“I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you. Not with anyone. I don’t even want to talk about it with myself. It never happened. It’s over,” I slurred, reaching for the bottle and sticking my tongue into the neck to reach the last speck of un-spilled liquor clinging to the top.

King grabbed the bottle from my hand and slid it across the room, out of my reach.

“Give that back, motherfucker,” I demanded, reaching my hand out and wagging my fingers at my lost bottle of booze.

“You think you’ve been through some shit? Well, you’re not the only one. Ray was raped by Isaac right before he, or one of his men, shot you. She was kidnapped by her ex who played a round of ‘burn off this tattoo’ on her with a motherfucking blow torch. I was shot four times trying to save her. You want to hear some more shit? Just ask Bear what the fuck’s been going on since you’ve been gone. Ask him about what Eli and his men did to him. I realize that you’re fucking hurting but get your head out of your own fucking ass long enough to understand that you have people around you. Family. And we’re here to help so stop fucking pushing us away.”

“What the fuck happened to Bear?” I asked, sitting upright.

“Ask him your fucking self,” King snapped.

“I would but everyone’s been tiptoeing around me and no one fucking tells me anything!”

“Then get your ass up and come outside. Breathe some fresh air and at least try!”

I shook my head. “I want to. I really do. But I can’t, man. I just can’t. Every time I try to leave the light outside is blinding as fuck. Every time I convince myself it’s all okay my chest seizes up and I...I just can’t. And you’re right. They don’t need to be seeing me like this, so I’ll go.”

“Prep, that’s not what I’m fucking saying and it’s not what I want. That’s not what any of us want. You been through hell. We get that. Let us help you through it. Come outside. Breathe some fresh fucking air and do something other than work on your uni-nostril.”

I chuckled. “Was that your attempt at a joke?” I asked, lighting a cigarette and leaning back against the recliner. My temples started to ache with the beginnings of a headache.

“I guess,” King said, scratching the back of his neck.

“It was fucking awful.”

“Fuck off.” King smiled, grabbing my face in his hands. “At least try, Prep. Try for us.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I said honestly.

King surprised me by stomping back across the room and pulling me up by my arm. “Come on,” he said dragging me into his shop and pushing me down onto the couch. He walked over to a picture on the wall and shifted it aside to reveal a safe. He entered a few numbers on the keypad and when the door opened his arm disappeared into the wall and when he pulled it out he was holding a notebook in his black gloved hands.

A familiar notebook.

He tossed it to me and I caught it. I didn’t need to open it to know what it was. I ran my hand over my eleven-year-old doodling on the cover. SAMUEL CLEARWATER written in graffiti style letters over the top. “I can’t believe you still have this,” I said.

King reached over and turned to a dog-eared page, revealing the stilt home drawing we drew that first day on the playground. The day we met. The marker ink had barely faded. The drops of red from my bloody nose from being beat up minutes before were still visible over stick a figure version of ourselves. “Of course I fucking kept it. I don’t want to forget where I came from or where I’m going.” He pointed to the page. “THIS might have been two fucking kids making a plan, but I still live by what we wrote that day and god willing, far in the fucking future, I’ll fucking die by it someday too. I want to know if you’re still fucking with me.”

I looked from the notebook to him. “We were just kids, Boss-man. We were just fucking around,” I said, closing the notebook and tossing it up onto the tray.

King blew out a frustrated breath. “Preppy, since we were kids we’ve always said we were gonna go out into the world and we weren’t going to wait for anyone to give us anything. We were gonna do what we wanted and take what we wanted. Since day fucking one, man. Me and you on that playground with that fucking notebook. We mapped out our lives in those scribbles. Don’t tell me you don’t fucking remember that and what it meant because I sure as shit do.”

“I remember,” I muttered, wondering where King was going with all this.

“You know; I don’t think you fucking do remember.” King stomped his way over to me, stopping only when his knees were pressed against mine, towering above me, glaring down as if he were about to strangle me with his bare hands. His nostrils flared. “You claim to remember. So tell me, what do we do when we want something?”

“We...we take it,” I said, rubbing my temples and recalling the words the naive kid versions of ourselves wrote down that day.

“Louder,” King demanded roughly grabbing me by the shoulders and lifting me off my feet.

“We take it.” I said a little bit louder, pushing his hands off of me only to have him grip me again, harder this time, and step even closer until he was right up in my face and our noses were almost touching.

“Louder, motherfucker,” King demanded with a growl.

“We take it!” I yelled, pushing against him only to have him push back against me yet again. He grabbed me by the back of the head and pushed his forehead against mine so he was staring right into my eyes and I had no choice but to stare back.

“Again! Louder! What do we do when we want something?” King screamed, anger pulsed from the vein in his neck as he talked through his teeth. “Tell. Me. What. We. DO!!!!”

I hit my boiling point. His fingers dug into the back of my neck as we squared off. “We take it!” I yelled. “We motherfucking take it! ‘Cause it’s ours! It’s all fucking ours to fucking take!”

“Scream it! Show me you still fucking believe in this! In us!” King said shaking me by the back of the neck and screaming in my face.

“We fucking take it!” I roared back with everything I had, my teeth clenching together as King held his forehead against mine. “We fucking take all of it!!!!!”

King clapped me on the back and released me, but he continued to crowd my space, his eyes never leaving mine. “Good. Now tell me what happens when someone stands in the way of us taking what’s ours?” He grabbed the notebook and thrust it against my chest. I closed my hands around it and looked from it to my best friend with new found determination I felt building in my soul.