Release(16)

“I’ll kill him,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“You are clearly not okay.”

“It’s just … disappointment, that’s all. We’ll still be friends. It’s cool.”

“I don’t know why you’re lying to me.” She took his hand and held it, just like that day they’d turned over in the car. “But maybe that’s what you have to do to stay alive right now, so that’s okay. If you ever fall, I’m here to catch you. Or not, actually, you’re a giant, but I’m here to at least watch you fall and then get bandages.”

He couldn’t tell her that if he spoke the truth aloud, if he revealed everything he’d invested in Enzo, all that hope and possibility, all the life that was his own and no one else’s, if he even cried, that would really mean it was over. Enzo went away, maybe he was scared, maybe he was screwed up a little in the head over the seriousness of it, or maybe he was going through some other stuff; his parents were pretty regular Catholics after all.

He would come back. He might come back. And so that bridge could never burn.

That last night had been more than ten months ago. Angela had tolerated him remaining friendly with Enzo, but it gradually became less of an issue for all of them, not just because of time passing – though mostly because of time passing – but also because of Linus. Who Adam loved. Who he wanted to love. Who maybe it was too early to love, but still, they said it. The bridge to Enzo hadn’t burned, but it had been closed for use and, for some decent stretches of time, not thought of much at all.

Except when it was. Except when the bridge needed pizza before it moved to Atlanta.

Is this what Marty meant? When he said it wasn’t real love? Did all this prove him wrong? Or did it prove him right?

Adam felt his eyes fill, was surprised, but maybe not. That wound in his chest, that thorn that seemed stuck there, however much it was real love or it wasn’t (it was), none of that stopped it from hurting when Enzo left.

“He broke my heart,” Adam said, out loud, to Karen and Renee.

They stared at him in the hanging dust of the stockroom. It was the most direct he’d ever been, the most he’d ever said to them.

“We know,” Renee said.

“Stupid,” Adam whispered to himself, thumbing away the tears that perched in his eyes.

“But he’s leaving,” Karen said. “Which is probably good and bad.”

“Probably,” Adam said.

“And you’ve got Linus Bertulis,” Renee said, “don’t you?”

“We like Linus,” Karen said. “He’s a nerd.”

“A cute nerd,” Renee said.

“Maybe that’s enough of my private life for today–”

“I would sure as shit hope so,” Wade said, coming around the corner. “If it’s a bad idea for me to let friends work together, let me know and I can reduce everyone’s hours.”

Karen and Renee got right back to work, scanning the last of the end tables. Adam went to help them, but Wade grabbed his elbow. “After you get through the guns, I need to see you in my office.”

Adam held the grasped arm away from himself like it was about to get a vaccination. “I’m off at one, Wade. I’ve got things to do.”

“Then you’d better finish the guns pretty darn fast, don’t you think?” He play-hit Adam in the stomach a little too hard and left them there.

“Asshole,” Karen said under her breath.

“Has he talked to you guys in his office?” Adam asked.

They shook their heads. Karen holstered the stock-taking scanner. “Let’s do guns now, get it over with. Nobody gives a damn if unscented candle stock is missing anyway.”

“Man,” Renee said, “I hate guns.”





She sees her death, feels the hands around her neck, feels the bruises reappear on her grey skin. She presses her palm into the spot where it happened. The smoke rises from between her splayed fingers and her throat closes again, remembering the breath that would not come, the unbearable need to swallow that would not be satisfied. The fear was an increasing thing, rising in her gullet – though where would it go with her throat closed off?

She can remember no argument, no hostility even, from, from, from, from–

“Tony,” she says, aloud, as the first flames lick up from her fingertips.

He was a mess, all meth heads were a mess, but he had mostly been a benign one. She was afraid of the boyfriend before Tony – Victor, all neck and rage – but not Tony, never Tony.

You took my stash, Tony said, hands around her neck.

“I didn’t,” she says now, the fire spreading out from her in a circle along the dried wood. “I didn’t.”

They had shot up together. He had given her the drugs himself. She hadn’t gone near–

You took my stash, Tony said again, and that was when the fear cut through the thousand beats per minute of the meth.

“I am going to die,” she says.

You did, you took it.

“I didn’t.”

You did.

She had. She wanted to tell him, now, at last. She had put it in her pocket when he closed his eyes as the meth first hit, but she wanted to tell him she was going to share it, that it was only because he lost it the last time, that it was for safe keeping–