“There were warning signs, if I’d known to look for them, but I didn’t, so I blew them off.” I glance at him. “Gia and I weren’t big partiers. Better things to do with our bodies.”
He flashes me an arch look, and I grin in spite of everything.
“But after a few months, we were spending too much time together for him to hide it. He couldn’t make it through a forty-minute TV show without disappearing into the bathroom for a fix, and he always wanted to wait in the car on a coffee run, sending me in alone for the sugary frozen crap he loved.” I pause, drawn unwitting into the tidal memories. “He’d chain smoke these awful cheap menthols.” I can picture him nodding off on the stairs outside my mom’s apartment, a still-lit butt with an inch of ash dangling from his fingers and burning holes in his jeans, the scent of burnt mint clinging to his hair.
“Fucking menthols.” Gale snorts. “Jamie loves those.”
“He dragged me down to the Foxhole a couple of times, looking for a fix, so I knew where to go looking when he started to disappear. I’d find him in one of the back rooms, half-naked and slurring his words, and I’d tow him home to bed.”
“Did you love him?” Gale is still watching my face. God knows what he sees there. I’ve given him too many weapons against me already, but there’s no malice in his voice, only morbid curiosity.
“I tried,” I admit. “And then I tried not to.” I meet his eyes, and something elemental passes between us. Talking about Caleb suddenly feels like the lesser evil.
“How’d that go?” His hollow tone resonates in my chest, and that unwilling empathy surges again.
“I gave up in phases,” I tell him. “Each time a little slower to go looking, each time telling myself this was the last, until one day it actually was. I got in a fight with one of his dealers and ended up with a busted rib that kept me off the straps for six weeks, and I’d finally had enough.”
Gale shakes his head.
“He wasn’t your family.”
“No,” I admit. The last time I saw him, he’d shown up outside the gym, ragged and skinny and looking for money. I’d given him twenty bucks to go away and tried not to hate myself for it.
Gale doesn’t ask any more questions.
We pull up to the Foxhole, and I find parking right across the street because none of the fuckers who hang out here have cars. The place is a beat-up old club-turned-crash-house, tucked into the forgotten shadows that cling to the edges of the neon Strip. It’s been over a year since I’ve been down here, and the guy on the door is no one I know, but when I tell him I’m here to see Heath, he relaxes.
“You got a picture?” I ask Gale. He pulls his phone out and fucks around for half a minute before handing it over. I glance at the screen and pass it to the new bouncer. The kid in the photo looks a little like Gale—the same dirty-blond hair hanging over the same green eyes, but faded, less visceral, with no trace of his older brother’s charisma. He’s got one skinny arm thrown around the shoulder of a dark-haired chick who, despite her heavy makeup, looks about fifteen.
“That was about six months ago,” Gale says. “His hair is longer now. He had it in a ponytail earlier tonight and was wearing a green army jacket.” The guy barely glances at the photo before shrugging and handing the phone back.
“Maybe,” he says. “Lots of skinny guys with long hair come through here.” He tries for a leer but gives it up as a bad ideawhen he catches Gale’s scowl. “You can ask Heath. He’s here tonight, and he always pays attention to the new folks.”
“Isn’t it your job to pay attention?” Gale asks, temper rising. “You gave us enough of a hard time.”
I put a warning hand on his arm and try not to notice the way the tight muscles shift under my hand.
“We’ll talk to Heath,” I tell him. “Come on.”
The inside is the same as I remember, thick with the heady stink of smoke and piss, of unwashed bodies and open wounds. Gale shadows me without comment, light and wary on his feet, but with the confidence of someone who’s spent time in dangerous places and lived to fight another day.
Heath is changing bandages in what Caleb called the bunkhouse, but I always think of as the hospital.The last refuge of lost causes, Heath said to me once, where junkies go to die once even the high isn’t worth staying alive for.
Gale hesitates in the doorway, thrown for the first time since our arrival, and panic flashes across his features before he locks it down.
“He’s not in here,” I murmur. “These are long-timers. If he came to party, he’ll be in one of the back rooms, and Heath will have seen him. ODs get sent to the ER. Nevada is a Good Samaritan state.”
“So is California,” he mutters. “People still get dumped in back alleys.”
I nod. He’s right.
“Lyot.” Heath gives me a hug. “I’d say it’s good to see you, but I’d be lying. Thought you were done chasing after lost boys.”
“Have you seen him lately?” I don’t want to ask, but I can’t help myself.
“No, but that’s a good thing.” He pats my arm with a beaming smile. “Caleb got out about six months ago, and a friend ofmine up at WestCare said he was in the program there. Hasn’t been back since.”
A buried weight lifts in my chest, and I suck in a deep gasp of the fetid air. Gale shifts beside me.
