Up in Smoke, Page 48

  us!” he exclaims, bouncing on his heels. “I could just kiss you. Come here, you big, burly bitch.”

  Bear and King laugh as Preppy leaps into the air, heading straight for me. I sidestep, and he goes crashing onto the couch. Rebounding without missing a beat, he rolls onto his back. Smile still in place.

  “You’re way too happy for someone who’s been tortured the way you have,” I point out, taking a drag of my smoke. Bear pours out another whiskey and hands it to me. I down it in one burning gulp and hold it out for a refill which Bear obliges, this time filling it almost to the brim.

  “I know, sickening, isn’t it?” Preppy asks. He winks at me and sits up, lighting a joint. “Sometimes all you need is a smidge of torture to put shit in perspective.”

  What was really sickening was what had happened to him. Preppy should be dead. For a long time, everyone, including his friends, thought he was dead, but he survived and rejoined the land of the living. If Preppy is still smiling after all that happened to him, I should be able to smile, too. To let Frankie in. To make this shit with her more…permanent.

  “I recognize that look,” King says. I hadn’t realized I’d been staring into my whiskey.

  “What look might that be?” I ask, staring out the window into the courtyard below at the closed door of the room Frankie’s in.

  “The look that says she’s gotten to you,” Bear says, downing his own whiskey. His grin is of the shit-eating variety.

  “Some people say that a good woman can tame a man. Train him. Make him less violent,” King says. He chuckles. “It ain’t true. It makes you more violent. It makes you more everything.”

  “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” I say, taking a drag from my smoke. “Something I’ve recently learned.”

  “Says the man covered from head to toe in what I assume is someone else’s blood,” Preppy says.

  I look down. “Kind of forgot about that.”

  “Been there,” Bear says.

  “We all have,” King adds.

  “Ditto or trippilo, or some shit like that. Me, too, is what I’m trying to say,” Preppy chimes in.