Max bent to kiss Jed, stopping when his lips were a hairsbreadth away. “Then you can show me more than once.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JEDSANKdown on the bathroom floor. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d puked in the past week, but somehow, each time felt like the worst yet. He pressed his hand to his chest, as though he could catch his breath in his fist. It didn’t work. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, and worst of all, he knew it was his own damned fault.
That was what he got for being a total dick to Max and then forcing down far too much food to make up for it.
“You okay, dude?”
Jed laid his head on his knees and stayed very still. Dan had rolled by not long after Max left for the night, talkative and buzzed from a postwork drink with the boys. It struck Jed as ironic that he’d been sober his whole life and yet he was the one puking his guts up. “I’m fine.”
Dan slid down the wall and sat next to him. “You don’t look it.”
“Fuck. Off.”
Dan stayed, but held his tongue and instead rubbed Jed’s back.
Jed drifted for a while, trying to repress the ominous weight in his chest. His heart hammered, like the end of the world was looming and there was no escape.
He raised his head, looking for something to ground him.
Dan met his gaze with a tentative grin. “Shitty day?”
“Yup. Your sister bugged me all afternoon. I bit her head off, then I was a dick to Max, and I need a fuckin’ cigarette.”
Dan laughed. “I have a pack in the van, but I don’t think they’ll make you feel any better.”
Jed refrained from pointing out they couldn’t make him feel much worse. He straightened his left leg and stretched it out in front of him, accepting the plastic cup of water Dan passed his way. “Thanks.”
“No worries.” Dan socked him with a featherlight punch. “And don’t sweat it about Max. He’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met. He’ll be cool, no matter how much of a prick you are.”
Jed said nothing. Dan was right: Max was the nicest guy in the world, and that made taking his shit out on him even more heinous. Max had been through enough. He didn’t need Jed’s crap thrown in his face.
“How long have you two been a thing?”
Jed winced at the stubborn stiffness in his neck. “You want to talk about my sex life?”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “No, actually, I was yanking your chain. So youarebanging him?”
“I’m not banging him, I love—” Jed broke off and closed his eyes, resisting the urge to knock his pounding head on his knees. “Don’t talk about him like that. I’m not too decrepit to put you on your ass.”
Jed wanted to say more. He wanted todomore, like wipe the surprised smirk off Dan’s face, like pick up the phone and tellMaxhe loved him, but instead he punctuated the closest he’d ever come to a declaration of love out loud by scrambling to his feet and puking in the sink.
This time, he couldn’t stop the low, pained groan getting out. The bathroom went dark. He swayed.
Dan caught him. “Dude, you don’t look good. Want me to get someone?”
It took Jed a minute to answer, but once he’d found his tongue and flighty sense of balance, he felt better. “No, it’s fine. I feel all right now.”
Dan wasn’t convinced. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Jed in such a mess, and it took Jed a while to persuade him he was okay to shuffle back across the room unaided. Once Jed was safely at his bed, though, Dan collapsed in the chair, clicked on the tiny TV, and passed out.
Jed glared at him, already knowing Dan’s content snoring was going to drive him nuts. He looked around for something to throw. There wasn’t much—a paper cup, a magazine. A book he liked too much to damage with Dan’s thick skull.
In the end, he settled on opening his laptop and trying to curb his growing agitation by writing a witness statement he’d been dodging for months.
The document was macabre and grueling. The storm raging outside didn’t help much. Jed squinted at the screen, trying to pull together his scattered memories of an incident he’d shoved to the back of his mind. To him, the incident had been minor, a bad day at the office, but shit had gotten blown up and an American had died, and when an American died, people wanted to know why. Usually, anyway.
Jed sighed and rubbed his head. It should’ve horrified him that the death of a young man had become trivial, but it didn’t. It was what it was, and he wanted to wrap it up so he didn’t have to take it home.