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so happy, for one thing. Meg gave her a small, wrapped
package from her pocket, and Ashley unwrapped what turned
out to be a brass key chain in the shape of a heart like it was
a pony and a trip to Disneyland instead of something that
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didn't even make sense as a present to a six year old. Did she
even have any keys?
"She's been gone for years," Levi overheard one of the
party guest's mothers saying quietly to another. "Drugs."
Levi gave them a dark look and they subsided.
It suddenly occurred to him, as Ashley was handed
another brightly wrapped gift to open, that he was willingly
submitting to torture. And that, all appearances aside, he
really wasn't a masochist. Screw this, he thought, and picked
up his jacket and headed for the door.
Part of him hoped that Philip would notice and come after
him okay, most of him hoped that, except for the little part
that would have felt guilty if it had actually happened. But it
didn't happen, and he was okay with that. Absolutely okay.
The fact that he was halfway across the road that led to the
parking lot without realizing it until a car blared it horn and
locked its wheels trying not to hit him just meant that he was
distracted, not not-okay. He barely knew the guy. It wasn't
like he'd been picturing himself surrounded by a whole family
or anything. Not at all.
"Get out of the road, asshole!" The car's driver must have
been pissed off to roll down the window in this cold. Levi
blinked and discovered he was already out of the road.
"Hey!" Someone else yelled at him, and he turned blindly
and shouted back, "Fuck off!" almost into Brian's startled
face.
"Hey," Brian said again, more gently this time. He grabbed
onto Levi's upper arms. "Hey, are you okay?"
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Levi didn't move. "Of course I'm okay. I'm fine. Why why
wouldn't I be o-okay?" His throat felt swollen and his heart
was clenched in his chest.
Brian was leading him somewhere, and he went along
because he didn't know what else to do. "Come on," Brian
said. "Come on, here. Get in."
He found himself in the passenger seat of Brian's car;
Brian was getting in on the driver's side. "My car " he
started.
"We'll come back for it later, okay? I'll bring you back
later. Levi, what happened?"
"I don't know," Levi said, looking out the window at the
clear blue sky. He leaned his temple against the glass and let
its icy cold soak into him and numb him. "I don't know."
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Chapter Six
They went back to Brian's place; his roommate wasn't
there, so they had the apartment to themselves. It was quiet.
Brian sat Levi down at the kitchen table, which was actually
jammed up against the wall in the space between the tiny
kitchen and the not much bigger living room. Two of the
table's legs were on the kitchen linoleum and the other two
were on the living room carpet. The first time Levi had seen
it, he'd just about laughed his ass off. Now, he just found it
sad.
"You want some tea?" Brian asked. He was filling a small
sauce pan with water from the tap, which confused Levi until
he realized the pan was a substitute for a tea kettle.
"You have tea?"
"I think so." Setting the pan on a burner and turning on
the stove, Brian started to go through the cabinets. "Um,
maybe not. Oh! Hot cocoa mix."
"Sure," Levi said. He knew he had to pull himself out of
this funk. "Why are you being so nice to me?"
Brian shrugged. "You looked so pitiful after you almost got
flattened."
"But you're never nice to people," Levi said, which came
out sounding even less nice than it had in his head.
"That's not strictly true." Brian spooned powdered cocoa
mix into two mugs. "I was nice to someone just last week, in
fact. Of course, I was hoping it would get me laid..."
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"I didn't mean it like that." Levi picked at the edge of the
table where the stuff that was supposed to make it look like
wood was peeling away from the layer underneath. "I'm just
surprised."
"You're lucky you didn't get surprised flat by that car,"
Brian said, then came over and sat down in one of the other
chairs. "So, are you going to tell me what happened?" His
straight brown hair was falling into his eyes; he brushed it
away impatiently.
Levi looked down at the peeling table. "Nothing
happened."
"Bullshit," Brian said. "What, did you actually crash a four-
year-old's birthday party and then get kicked out?"
"She's six," Levi said hotly. "And I didn't crash, they
invited me." God, he really cared about this, didn't he?
"Anyway, her mom showed up, and it all kind of went to hell."
"Whose mom, the kid's?" Brian frowned and shifted, his
knee knocking against Levi's under the table. "What's bad
about that?"
"She took off, like, two years ago, or something. She's
schizo no, sorry, bipolar, I think and a drug addict. They
thought she was dead. And then she just turns up at her
daughter's birthday party like nothing ever happened, and
everyone else pretends right along with her. It was really
weird."
Brian sighed. "I tried to warn you about straight guys who
like to dabble. It's a recipe for getting your heart broken." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]