wanted to be a masochist, it was best that I didn’t do that.
Shivering, I pulled my robe down from the back of the bathroom door and slid it on. I couldn’t prevent the wide yawn.
“Trouble sleeping?”
I tied the sash around the robe. “I don’t sleep much because I worry that whoever shot Mom will come back. I stay awake and listen to the sounds outside.”
Ryan’s eyes turned into glaciers. “You can sleep. You don’t have to worry about someone hurting you or Mark.”
“What? Are you going to be my guard dog?”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
The ferociousness of his response hovered, fat with unspoken meaning, between us and I scowled, sensing an undercurrent, a meaning I wasn’t privy to. “You’re sure that it’s a he?”
Ryan blinked. “Most drive-by shootings are done by guys. That’s not hard to figure out.”
He took a step back into the hallway. “If you’re o
kay, I’ve got to get back to work. Lock up behind me.”
“Okay.” I followed him into the living room and kept my hand on the door after I’d closed it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Ryan was keeping something from me, something even worse than what had happened to my mom.
*
RYAN
I don’t scare easily. That was a by-product of all the shit I’ve seen but Tana talking about making someone pay scared the hell out of me. She didn’t have any idea the kind of evil that lurked in the world I was going back into. You didn’t hunt for justice without having shit blow back on you. A life for a life, that was the way of the street. For Tana to start asking questions and hunting for the person who hurt her mom would put her in the crosshairs.
I left her house, jogging over to Cooper’s car. He lowered the window and extended his fist. We bumped and I went around to get into the passenger side. “You see anything?”
“Nah. I got here and talked to Ryker. He said a couple cars came by slow but the drivers weren't Chanos’ boys.” He pulled his sunglasses off and leaned across me to pop open the glove box. “Your old sidekick.”
The familiar gun lying there took me back to Donny’s side and all the sounds and smells of that day rushed at me. My hands pressing on his chest, pumping CPR compressions with every ounce of strength I had while blood oozed between my fingers. His broken voice telling me he was scared and pleading with me not to let him die. I slammed the glove box closed, wishing I could shut off the memory the same way. “I don’t carry any more.”
“I know that, but no matter how good you are with your fists, you’re no match for Chanos’ bullets.”
“Every time I look at a gun, I think of Donny,” I said.
Cooper nodded. “He was my friend too.”
Like me, Cooper had chosen to get jumped out of the gang. He’d fought demons far worse than mine and had come closer than I had to ending up in prison. He put his sunglasses back on. “Now picture if that was Tana you had to bury instead of Donny.”
