N9ne: The Tale of Kevin Clearwater (King, #9)(11)

Shit, I trusted him before I ever met him.

“You and me both, kid.” Preppy opens his beer bottle using the edge of the table and takes a sip. “Speaking of people who are alive and shouldn’t be, any clue where dear old mama is? Crack den? Whorehouse? On tour with the Backstreet Boys?”

“Don’t know. Don’t fucking care.”

Preppy clinks his bottle to mine. “I’ll cheers to that, brother.”

Preppy stands. “I’m gonna take my wife home and service her,” he says. “Shall we continue this another time?”

“Yeah, man. I’d like that. Let me get your number,” I say pulling out my phone.

Before the screen is even up, Preppy is spewing his number. Five. Five. Five. Seven. Three. Nine. Seven. Seven. Three. Seven.

“Wait, hold on. I didn’t get it,” I say, finally pulling up the screen. “You said Five. Five. Five. Seven. Three. Nine. Seven. Seven. Three. Seven. Right?” I enter in the numbers in, and I realize something about the them or rather, what they spell. I look up to Preppy. “Wait, your number is 555-SEX-PREP?”

Preppy’s jaw drops. “No fucking way! You got that? No one EVER gets that, and it’s totally no fun when I have to point it out to people.” He opens the sliding glass door.

“Now, that’s a number I can remember.”

“They always do.” He winks. “They always motherfucking do.”





Chapter Four





LENNY





THREE YEARS LATER…


Jared never tells me I drink too much even though it’s the truth.

There’s never a disapproving glance at my seven-a.m. screwdriver (sans orange juice). He doesn’t say no when I ask him to stop and pick up yet another bottle of vodka from the liquor store, and he’s the first one to refill my drink at a party.

I’m drowning. Not in vodka, but in a vast ocean of indifference.

Jared doesn’t say anything about your drinking because he doesn’t care.

My anxiety has a voice of its own, and it’s almost as much of an asshole as I am these days. The problem with having the voice of said anxiety chirping in your brain twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week is that it’s tough to differentiate between a real problem and one of my mind’s own making.

Is Jared really indifferent, or am I just creating this issue out of nothing? I mean, the man gives me what I ask for and doesn’t give me shit about it.

Well, not when it comes to drinking. My anxiety disorder is another animal entirely. He gives me plenty of shit about that.

“I don’t understand why you won’t talk to someone about all this,” Jared huffs with frustration as he steps out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, hands on his hips. Steam billows behind him through the open door. He motions with a wave of his hand to me and my current situation. I make a mental note that he doesn’t mention that I should talk to him about this, but someone else. But why would he? I’ve tried to explain anxiety to him before, and he only gets angry and frustrated because he doesn’t understand.

I don’t blame him. Some days, I don’t understand myself.

Maybe, he doesn’t give me crap about my drinking because it’s the lesser of two evils.

Before I answer Jared, I dig in. Literally. I push my nails into my palms and reopen the crescent-shaped scabs and scars until I bleed. It’s a little Morticia Adams, but I’ve established that coping isn’t my strong suit.

“What shit?” I groan as if I have no idea what he’s talking about.

The current shit is that I’m lying in our bed, cocooned between three thick comforters at eight o’clock in the morning when it’s already eighty degrees outside. Jared knows I haven’t just woken up; there’s an empty glass with ice still intact on my nightstand with barely a sweat around it.

“Lenny, you know what I’m saying. You need to see a professional about this crazy stuff. Or get on some meds.”

He’s not saying that because he cares. He’s saying it because your antics annoy him.

And when it comes to therapy? Been there. Done that. If they sold t-shirts at Dr. Farley’s office, there’s no doubt that I’d own one that would read “I WENT TO THERAPY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.” Oh yeah, and a shit-ton of bills.

But I don’t say any of that because Jared doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t try to.

“You know I can’t. My insurance was through work, so it got canceled when the company folded. And you know that the meds zombie me out, and I don’t want to live my life that way.”

“And what you’re doing right now is somehow better?”

“Yes, and it’s temporary. I’ll be up and about soon. I just need a minute.”

“What you need is new insurance and new meds,” he says, stepping out from his closet, wearing navy blue slacks and a white dress shirt. He straightens his tie and plops down in one of the sitting area chairs to tie on his shiny brown shoes.

“I can’t afford new insurance,” I argue. I’ve spent every last dollar I had trying to bring back to life a company that couldn’t be saved. As of one week ago, Leary Real Estate was no more.

“It can’t be that much,” he says.