Last Call (Bad Habits Book 3) (6 page)

Lily grinned again. “So happy. Want to look for more?”

I picked up my drink. “I want to get wasted and hide under a rock.”

She laughed. “It’s not like everyone doesn’t do this.”

“Then why does it feel so pathetic? Shopping for a date online is exactly like buying condoms. You stand there scanning eighty different packages, trying to hurry because of some lingering shame, topped with the worry that someone might see you. I mean, what do you get? Ribbed? Extra sensitive? Fire and Ice? You never know what you like until you try one, so you take a risk on some shit like Fire and Ice and it ends up being a burning crotch nightmare.”

Lily burst out laughing.

“Seriously, whose idea was it to put Icy Hot on your genitals? I’m pretty sure that cautionary tale has been in every teen movie ever.” I took a drink. “Like I said — it’s exactly like online dating. I don’t want Fire and Ice in my lady parts. I just need some nice, normal, no-gimmick business that won’t get me pregnant.”

My phone buzzed in my hand.

I gaped when I saw the message. “Oh, my God. It’s UndyingArt. He says he’s free tomorrow.”

She squealed like a pre-teen who just got the newest
Tiger Beat
in the mail. “What are you going to say?”

“Well, it’d be kind of weird to say no at this point,” I said as I answered him, setting the place, and he agreed almost immediately. Butterflies took off in my stomach. “We’re meeting at Roasted tomorrow afternoon.” I set down my phone and smiled at her. “A date with a cute artist.”

“How do you feel?”

I bobbed my head, rolling the feeling around. “Good, I think. That was way easier than I thought it would be, and kind of a rush. I thought it would take longer to find someone I wanted to go out with than four-point-two seconds.”

“Well, no one would ever accuse you of being indecisive.”

I raised my glass. “That, my friend, is very true.”

Patrick

I WASN’T SURE HOW LATE it was, only that it had been long enough that the voice in the back of my mind told me I should probably leave or go to bed before she came home. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, just recrossed my ankles with my eyes on my sketchbook, telling myself I was just comfortable. That the next time I got up, I’d go to sleep. That I definitely wasn’t waiting for her to come home so I could see her.

Music played softly from her portable speaker, a beat to drive my hand as it guided the charcoal across the page in heavy strokes. A curve and a line for her lips. The swoop of her hair. The angle of her jaw. The smallest smile resting just in the corner of her mouth as she looked away.
 

I knew every detail of Rose’s face, every expression.

I pictured her in moments permanently imprinted in my mind. As she lay in bed next to me on some otherwise unmemorable morning. After I kissed her for the first time. When I told her I wanted to end it, her face as flat and smooth as glass. I thought she didn’t care.
 

Wrong.

It wasn’t her fault, what had happened between us. I just didn’t know how to handle what I felt for her. I didn’t even know what my feelings
were.
Not until it was too late.

And now, after everything, I somehow found myself bunking with the girl I couldn’t let go. I pushed away the thought that this could be my chance, not wanting to hope. In my experience, hope led to disappointment. But if nothing else, maybe Rose and I could at least find a way to mend things on some level. I blew it up, so I figured it was up to me to figure out how it all fit back together, one piece at a time. Even just friends would be better than nothing, better than what we’d been over the last few months.

I knew what nothing felt like, and I never wanted to go back to that.

Life could have been so much harder than it had been for me. I never went hungry. I was never beaten or abused. I had a roof over my head and clothes on my back. But I couldn’t say I ever felt loved or wanted. Not that I could remember, anyway.

My father — The Sergeant, we called him — was in the Army, and it suited him almost too well. I sometimes wondered if he could have survived in a civilian life, a civilian job, the quiet, hardened man I knew who valued structure and order over everything. I suppose it was why we never saw eye-to-eye — I had the rebellion gene, thanks to my mom.
 

