Page 46 of Guardian
And two teeth.
“Hell, man.Didn’t mean to do that.”
Still hunched over, he responds by putting up his middle finger.“Sure.Whatever, fucker.My fault for leaving my mouth guard in my locker.Now before I call the dentist to see if I can have these put back in, do you wanna tell me again how you’re perfectly chill and nothing at all is wrong?”
Willing my heart rate to settle down, I bring my hands up, interlacing them behind my head.This man is my best friend.We’ve been through the worst kind of shit together.I’d tell him anything, but I don’t know how to tell him this.
I’m still barely willing to admit it to myself.
“Look, we all know you want to fuck the kid.I think I speak for everyone when I say just get it the hell over with so you can go back to being a regular asshole we barely tolerate and not the extra-extra asshole you’ve been lately, okay?”
Everything inside me goes cold.“What did you fucking say?”
My offense is a smokescreen, desperately covering the guilt that curdles my blood.The shame.The utter panic.
Everyone knows.Everyonehas known.Do they all think I’m a fucking predator?Is that what I am?In the end maybe I’m no better than the sick old fuckers paying to watch Ravi dance while they smoke cigars.
“Jesus, Liam.You can’t think it’s not obvious.Well.Maybe it wasn’t at first to the rest of the crew, but you forget how well I know you.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”When I say Zed and I have been through everything together, I mean everything.
In spite of that, I’ve never wanted to strangle him more for calling me on my shit.But Zed and I don’t pull punches with each other.We never have.
“Then maybe you thought that knock I took to the head off the Gulf of Aden caused permanent brain damage.You must have, since you seemed to think I wouldn’t notice how a little more than a year and a half ago you switched from mostly women to mostly men at our group sessions.Then you slowly stopped having them at all.And how you’ve been pent up as fuck ever since this auction shit hit the wire.”
“Did Bev tell you?That Ravi’s the one…” Getting auctioned off like a used car.Like cattle.Like foreclosed real estate.I can’t even say it out loud.
“She did, but she didn’t have to.You think I can’t read?I have access to the same reports you do.And she was right to tell me.”
“I’d hoped for some discretion considering?—”
“Considering he has you twisted up like Mama Elisabetta’s garlic knots?She was right to come to me.You should have done it first.”
My throat’s dry and tight, like I swallowed sandpaper.Another guzzle from my own water bottle helps me stall on my answer but does nothing to ease the pain.
“You’re right.I think…I might be losing it a little,” I admit on a shaky exhale.
“Because you want to fuck the kid.”
“He’s not a kid!”My water bottle sails across the room before I even process what I’ve done.
Zed grimaces with his two front teeth missing, undeterred.“The hero doth protest way too fucking much.You’re the one who calls him that.Man, then.”
“He isn’t—” When I realize I’m about to contradict myself, I stop.“He’s nineteen, man.I’m almost forty.Comparatively, he’s a kid.”
“A kid you’d like to fuck.”
“Don’t make me clean out the rest of your goddamn mouth.I’m not supposed to want to fuck a kid I helped raise.We hunt down pieces of shit like me.”
“We hunt down child molesters and traffickers.People who groom someone below the age of consent into doing things they shouldn’t do or otherwise wouldn’t agree to.This is not that.”
Exhaustion pulls me to the floor, knees bent up as my ass hits the mat.“He says he knows about the get-togethers.”
His eyebrows shoot up.“Get-togethers?”
“You know, the group sessions.The ones where we?—”
“I know exactly what the hell we do at those get-togethers, Liam.How does he know?”
