Page 104 of Penny For Your Thoughts
“I know.”
“I’m going to a meeting tomorrow with Aslan.” I glanced at the bed. “Will you watch the kid while I’m gone?”
Tallus groaned. “He’s nineteen. He doesn’t need a babysitter.”
When I didn’t speak, he sighed. “Yeah. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I won’t promise not to shove a dirty sock down his throat if he gets lippy.”
“That’s fair.” I kissed the top of Tallus’s head, and when he tilted his face up, I planted another kiss on his lips. The soft peck turned into something deeper.
“Ugh. So gay,” came a hoarse whisper from the hospital bed. “You’d think you were newlyweds. Fucking gross. Do that somewhere else.”
Tallus rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I love you.”
“I love you back, D.”
I walked Tallus to the emergency room doors, where I removed Echo’s vest and passed off the leash. “I’ll be home whenever we’re done here.”
“I’ll meet you in bed.”
Before he could walk away, I snagged his hand and drew him in for another kiss, this one, uninterrupted by a weaselly teenager.
Darcy wasn’t discharged until close to midnight. The doctor prescribed painkillers of the less-addictive variety, which the kid bitched about all the way back to the apartment. “He might as well have given me stupid Tylenol.”
“ItisTylenol… with codeine, which is technically a narcotic, so consider yourself lucky. I could have told him you’re an addict, and all he would have given you was baby aspirin.”
“I’m not a fucking addict.”
“No? How much did you participate in the drug orgy back at your apartment? You admitted you snorted coke and smoked pot. Those are drugs.”
“Those aren’t bad drugs. They aren’t even addictive, and I didn’t touch heroin.”
“Theyareaddictive. Ask me how I know. Do you drink?”
“Everyone does.”
“Alcohol’s a drug. You’re an addict.”
“Fuck you. You don’t know me.”
I knew him better than he understood. He was me, and I’d argued those same points at his age, convinced I was right and no one could tell me differently.
At the apartment, I found him a clean pair of Tallus’s pajamas in a basket of laundry that had yet to be put away. He spent twenty minutes in the bathroom, showering with a plastic bag around his cast because he didn’t want to stink like a hospital. He rejected my offer to help wrap it, and I swore up and down that I would knock him into next week if he got the cast wet.
By the time he settled on the couch, he was in visible pain, sulky, and flushed from a scalding shower. “Got any booze?”
I laughed. “Thought you weren’t an addict.”
“It’s fucking booze. Come on, man. I hurt, and I can’t fill my script. You gotta have something.”
“They gave you plenty of meds at the hospital to last you until morning.”
“Codeine is the weak stuff. A few shots of liquor would take the edge off.”
“Says every addict known to mankind.”
“I’m not a fucking addict.”
“Well, I am, and I don’t have booze in the house.”I regretfully dumped it the other day, but I kept that thought to myself. I’d have given my left nut for just about anything totake the edge off.