Sometimes I think I remember what it was like when I was very young, though part of me thinks it’s just a recreation of an old photo, a retold story from someone else’s memory rather than one of my own. But I remember us happy, even though it’s a fleeting feeling — as soon as I touch the thought, it’s gone. I remember the three of us laughing, holding hands as we watched the giraffes with their long black tongues, necks stretched to reach the green leaves near the viewing platform.
 

I was nine when she left us, and I think she took the best part of him with her. Maybe she just normalized him somehow, or maybe she was a buffer that made everything feel like it was fine. Either way, he was never the same after she left. I don’t think he really knew what to do with me, and we never understood each other. Temperamentally, he and I were very much alike — stoic, avoiding what we didn’t know how to deal with, leaving things unsaid and unresolved. I stayed out of his way, and he stayed out of mine.

Art was my only constant, the place — the
only
place — where I could be open and honest. Over the years, I filled sketchbook after book, never taking classes, never expecting it to amount to anything. It was just what I did, something to fill my soul and the silence of my life. We never lived anywhere for more than a year before we were re-stationed, which meant I never really had a chance to make friends. So I was the weird, quiet kid who wore mostly black, with charcoal-smudged fingers and hard eyes, smoking under the bleachers.

When I turned sixteen, The Sergeant announced we were moving again and it just hit me. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to live with him. I wanted to go to New York, start a life for myself.
 

He didn’t even put up a fight when I told him, just gave me a couple grand and told me to call him if I got in any trouble.

I never called. Neither did he.
 

It had been more than ten years since then. Sometimes I wondered about him. If he found a new wife. Had more kids. If he was happy. Sometimes I wondered if he wondered about me. But usually I didn’t think about him at all.

I’d taken a bus from Fort Rucker, Alabama, to New York with nothing but what was in my dad’s old canvas army-green duffle bag, used the money to rent a room at the Vanderbilt YMCA for a month, and found a job at an Italian restaurant bussing tables.

It was there that I met a gangly blond kid, a couple years older than me with a smile like Christmas morning and the ability to make me laugh like no one I’d ever met. Seth was my first friend, the first person to make me feel included. It was the first time I’d ever been happy. He lived with his buddies, Danny and Sarah, and said they had room for me, if I wanted to stay. And of course I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay forever.
 

But what I thought was good and real was just an illusion. I followed Seth down the rabbit hole all the same.

I’d done drugs before — smoked a little weed, tripped on mushrooms — but nothing like what I walked into with Seth. Molly — ecstasy — was the first step for me, the easy push, something to make you feel like everything was going to be just fine, the overload of serotonin that made all of my problems, past or future, seem small and trivial. Then it was ketamine, heavy limbs and stretched out nights spent just existing. And through it all, I felt like I finally had a home. That I had a family. That I belonged. And I was so in love with the idea that I sacrificed myself to hang on to the feeling.

One night, Jared, our dealer, came over and brought a needle kit. Free samples of China White. Like nothing we’d ever felt before, he said, and he was right. It was like nothing I ever felt again, even though I chased it every time I put a needle in my arm.

The next two years were a blur, days and nights running together like dripping paint. The four of us split rent in a shitty two-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen, working so we could get high. Then Seth started peddling for Jared, and the cycle went around and around, faster, deeper, darker — until we were all lost.

I remember the day I
woke up
in both senses of the word. The metallic tang of unwashed bodies hung in the thick air, still and stagnant from long, slow breaths and closed doors and windows. I didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, as I opened my heavy lids, mouth sticky. I looked over at Seth, hanging half off his rumpled bed, the knuckles of one hand dangling just over the floor. His face was turned to mine, eyes closed, ringed with dark shadows, hair more yellow than golden, dark and thick with oil. His needle kit lay on the bed next to him, the cigar box open, contents strewn around it.

I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t recognize myself. And it was then I knew I needed more out of life than I was giving myself.
 

I didn’t have a diploma, so my job options were slim. But I could draw. I saw an article about Tonic in a magazine and wondered if being a tattoo artist was a possibility. You didn’t need a diploma or degree, you just apprenticed and practiced and
became
what you wanted to be.

