I’ll be dead within a year.

Probably sooner.

I try not to dwell on the thought because it makes me crazy. Most days I’m seconds away from losing my shit and proclaiming the desk lamp as my new best friend/Queen of England. Being tired doesn’t help. It’s as if gravity is pulling down on me much harder these days. If I don’t get a decent night’s sleep soon I’m going to start hearing colors.

We all die after all. My death will just be a little sooner than most. Before the wrinkles have set in and old age has me repeating the same stories over and over again.

My eyelids are heavy. I’m fighting yet another battle in the continuing war against myself to stay awake. My elbow slides further and further off to the side of the desk, my chin propped in my hand.

A scratching sound at the window gives me a jolt. My spine jumps. I’m jarred awake just before my forehead meets the keyboard.

Feeling under my desk I wrap my fingers around the knife taped underneath.

A shadow crosses the window and I pull my hand away from the blade and blow out a breath.

It’s only Izzy, the fat white cat who visits me on a regular basis. She’s preening on the other side of the high basement window, her collar scratching against the glass. I don’t know who owns her. I only know her name is Izzy because it’s written in large lettering on her pink sparkling name tag adorning her equally pink and sparkling collar.

It’s just a fucking cat, Frankie.

I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. My eyelids feel as if they are being weighed down by padlocks. I shake off the tired and the sudden panic and turn back to my work.

The lack of Z’s isn’t ideal, but so far, it’s paid off. My latest project is worth every minute of sleeplessness and then some. If I were the bragging sort I’d call up everyone in my life and tell them about how I single-handedly…well, I guess it doesn’t really matter because I can’t tell anyone.

Plus, there’s the little fact that I don’t have anyone to tell.

“Izzy,” I shout to the cat’s shadow. “I’m doing a good thing. A really good thing.” The fat cat darts away from the window with an exaggerated leap, most likely startled by a lizard in the grass. “Dick.”

Great. Not only am I talking to a cat I don’t even own, I’m offended by the fur-ball.

I spend way too much time alone.

Today and yesterday have blended together. I’m not sure where one started and the other ended. The basement has such little light sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s day or night.

My phone buzzes on my lap, and I jump like I’ve been kicked in the spine, knocking over a stack of paper coffee cups. “Fuck,” I swear, looking down at the phone now laying on the ground with a crack across the screen. It’s only the alarm.

I’m getting jumpier by the day, but it’s not without reason. My work has come with a sacrifice of sorts. I’ve pissed off a lot of people. The kind most sane people wouldn’t dare piss off. I’ve taken precautions but there might come a day when those precautions aren’t enough.

Maybe one day I’ll be finished with my work. Finished looking over my shoulder. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll even stave off that heart attack threatening to take me under with every startled jump and jolt—well before I’ve hit the quarter century mark.

Probably not.

I pick my phone up off the floor and swipe my thumb across the screen to kill the alarm. The time can’t be right. Has it really been eight hours since I’ve so much as moved from my chair?

I push back the chair and stand, rolling my shoulders and neck. My back lets out a series of popping cracks that feel a lot better than they sound. My spine protests the shift in position, but I keep stretching, knowing the more I move the better it will feel. I bend at the waist and reach for the floor with my arms straight and my fingers out-stretched. Slowly I straighten, raising my arms, pointing my fingers toward the ceiling. I remain this way until my bones feel like they’ve shifted back to more of a normal position and aren’t all crunched together somewhere in my lower back. A tingling feeling of relief buzzes through my aching muscles.

My legs are buzzing with that pins-and-needles feeling. I make sure to use the handrail as I ascend the stairs so I don’t go flying backward since I can’t feel my feet. The torturous static feeling thankfully lets up by the time I’ve reached the door at the top.

I cross through the living room and head for the kitchen. On the way, I stop in the hallway. I kiss the tips of my fingers and reach up to press them against the only picture hanging in the house. A picture of my mother. “Hey Mama,” I say, smiling up at her. She had the same long dark hair as I do and the same unique yellow/orange eyes. The picture was taken around the time she died, when I was just a toddler. “I hope I’m making you proud, wherever you are.”

My stomach growls, reminding me of where I was heading and I pad into the kitchen. When was the last time I’d eaten? Breakfast? Dinner last night? No, it was definitely breakfast. Breakfast yesterday. My stomach growls, louder this time.

“Yeah, yeah. I hear ya,” I mutter.

The contents of the refrigerator are…well, there aren’t any contents. Unless Google can show me how to make a meal from a half jar of pickles, two slices of cheese, and a six-pack of beer.

