I said. I hated lying to him. It ate at me almost as badly as the guilt. “Hey, my sister told me they just started having NA meetings down at the old church by—”
“I know where it is.”
“Have you been?”
“Nah. When I’m ready to get clean, I know where to go. Don’t worry; I got this shit handled.”
I’d been hearing that for years. It was nothing more than an excuse. An excuse that would eventually be the cause of his death.
“Don’t tell me not to worry.”
“Why?” He laughed. “I ain’t worried about you. I figure, the worst that can happen is you get inside some nasty pussy. You’ll slide right out of it and run your ass home.” He laughed again, which turned into a deep cough. “Just like I’d get out of it. Nothin’—not dope, not pussy—is gonna get me down.”
“That’s what you call handling your shit?” I couldn’t hide the anger in my voice. “Because it has gotten you down, Billy. And it’s holding you down, too.”
The guys on the streets reported back to me—not the scum down at the boardwalk, but the guys who sold to them. The same guys Billy got his junk from. So, I knew how much he was buying, how much he was slinging, and how much he was using.
And I knew he was using more than he was slinging.
“I don’t want you to end up in the same place as Paulie. You keep this shit up, and that’s what’s going to happen.”
“You want to fight with someone? Is that it?” he barked back. “Then, fine, fight me. Say whatever you need to say, and let it all out. As soon as I hang up, I’m going to do what I want, you’re gonna keep on worrying, and nothing is going to change.”
“Fuck that.”
I didn’t want to get angry and sound like I was attacking him. But why the hell didn’t he want to get help? Why didn’t he worry about overdosing? Why did he act as though he were invincible when he’d witnessed so many guys like him drop dead?
It was because he didn’t fucking care.
“Let me know if the guys say anything about Paulie. I’ll call you in a few days,” he said and hung up.
The phone felt so hot in my hand. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I reached back and threw it as hard as I could. It flew through the air, hit the wall, and fell to the marble floor. The screen smashed, the case shattered, throwing tiny pieces everywhere.
When I walked over to my desk, it was covered in papers and reports and contracts. None of them mattered. Not at this moment.
Neither did the stress from worrying about the jackpots or the marketing director I had to replace. Not even the poker tournament that was going to draw our biggest crowd yet.
All that mattered was Billy.
If something didn’t happen soon, I was going to lose my best friend.
Seven
Kyle
When I heard the lock unlatch, I jolted upright, my head swinging in the direction of the door to watch it slowly open. It was the first time there had been noise inside our cell that hadn’t been created by Garin or me. The first time anyone had been in here since I’d been awake.
A man walked in, taller than Garin, his shoulders almost as broad as the doorway. His wifebeater showed a set of arms that were twice the size of my thighs. Every inch of them was covered in the most colorful tattoos. A full-grown thick beard hung from his chin, a feature I had once considered extremely sexy until I saw it on the face of my captor. And in his hands were two trays filled with small mountains of brown slop.
“¡A comer!” he barked, his voice so deep it vibrated through the cell.
The two years of Spanish that I’d taken in high school weren’t going to help me out at all. I knew ten words, fifteen tops.
“What did he just say?” I asked Garin, not at all expecting him to answer.
“He’s telling us to eat,” Garin said.
Later, I would ask him how he knew that, but now, the bearded guy had my full attention. He dropped the trays on the floor, and he kicked them toward us. The brown sauce spilled over the sides from the rush of movement.
My stomach growled, and I wanted so badly to crawl forward and lap up the puddle off the dirty cement. I didn’t know how long it had been