And that’s exactly what I did. Walked into that shop where — I learned later — it was nearly impossible to get a job. I showed Joel a couple of my sketchbooks, and he hired me on the spot. Even offered me a place to stay, helped me get clean.

People may call me Tricky, but the best things in my life have come to me by sheer luck.

The door opened behind me, and I closed my sketchbook, looking over my shoulder to find Rose with her bag in the crook of her elbow, foot on the door as she pulled her key out of the lock.

“You’re still here.” It wasn’t an accusation or a question, though I couldn’t quite place her tone, like she was happy and pissed at the fact.

I stretched. “Just about to go to bed. How was Habits?”

She set her bag on the table and took a seat in the armchair., propping her boots on the coffee table. “Good. The usual.”
 

I watched her twist up her hair, noting that she was concentrating a little too hard for such a simple task — lip between her teeth, eyes narrowed with focus. I realized then that she was drunk.
 

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” she said as she settled into the chair.

I leaned forward to set my sketchbook on the table by her feet, glancing up the line of her legs to meet her eyes. Mine lingered there. “Yeah, sorry. It was just getting late, so I figured why leave and then come right back?”

“I have a date tomorrow,” she blurted, looking somehow nervous and determined all at the same time.

My heart stopped for a long moment, though my face was still as I leaned back to settle into couch again. “Okay.”
 

Her cheeks flushed as she picked something invisible off the arm of the chair. “Not that I need your permission, or anything. I just thought you should know, you know? Like you staying here doesn’t mean—”

I smirked, covering for the fact that she’d called me out. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

Her mouth opened and closed again, and my smirk climbed. Stone-cold Rose, caught off guard. I wondered if it was my lucky day.

“I know what it doesn’t mean, Rose. Funny that you’d assume I didn’t, though,” I joked.

Her flush deepened. “It’s not like that. I just wanted to say it out loud.”

“I get it. I wasn’t planning on making a move.”
 

It was true. I hadn’t planned on it, but I wouldn’t ignore an opportunity. I’d never admit that to her, though, and she needed reassurance that I wasn’t going to make it weird. So that’s exactly what I gave her. “Look, it’s been long enough that we’ve danced around each other like this. Maybe we can find our new normal. Move on.”

I said it like it was simple, but it was just another lie to keep us both standing.
 

I veered us away from that subject and into the last thing I wanted to talk about. But I had to play it cool, pretend I was fine with it. I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of pretending in the days to come. “So, a date, huh? You excited?”
 

She relaxed into her chair at the mention, looking a little weary. “I don’t even know, man. Mostly, I’m nervous. It’s been a while.” Her eyes darted to mine, like she’d forgotten for a second it was me she was talking to.

I stared at her bottom lip where it was pinned between her teeth — lips that were mine. Lips that had said words I wished they would utter again. Lips that had smiled only for me, that had kissed my own, that had delivered her to me.
 

Lips that were my deliverance.

Lips that could be kissing some other guy within twenty-four hours.

I smiled reassuringly through the fire in my ribs. “I know the feeling. What’s his story?” I asked, not wanting to know.

“He’s an artist named Steve. I don’t know too much else.”

“What’s his medium?” I was genuinely interested, only because I hoped it was something I could hold against him.

“Not sure, though I know he makes furniture at least.”

I nodded, impressed despite myself. “Lots of math, which is why I never got into it.”

She laughed. “Right? My high school algebra teacher was a friggin’ liar. I’ve never once had to solve an algebra problem as an adult.”

“Try learning it on your own. Joel attempting to help me while I was getting my GED was a fucking riot.” I snickered at the memory.

Those smiling lips again. I couldn’t look away. “Oh, my God. I can only imagine the swearing involved in that.”

I chuckled and rested my arms on the back of the couch with a sigh. “Shep’s actually the mathmagician of the family, so at least I had him to step in and save the day when quadratic equations got the best of us.”

“So,” she said as she leaned forward to untie her boots. “I think everyone’s going to Habits night after next. Maggie and Cooper are even going to be there.” She made a mock surprised face.