I lean on the counter and pull up the GrubTrain grocery delivery app. I order a few essentials, using the last forty dollars in my account.

I use the thirty minutes until the food arrives to go upstairs take a quick, much-needed shower and change into a baggy off the shoulder t-shirt with the logo of my favorite band, Veruca Salt, emblazoned across the front. The grey shorts I change into used to be sweatpants, but when they became frayed from stepping on the bottoms of the too-long legs, I took a pair of scissors to them and boom.

Sweat-shorts.

When I’m done, I head back downstairs and sort through the mail. My last name is Helburn, but all the mail comes in the alias name of Jackson. My father had changed it years ago. Insisted it was because of his work with the government.

It was years before I found out that was all a lie.

HE was a lie.

I swallow down the familiar anger rising in my throat. I don’t have the time or energy to deal with memories of my father’s actions or the mess he’s made of our lives and the lives of countless others.

I chuck the junk mail in the trash and set off on the first of my several-times-a-day routine of checking the locks on all of the windows and doors. Flipping open the alarm panel I click in my code and make sure it’s in working order.

Twice.

In the master bedroom, I step over my dad’s clothes strewn about the floor, walking with purpose over to the window. I check the lock. It’s intact. I head back out, shutting the door behind me quickly, releasing a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

Taking the steps two at a time, I head back down to the living room of the two-bedroom, three-level, dilapidated townhouse.

It looks the same as the day we first moved in four years ago. Empty nails from where the previous tenants hung decorations and pictures poke out from the drywall at various intervals. The only furniture, a ratty brown three cushion sofa in the living room—no television— and a couple of mismatched barstools tucked under the raised counter separating the small living room from the equally small kitchen.

The doorbell rings, and even though I was expecting it, I’m still cautious.

I’m always cautious.

Standing on my tip-toes I glance through the peephole. On the other end of the brass tunnel is Duke, wagging his eyebrows and contorting his lips around his teeth. I smile because it’s impossible not to smile. Duke’s carrying a grocery bag in each hand. He holds them up to the peep hole, grinning proudly like a hunter holding up his kills.

Unbolting all the locks on the door takes a while because there are eight of them.

Duke’s megawatt smile greets me after I finally open the door.

“Hey,” Duke says smoothly. “I saw your order come through, and I wanted to make sure I brought it to you personally.” His smile widens and it’s is so damn bright it’s like staring into the sun. His sandy blonde curls are being cruelly squished by a neon green GrubTrain baseball cap.

Duke raises the bags again, flexing his muscular biceps beneath his matching GrubTrain polo shirt. He winks when he catches me looking at his abs flexing under the fabric. My face warms. He leans in and gives me an awkward hug around the grocery bags. He smells good, like Irish soap.

“Hey, Duke,” I say slowly, drawing out my words so he has no choice but to look at my lips. I bat my eyelashes and meet his hazel gaze. “Thanks for bringing those over so fast.”

“Anything for you, ma’am,” he says with a fake western style drawl.

“Ma’am? Hmmmm…I like the sound of that,” I tease, biting my bottom lip.

Duke shifts from one foot to the other, and I realize he’s shifting the bags to cover the growing bulge in his pants.

“Is your dad home today?” Duke asks, poking his head through the door and looking around.

“Working in the basement as usual,” I say. “Also, ignoring me as usual.” I stand to the side and let him in.

“I won’t ignore you,” Duke says suggestively, wagging his eyebrows on his way to the kitchen.

I chuckle and playfully swat at Duke’s butt. I’m about to close the door, but I freeze as I’m hit by a hot tingling of awareness. It warms my chest and spreads through to my limbs. My pulse spikes. I slowly push the door back open half expecting to see someone standing on the other side.

There’s no one there.

Duke is talking to me from the kitchen, but I’m not listening. Cautiously, I step out onto the little concrete pad of a porch and look around in every direction.

Nothing.

The gas station across the street has a few customers walking in and out. A few kids are playing catch in the empty lot next to the fence that separates it from the convenience store.

The choking feeling in my throat dissipates and I find my ability to swallow again.

Yup. I’m going crazy.

“Sarah? Where did you go?” Duke calls from the kitchen.

I step back inside and shut the door, locking all the bolts out of habit. “You and those damned locks. Your dad really is paranoid, huh?” Duke says, coming up behind me and lifting me off the ground. I kick my feet in the air and laugh. He carries me into the kitchen and sets me down on the center island. He turns his cap backward, takes a joint out of his back pocket. He lights it and takes a long pull.

“Your pops might be paranoid and ignore you all the time, but I think it’s fucking awesome he lets you smoke weed in the house,” Duke says on an exhale.

