Page 86 of Badd Love
"Woof." I pronounced the word deadpan. "How didIbecome the dog in this situation, though?"
Bax shoved me playfully. "Get outta here, young pup. Go on, git."
I snagged Lindsey's hand and led her out of the house. She exhaled a long, slow breath once we were away from the noise and chaos of the house.
I laughed. "Same. Like I said, my family is fucking amazing, but they can be overwhelming at times." She hesitated as if thinking about saying something, and then clapped her teeth together, clearly reconsidering. "Well, don't start filtering yourself now, Linz."
She sighed. "I'm kind of jealous. Or, a lot jealous. Under different circumstances, I'd love to hang out and get to know everyone. Right now, though, I…selfishly, I just want to talk to you."
We strolled across the back lawn toward the beach and walked along the water's edge just out of reach of the lapping wavelets.
I sensed she was putting her thoughts together, so I let the silence stand. She stopped after a quarter mile or so and sat down in the grass on a bluff overlooking the Passage. I sat beside her and waited.
"I have a brother, Larry," she said, eventually. "He's ten years older than me, and he's technically my half-brother. He's also a piece of shit."
I barked a laugh. "Wow, okay."
"No, for real. He was always a fucking hooligan. Always in trouble for stupid shit. He didn't get arrested for dealing drugs; he got arrested for trying to sell drugs to a uniformed officer."
I spluttered. "No. No fucking way."
"No, for real. He knew the guy and thought they were buddies. He offered him a dime bag of heroin."
I stared at her. "You aren't for real. No one is that stupid."
"Larry is." I shook my head. "He pulled shit like that all the time. He also had an uncanny knack for getting himselfoutof trouble. He never saw charges for that stunt with the cop, somehow. Never went to jail at all, actually, despite all the terribly illegal shit he pulled."
"You're saying 'had.' Is he dead?"
"No, just in the Navy, apparently."
"I take it you're not close to him."
She snorted. "Not even a little, for reasons that will be obvious shortly." She inhaled, held it, and let it out slowly. "Larry was an obnoxiously, shockingly stupid person, but we generally got along okay. If Mom was gone at work, he'd make sure I at least had a PB-and-J or something."
I frowned. "Don't much like the sound of that."
Lindsey shrugged. "Mom wasn't exactly the most attentive mother. Not the point. My problem with Larry wasn't really so much Larry as it was his friends. They were all uniformly fucking awful. Just jerks and assholes. I always hated it when he brought his friends around because they were just the worst assholes in the world." She paused, sighing. "And then there was his friend Danny. Daniel Cohen. I hated him from the moment I met him. He was greasy, smelly, and unwashed. He wasmean. Not just an asshole or obnoxious, he was flat-out mean. And the way he'd look at me?"
My stomach lurched, sank. "Shit."
She stared out at the water, painted silver by the bright curve of the waning moon, just a few days past full, and the numberless stars. "I was twelve when Larry started bringingDanny around. It was always at night when Mom was reliably going to be out getting wasted."
"Your mom left you at home alone with a drug dealer brother?" I asked.
I actually laughed. "Dane, she left me alonewithoutmy drug dealer brother when I waseight. It was better when Larry wasn't there, honestly. I was safe when I was alone. By twelve, I knew how to take care of myself. I already did my own laundry, made most of my own meals, got myself to school, all that shit. Mom had already gone to work by the time I had to get up for school."
I feel my heart shred. "Jesus, Linz."
She shook her head. "Don't. Not for that. It taught me independence."
"No, it taught you that you can't trust anyone,” I said. “That you can't rely on anyone but yourself."
She nodded. "True enough, I guess. Anyway. Danny Cohen. He and Larry would come over and watch TV, play video games, get wasted, the usual twenty-year-old boy bullshit. School was an escape for me, so I actually liked going. It was safe. There was food. Sometimes Mom would forget to pay a bill and we'd be in the dark until she got paid, or the gas was out so our showers were cold and the stove didn't work, or we didn't have water so I had to shower at school. Didn't happen all the time, but it happened."
Another long pause; I got the feeling she was delaying getting to the hard stuff.
"April 5th, four months from my thirteenth birthday, I went to bed early because I had a math test the next morning, and I really wanted to do well on it. I'd studied my butt off for it, and I was excited to show my teacher how hard I'd worked." Her eyes watered, shimmering, and she dropped her gaze, head hanging. "Fuck."
