Chapter 25

Fox

The coke lines glittered before me, powerful and thick. Rhett drew them strong, long, his eyes darting like a wild animal’s. He gestured with his head toward the lines, lifting his brow. “You’ve been out of the game a little while, soldier. Don’t suppose this is a world you can hack anymore, is it?”

“Don’t be stupid,” I scoffed. I lifted the twenty-dollar bill to my nose, rolling it tighter. Placing it at the edge of the line, I waited for a split second, feeling my phone buzz in my pocket. Based on the previous three calls, I knew that it was Talia. Again and again.

“Come on, then. Snort it, like you know what you’re doing,” Rhett said, cutting his head closer to mine. “I dare you.”

“Ha. What are you, fifteen?” I asked, drawing my twenty-dollar bill across the powder. The coke entered my nose, making me immediately electric, vibrant. I felt on top of the world, my tongue fizzing with words. In the staggering silence, after first becoming high out of my mind, I felt my cock aching for Talia. I wanted to thrust it inside her, to say a final goodbye. I owed her that.

“Why won’t your phone fucking calm down?” Rhett demanded, pointing at my pocket. “Thought you were free or whatever. From all your bullshit life.”

“Just let me call someone real quick,” I said, rising up from my chair. I walked toward the kitchen, where I leaned heavily over a broken and rusted sink. The sink dripped grey water into the basin, and it stank of saline.

The phone rang out across the states—the long route I’d traveled since leaving the cabin. I could feel the dense distance between us. I could feel the weight of my second abandonment.

“Hello?”

God, her voice was angelic. It called me home, even as I plastered myself surer, more firmer against the counter. My dick continued to strain against my jeans, pulsing wildly with need. I stroked at it with my free hand. I could have thrown myself into the bathroom and rolled my fist over and over and over my cock, until I came wildly, my mind screaming with desire.

But I held it back, trying to focus on my conversation. Though it was difficult when I could remember so clearly what Talia looked like naked: those tart brown nipples bolting out from her milky breasts; her supple ass above those tight thighs; How she’d looked when I’d thrust her against the bed; her tits bouncing back and forth; and her mouth open, ready to take my cock.

“Talia, it’s me,” I said, trying to calm my voice. “Fox.”

Her sigh was heavy. She sounded older than she was. Older than anyone I’d ever met. I wondered if I’d done that to her—made her feel like the world was rougher than it truly was. I supposed that’s what people did to you, when you were in love with them. How often had I remembered her words, telling me she was in love… in love with me… all over again.

“Fox. Where are you?” she whispered, clearly trying to hide it from someone. Probably Lily-Rose, who was surely so close to her, following her like a shadow. “I just drove out to the cabin.”

“I’m in Los Angeles,” I told her. “I drove out here a few days ago. I… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I just couldn’t fucking handle it. I told you—I’m a different kind of person now, especially since my wife died. I can’t fall in love again, Talia. I can’t… I can’t get involved with any sort of community. Or any sort of child. As much as I love Lily-Rose.”

“She loves you, too,” Talia said softly, her voice breaking. “She’s been a mess since you haven’t been around. She was waiting for her lesson.”

“You just have to get through this. Help her, the way we all had to get through stuff. You’re the perfect woman to try to do it, you know?” I paused, feeling the coke begin to line my brain, making my thoughts race. I wanted to blurt out how much I wanted her. I could visualize her perfect body: her pert tits, bouncing above me. Her nipples, so firm and dark, pointing against my chest. Her pussy, soft and wet as I dove my face toward it. How my tongue had loved falling into it, separating her pussy lips.

“I know you can. I know you’re stronger than me,” I told Talia, my throat feeling constricted. “Please. There’s no chance that we can be together. So please, please stop telling yourself we can. Find a way to keep Lily-Rose, though. I know you’re the only hope she has.”

Talia began to sob into the phone. In the room beside me, Rhett had lit up a cigarette. Smoke billowed through the living room, milling through the couch and chairs. He coughed loudly, a reminder that he was killing himself—that we both were. Still, Talia continued to sob, as if she recognized how firmly I wanted to die.

“You don’t have to be alone, Fox. And yet, that’s the decision you’ve made for yourself,” she said, through tears. “You know you could come here. Be a family with me and Lily-Rose. But you won’t fucking do it. And that… that’s the saddest thing in the world. You’re going to be lost without us. I don’t even have to threaten you with that fact. I know already that you know it’s true.”

The coke began to ramp up in my mind. I thrust my phone from my ear, stabbing my finger on the END button. I huffed at it, listening as Rhett began to play an old seventies record. He was falling further and further into his high, even as my brain was yanked back to Indiana, to a world I swore I could never belong to.

“Are you coming back in here?” Rhett called. “You have to hear how this song breaks apart, man. I swear. When you hear it, you’ll remember why it is you’re alive. I fucking swear.”

As I stretched my legs toward the far room, I desperately tried to push all memories of Talia from my mind: Talia, peeking up at me, sixteen years old, her body prime and supple and porcelain-white, aching for mine. I tried to shove the memory of twenty-nine-year-old Talia away as well, knowing that it was needier, yet, contradictorily, even stronger Talia. Even prouder. Even more capable. She was raising a child on her own. And she yearned for me to be her partner, rather than her dominator.

“Take another line, man,” Rhett said, almost scoffing at my lost expression. “You look like such a pussy right now. Not like the man I met ten years ago when you were ripping lines across that stripper’s titties. Don’t you remember it, man? You were fucking wild. No one could stop you!”

In the back of my mind, I felt certain that I was nearly ready to stop. That after driving across the continent, I hadn’t discovered anything bigger than what I’d had back home. But instead of entertaining these deep levels of emotion, I leaned toward the table, the twenty-dollar bill in my hand.

“All right. Bottoms up,” I spewed, before snorting.

Los Angeles was revealing its underbelly to me all over again. Yet I felt, this time, it would destroy me. Perhaps that’s what I wanted.