Winter Solstice in St. Nacho's (St. Nacho's #5) - Z.A. Maxfield Page 0,5

told me to get you a motel room. They’re coming down. I told you about Echo. Gayle’s a physician who specializes in addiction recovery.”

“Do you go through all this with everyone who overdoses on your watch?” He talked through a haze of blue sugar dust.

“Of course. Didn’t you know you can get anything at the library?”

He pulled one eyelid down and blew a raspberry, literally. Blue raspberry scented breath tinged with vomit and tooth decay wafted my way.

Damn it, Thuong. Of all the library bathrooms in all the world...

“This blows,” he whined. “Getting sober’s going to be such a bitch.”

I picked up the check. “Calculus was a bitch, and you handled that.”

“What the fuck, man?” He glared at me like he had before I wore him down with candy. “Is that some kind of racist thing? Just because I have an Asian name doesn’t mean I do math.”

Did he really not know who I was yet? The way we’d talked, I guess I just thought... “I taught you calculus.”

He pulled back. “Uh, no you didn’t. Because unless you’re looking really good for a seventy-five-year-old woman named Doris Sanders—”

“No. I tutored you almost every day when I was home from school. At Comix and Games. You really don’t recognize me?”

“Wait—” He swallowed hard. “Luke?”

If I thought our past would make things easier between us, I was mistaken. He flushed so deeply I worried he was having some sort of episode. Shock and something else—shame, maybe—drew his features tight. Tears he hadn’t shed over the prospect of dying fell unchecked over his cheeks as he stumbled out of the booth and ran for the door.

I didn’t go after him. I couldn’t have caught him anyway. Tug ran like a streak of lightning despite how frail he appeared. Adrenaline had lit his afterburners with all that sugar as fuel. He was probably used to running from cops and violent johns and God knew what else. It wouldn’t take long for that chemical cocktail to wear off, then he’d be a mess.

I would never find him.

That meant I had to stay where he could find me.

I left money for the food and picked up the candy he’d left behind.

Outside, I sat in the car with the door open and gave him a few minutes to cool down. That close to the river, a balmy, rich, earth-scented breeze blew through the car. I left the dome light on to illuminate me like a beacon. The radio played Coldplay’s “Clocks.”

Had I really wondered if I wanted more from life than just my staid job and boring social life? Now, I reconsidered that. Nope. Nyet. Give me an uneventful library any day.

I waited fifteen minutes with no sign of Tug. After twenty, I closed the door and started the engine so I could use the AC. Thirty minutes and a couple annoying mosquito bites later, the passenger door opened. Tug fell into the seat beside me, looking more like a wet dishcloth than a human being.

“You’ll really get me a room?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Because...?”

“Because all the hot mermen are busy with navy seal shifters tonight.”

“You’re still really weird.” He picked up the candy I’d set on the dashboard and pulled it to him as if to say, my precioussss.

Thank God for Echo and Gayle. Thank God for naloxone. Thank God for all the vacations I’d never taken because I could take time off and had plenty of headroom on my credit card for three days in the Palm Court—a positively disgraceful motel on the frontage road off State Route 99 just outside Lodi, south of Galt by about ten miles.

I texted the address to Echo before retrieving a trick kit from the front desk—crappy toothbrush, individual packet of toothpaste, plastic comb, and oh, goodie, a condom—amenities motels rarely bothered with anymore.

Later, I’d go out and get more, but in a pinch... I handed the things I’d gotten over to Tug.

He took them shyly with both hands. “Thanks.”

I remembered the EMT asking him if he had anything else, anything sharp, anything that would hurt her. He’d replied, “No ma’am,” like the healthy, butch little Galt boy I’d known so long ago.

I wanted to ask him, “Are you going to do anything stupid, anything painful, anything that will destroy my faith in myself and my ability to trust my fellow man in the future?”

I didn’t ask because I didn’t want the answer.

“Why don’t you go take a shower.” I sat in a chair with casters at a Spanish colonial two-top