By the time he got out two years ago, I wanted nothing to do with him. He showed up once. Going on and on with apologies I didn’t believe and promises I’d heard before.
I told him to get lost.
Last I heard, he married some rich lady and was playing house with her and her kid. Probably already running his next con.
Tucker men don’t change. They just find new marks.
“You and me were always perfect like that,” Z continues, oblivious to the ache in my chest. “Like fire and oxygen. We’re only complete together.”
I shake my head. “Fire and oxygen burn each other up, and then they’re both gone, silly.”
“But it’s fuckingmagicwhile it burns,” he whispers, staring at me with those soft eyes again.
The ones he’s been giving me a lot lately.
The ones that want something I can’t give.
Z and I have our whole lives planned out. We’re going to get an apartment. Be roommates. Get the hell out of this place and start over. Become different people.
Like they are on TV. Living in a city, with fun jobs and tons of friends and fancy coffee shop drinks with foam on top?—
And the soft eyes could ruin it.
Don’t ruin it, I want to say. But acknowledging theitwould bring the whole house of cards crashing down.
He’s the only stable thing in my world.
“I knew I had to keep you around after that,” he says, clearly still lost in the memory. “Especially after we got so high that you saw those unicorns running through the forest.”
“They werereally there,” I protest, smacking his shoulder.
“Yeah, ’cause you’re a lightweight, pipsqueak. You were seeing colors before I even lit the thing.”
“Well, that’s true,” I mutter. If Mom’s any indication, I’ve got the tolerance of a fruit fly. She can get drunk off a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which is why she’s been basically continuously wasted since 1999.
“We laughed so hard that day,” Z says.
I close my eyes, sinking into the memory. We lay on our backs in the woods—just like we are now on his bed—watching the light filter through the trees above. The light that eventually turned into prancing unicorns that only I could see.
“So hard you almost peed yourself,” I snort-laugh. “You got so upset when you couldn’t get your zipper down.”
“What?” he objects. “You’re remembering it wrong! I wasn’t upset.Youwere. You were freaked out because it was your first time trying weed.”
I shrug. He’s probably right. “Well, Iwasout in the woods with a stranger getting high for the first time. And it wasn’t even fair because you could justgo pee in the woods. Squatting is way harder. Especially when you’re high.”
“Whatever, whiner.”
I smack him again, giggling.
He pretends to wince and rub his shoulder. “Whoa, dude. Mean left hook.”
I mock-threaten him again, and we both crack up.
Then he rolls onto his side, propping his head on his elbow.
There’s only twelve inches between us, but with Z, it never feels like an invasion of space. We’ve spent too many nights curled up together, holding each other through nightmares and bad days and the general hellscape of our lives.
“How come we never got together, Harp?”