I shrug and take the joint from his fingers. Taking a long drag, I hold the smoke deep in my lungs before exhaling slowly. The pot does the trick and within a few seconds the tension eases, my shoulders drop.

“Even if he wasn’t okay with it, I doubt he’d notice,” I reply, sounding bitter.

“You alright, lady?” Duke asks, searching my eyes for clues.

“I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping all that great,” I admit. It’s the shortest explanation of a much larger issue, but Duke and I don’t have a big issue kind of relationship. We have a smoke a joint in the kitchen, make out until I send him home kind of relationship.

“Here,” he says, pulling a plastic sandwich bag chock-full of joints from his back pocket. GrubTrain is only one of Duke’s part-time jobs. A lesser paying one than his main job of weed dealer. He pulls two joints from the bag and places them in an empty coffee tin on the counter. “These are for later. It will help you sleep.”

“What do I owe you?” I ask, leaning back on my hand and taking another hit.

“Oh, I can think of things. Actually, I can think of many many things.” Duke drags his gaze over my body. He lifts his hand to his mouth and playfully bites down on his knuckles, making a growling sound I can’t help but laugh at.

With a wink, he moves over to the bags and begins to take things out and put them away. Having been my grocery delivery boy for months now, he knows his way around the kitchen as well as I do. “The weed is on the house, of course,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.

Duke’s always nice to me. I mean, he’s nice to a lot of girls, but he’s genuine and that’s why I’ve broken my rules and allowed him into my life.

Duke’s the popular kid at school and a total man-whore. He’s stuck his dick in most of the cheerleaders on the varsity and junior varsity cheerleading teams, but he doesn’t lie about it, doesn’t make them any false promises. Honesty, for me, is the greatest quality a person can possess. I value it above all else. Maybe, it’s because I’ve been forced into dishonesty for most of my life. Maybe, it’s because my father’s entire life was a lie.

Duke must be reading my mind because he flashes me his Hollywood smile. “Have you heard?” He folds the paper bags and shoves them into the recycling bin. He then launches into an animated retelling of the ‘most hilarious’—his words, not mine— dick and fart joke he heard in the weight room from some jock on the football team.

I take another hit from the joint and drop my shoulders. I tilt my head back and exhale toward the ceiling. The front of my brain feels fuzzy. A soft buzz travels to the rest of my body, continuing to dull the sharp edges surrounding me.

“You know, you don’t act the same here with me, when we’re alone, as you do in school,” Duke mentions out of the blue. I’m blinking rapidly as I try to take in what he’s saying. “Why is that? You walk around with your hair in your face, staring at the floor all day. You don’t talk to anyone. You don’t look at anyone. I bet you most of the kids in school couldn’t point you out of a line up.”

Bingo.

“Not even me,” he continues. “You ignore me like you don’t even know me. But we’re…friends, right? Because here, with me, you’re…”

“Normal?” I suggest. “At least, normal-ish?”

Duke shakes his head. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

Maybe, he wasn’t going to use that exact word, but I sensed him searching his mental thesaurus for something comparable.

“Why? Why are you so different here than you are there?” He asks, with what sounds like genuine concern in his voice.

I crook my finger at him like I’m about to tell him all my secrets.

Duke leans in close. My lips are at his ear. “I’m Batman,” I whisper.

Duke rolls his eyes and groans at my horrible joke. “Seriously, Sarah. You never come to the games. You don’t hang out with anyone else but me outside of school, well, not that I know of anyway.”

“Maybe, I’m giving you space,” I suggest. It’s a lie of course. One of a million I’ve told Duke over the last several months. “I don’t think Missy or Misty or…Maci?” I grimace. “Would like it very much if they saw us together.”

“Well, I happen to not give a shit what Melanie or anyone else thinks. I like you, Sarah.” Duke pushes my knees apart and stands between them. “I like you a lot.”

“Melanie,” I nod and snap my fingers. “That’s it. Melanie. I’ll have to remember that one.”

I pass him the joint. He takes a long hit, grabs the back of my neck with the hand holding the joint, using the other to press on my cheeks, parting my lips. He blows the smoke into my mouth, our lips only a breath apart. I inhale deeply.

Duke pulls back as I exhale. He presses the glowing end of the joint between his fingers, extinguishing the cherry, tucking it behind his ear.

“I think you like me, too.” Duke says softly. He’s kneading his fingers gently into my thighs, inching his hands further and further up my legs with each rotation of his skilled fingers.

“I do like you,” I tell him. And in another life—no, if I were another person, I might give Duke a real shot.

But not in this life.

