“Hey Bear, you want to know what they call gay marriage in states where it’s legal?” I asked as we reached the car.

“No, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway,” he said with a laugh, struggling to maintain his semi-permanent state of looking annoyed.

“Marriage, you fucking idiot,” I said, flicking him on the back of his head as I jogged over to my car. He shot me a tattooed middle finger.

* * *

“I came in like a wrecking baaaallll.” I belted out the open window at a bunch of teenagers walking across the causeway. The group of mostly girls scrunched up their noses in confusion as if they’d never been the victims of a drive-by-singing before.

“Fucking teenagers,” I muttered, propping my elbow up on the door and waving my hand through the wind to the beat of the music, continuing my radio duet at a volume not fully appreciated by most, and especially not appreciated by the party-pooper next to me who had a pained look on his face as if my singing was causing his dick to tie itself in a knot.

“We’re all feeling shitty about King and Max, Bear, but do you have to look so constipated?” I asked, punching him in the shoulder.

Bear was silent for a moment. He blew out a breath and scratched the back of his neck. “It’s not just King. It’s my old man too. He’s been all over me lately, even more than usual.” I parked outside of the gate. Bear looked up to the darkened clubhouse, staring at it like he could see something more than windows and walls.

“Fuck your old man,” I said. “That motherfucker best never step to me or I’ll show him the Preppy special.”

“What exactly is the Preppy special?” Bear asked, one bushy blond eyebrow quirked up.

I made the shape of a gun with my thumb and index finger and pointed it up to the clubhouse. “A bullet with a side of bow tie.” I shot my finger gun and made my best exploding gun noise with my mouth.

Bear laughed, not that fake-laugh shit he’d been trying to pass off as the real deal these last few weeks, but a real, live, genuine laugh, which was a relief to hear, considering the cloud of doom he’s been walking around in. Motherfucker could be so serious sometimes, it made my dick hurt.

Bear got out with a good-bye salute and disappeared behind the gate.

I headed to Mirna’s, feeling more determined then ever to get Max back for King, and protect the people I called family.

There was nothing I wouldn’t do.

No one I wouldn’t kill.

If only it were that fucking easy.

CHAPTER TWO

DRE

I have cum in my hair.

Blood caked underneath my fingernails.

Bruises between my legs.

I was so over being me that I needed a new word for over. I needed a new fucking life. I patted my bra over my shirt, feeling for my bus ticket for the hundredth time. I breathed a sigh of relief when the paper crinkled against my skin, my reminder that a fresh start was only a bus ride away.

I righted my shirt and took in my surroundings. The small house was once very familiar to me, in what seemed like another lifetime, but in reality was only a few years ago. I used to feel at home there.

Oh, how things have changed.

I nervously crossed and uncrossed my legs, as Mirna shuffled around the kitchen. I felt everything and anything but at home. This had nothing to do with Mirna (I’d always called her by her first name) and everything to do with me.

I pulled down on the hem of my shorts as if I could somehow make them longer, suddenly all too aware of the hole in the pocket exposing the skin on my upper thigh. After uselessly yanking at the worn denim, I switched to my sleeves, stretching the fabric over the palms of my hands and folding my fingers over it to keep it in place. Sunlight beamed through the large window of the living room. The last light of the day rendered the thin material of my shirt completely see through, and I hoped with everything I had that Mirna wouldn’t see my arms.

My stomach twisted. The H I’d had over the past week wasn’t nearly enough to get me high, only enough to keep me from plowing head first into major withdrawals. My head throbbed and my body ached like I had the flu. The major hangover that never really went away.

My stomach could have also been twisting because the second I’d entered my grandmother’s house, I’d officially become the worst fucking human being on the planet.

Unofficially, I’d already held that title for quite some time.

I rocked forward to quell the nausea, but there was little that could help me that didn’t come in the form of a syringe, or a less used and abused body.

I wondered what was taking Mirna so long because I was’t sure how much longer I could sit there without vomiting into the planter next to the front door. Another wave of nausea washed over me and without thinking I bit down hard on my bottom lip to keep the contents of my stomach down. I licked the blood from my lip, the taste of copper adding to the already disgusting taste of bile on my tongue.

Mirna came back into the living room with a big smile on her face. She set down a silver tray on the coffee table, the one she only used when company came around.

My grandmother, seemingly unaware of my discomfort, poured tea into two mismatched cups. One was light blue with a chip on the rim, and I recognized it immediately. The chip had been a result of me running my big wheel into her coffee table as a kid. I’d sent her entire tea set, a wedding gift from my late grandfather, crashing to the floor. Mirna had sat with me on her lap on the kitchen floor, stroking my hair and comforting me for hours, even though it was me who ruined her entire tea set beyond repair. All had been lost, except for one cup.

The one cup I now took from Mirna as she passed it across the coffee table.

My hands shook, rattling the teacup against the saucer. I smiled as politely as I could, setting it carefully back on the table without so much as taking a sip. My grandmother returned my smile and watched me curiously over the rim of her teacup, and just like when I’d first knocked on her front door several minutes earlier, I waited.

Nothing.

The last time I visited, Mirna was having trouble remembering things. Where she’d put the keys. What time her friend Hilda was picking her up for Bingo.

It seemed things weren’t only different for me, but Mirna as well, because I never expected the woman I spent every summer with during my childhood since I was four years old to not recognize her one and only grandchild.