“So then, why do you pretend you don’t know me?” Duke presses, pursing his lips.

So no one sees us together. So you don’t become collateral damage if the shit hits the fan.

“I guess I don’t like high school all that much. Plus, I like to keep to myself. That’s all,” I assure him.

Duke gives me a knowing look. He’s not buying it. Not one bit.

I try again. “Or maybe,” I sigh dramatically and let my shoulders fall. “I just don’t want to be considered one of the many in the Duke Weathersby Harem.”

“The what?” he asks with a laugh.

“The harem. The bevy of beauties that run after you, leaving puddles of drool in your wake. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, Duke Weathersby. I’ve heard that term a million times so I know you have, too.”

“I might have heard it a time or two,” Duke admits. A sly smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me to the edge of the counter. “I mean I guess it’s good you don’t talk to anyone else. That way, I get to keep you all to myself.”

Duke leans in and presses his lips against mine. Our mouths meld and move together. It’s an enjoyable kiss, it always is. I liken it to finishing a great book. A nice hot shower. Or finding a killer pair of jeans on the 50% off rack.

There’s fireworks, but not the exploding colors, loud booms, fourth of July finale, kind. No, what we have is more of the waving-a-sparkler-around-in-the-front-yard kind. I like sparklers.

Sparklers are nice.

Plus, the chances of getting hurt or burned are low. And just like Duke—they’re safe.

I return his kiss. My mouth opens to his when he parts my lips with his tongue. My nipples harden when he presses closer, and I can feel the heat of his skin through our shirts. I relax and push myself up against him, needing to feel his hard body against mine. Needing to be reminded that I’m human and that I’m alive and that someone else in this world knows it, too.

Duke Weathersby is the closest I’ve ever come to having a boyfriend, even though he isn’t my boyfriend and never will be. Our pseudo-relationship consists of small talk, getting high, and making out. Which is basically a lot of over-the-clothes petting followed by me sending Duke home with a raging case of blue-balls.

Duke pulls back slightly, fingering the neckline of my shirt, brushing along my skin toward my exposed shoulder. His forehead is pressed against mine. “I think we should take this upstairs to your room. All these clothes are getting in the way,” he whispers against my lips, tugging at the frayed end of my sweat-shorts. He rocks his erection between my legs.

I smile against his lips and lift my ass off the counter, shamelessly grinding myself against him.

Duke groans into my mouth and grabs my hips, rotating them, grinding me against the hardness jutting up against the zipper of his khakis.

I’m turned on. I am. I am female, after all, and Duke’s stunningly attractive. As much as I know I’m not like other girls in school, I’m not immune to the charm, smile, or muscles of Duke Weathersby. I blame nature and pheromones. Birds and bees. You know, science-ey stuff and all that jazz.

A part of me would like nothing more than to let him drag me upstairs so he can have his wicked way with me.

A much bigger part of me just can’t go there.

I’m a damn tease. I know it. Duke has got to know it, too. But he keeps coming back, and the truth is that’s what I want. Him to come back. Company. Human contact.

My friendship with him was already breaking one of my rules. Sex would be obliterating it and I’m not willing to take it that far. Not yet, anyway. Not while there’s so much on the line.

I pull back. “I…I can’t. My dad,” I whisper, dragging my teeth along the skin of his neck— just below his ear— rejecting him while promising him the possibilities the future might hold.

“He never comes out of the basement,” Duke reminds me, peppering kisses along my neck, trying to convince me with his lips. He moves to my clavicle, adding light biting and licking to the mix. I feel my muscles tensing. My desire building. My determination to keep this relationship PG-13 crumbles as he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth and traces it with his skilled tongue.

I must admit that the boy is gooooood. There’s a reason why he has a harem. A well-deserved one at that.

“Let me make you come,” Duke whispers, squeezing the tops of my thighs sending a jolt of happy pleasure between my legs.

I’m desperate. I’m needy. I’m high. I’m lonely.

So very fucking lonely.

I don’t want to be. I just want to feel…something else. Something at all. Something that doesn’t come with worry or hurt or panic.

“Okay,” I hear myself say.

Duke makes a sound low in his throat. A little bit growl. A little bit groan. He snakes his hand up my shorts. The heat from his fingers alone is driving me to the edge. I’ve never let him touch me there before. I’ve never let ANYONE touch me there before. I’m both excited and nervous and totally reckless, wrapping my legs around his waist, urging him closer.

The tips of Duke’s fingers brush across my throbbing folds and achingly neglected flesh just as a loud crash echoes through the room.

“Where did that come from?” Duke whispers.

The basement.

It came from the basement.