Josh

 

 

“Jesus Christ, dude!” Harrison exclaims when I open the door.

He scans my face; my swollen eye, my bruised jaw, my split lip. The rest of me is no better. I’ve tossed my shirt in the trash, exposing my side as a mess of bruising. The back of my right hand is puffed up, the skin pulled tight and shining. Throbbing. Blood on my jeans, a rip down the right leg. I don’t even know when that happened. Probably when I took the tackle.

I shove the door open for him, turning slowly to hobble back to my couch. “You should see the other guy,” I slur, my lip screaming in hot protest.

Harrison closes the door. He throws the deadbolt quickly behind him. “You fucked him up?”

“Not even a little.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Bryan jumped me.” I sink slowly into the couch, trying not to cringe as my side lights up. Wincing hurts but I can’t help it. Breathing hurts but I have to do it. “I had just been to Ritchie’s. He cleaned me out.”

Harrison hovers at the edge of the living room. He crosses his arms over his chest, his face pinched in confusion. He looks like a J Crew model standing in the diffused light filtering in through the windows. He’s tall and lanky, his face long but cut sharply. His lips are full, his nose pert. He’s that kind of ‘different looking’ that just passes for handsome, stopping shy of being weird. His brown hair is expertly mussed, his clothes perfectly tailored. The guy looks like he comes from money, but he’s almost as poor as I am. Every extra dime he makes working for me goes toward his wardrobe.

“Wait, I thought you met up with Bryan hours ago,” he argues. “Before Ritchie’s.”

“I did. I sold him what he ordered, we had a little dialogue, and he was waiting for me when I came home this morning. Him and one of his buddies from the team, probably.”

“What kind of ‘dialogue’?”

I cough to clear my throat. I get an immediate ‘fuck you’ from my ribs for the trouble. “It wasn’t friendly,” I admit weakly.

“Shit. So we have nothing left?”

“There’s some stuff left in the cabinets. Not much. Painkillers mostly.”

“You look like you could use them.”

“I don’t touch my own stash. Especially when it’s all I’ve got left in the world.”

“How much can we make off it?”

“If we could find buyers, we’d make enough to start over, but it’s random shit, man. Finding someone looking for all of it is almost more trouble than it’s worth.”

He shoves his hands in his hair, stretching his long body up tall and tight. Angry. “Fuck,” he whispers.

“I know.”

Harrison pinches his lips together, staring over my head at nothing. He’s thinking, probably running through every scenario I’ve been through as I sat here hurting and waiting for him. There aren’t many options.

Finally, he throws his hands up in the air helplessly before letting them smack down hard at his sides. “We gotta get it back,” he tells me decidedly.

“Get what back? The drugs?”

“What else, dude? Yeah, of course the drugs.”

“Us and what army?” I chuckle in amazement.

“Where’s your gun?”

“I’m not going on campus waving a gun around at some jock asshole hopped up on the speed that I sold him. There are about three million ways I see that going really, really wrong for me.”

“Then what do we do?”

I sigh, instantly wishing I hadn’t. White hot agony explodes in my side, bubbling up into the back of my throat. “We need one of two things; money or more drugs.”

“Or muscle to get our drugs back.”

“He’s on the football team. He has all the muscle in this town on lock.”

“Not all of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Harlow.”

My back stiffens. “No. You’re not.”

“I’m not talking about…?” His words taper off as he reads the room. It’s filling slowly with a thick gas, noxious and angry. “Okay, man. Sorry. Shit. I won’t talk about her.”

I shake my head, trying to clear it. My vision swims violently, spinning wild like a tire swing under a tall oak.

“Harlow is not an option,” I tell Harrison quietly.

“I don’t mean her exactly.”

“No, I know what you mean. You mean the club.” I exhale hard. “Life is fucking crazy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I was there tonight before I went to Ritchie’s.”

He gapes at me. “You were at The Three?”

“Yeah.”

“Since when do you go to The Three?”

“I don’t. I was killing time at the gas station by the bridge when I ran into Harlow. I walked her back to the bar. She gave me a beer and introduced me to the guys.”

Harrison’s eyes are wide. “Holy shit,” he mutters. “It’s fate, man.”

“No. It’s not.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug like I’m telling the truth. Like I’m cool about everything. “Three years or more.”

“Fate.”

“It’s not fate. It’s a coincidence. Life is full of ‘em.”

“And you’re stupid if you ignore them.”

“What do you expect me to do? Go in there and tell a bunch of outlaws that a bully stole my lunch money? They aren’t gonna give a shit.”

“Not unless you give them a cut.”

I feel my face harden. I can hear it in my tone when I tell him soundly, “No.”

Harrison sits down on the edge of the coffee table. He leans forward on his elbows, his face serious and imploring. “Listen, I know you’re not hot on the idea of sharing any of your business with anyone. Keep it small, stay under the radar. I get that. But without that product, we’re up shit creek, Josh. We can’t start from scratch. There’s no time. Neither of us can afford to wait six months before the next solid payout.”

He’s right. When we first got started moving drugs two years ago, we were nothing. We had nothing. Pops had just gone into the home, I was starting a new year at school with new books to buy and no money for supplies. I had nothing left over for basics, like food. I wasn’t hooked up with Ritchie just yet. I knew of him, I knew he was a drunk ‘cause I grew up here and he owns the only pharmacy for fifty miles, but I didn’t know him. Not yet. Back in the beginning I was selling left over scripts Pops had in the house. He was getting that shit taken care of in the home, he didn’t need the stuff he’d left with me. So I sold it. All of it. I made a decent profit off it and it got me thinking.

I met Harrison my freshman year when we were both working in the bookstore on campus. I knew he was cool. He smoked weed with me out back a few times. He shit-talked the management at the bookstore and the rich kids in our classes. He bitched about being broke, and I found myself confessing that I was too. We were in the same boat in life, outsiders looking in, looking for a foothold to get us through the door. The biggest problem we had was that we didn’t have money. The old saying ‘you’ve gotta spend money to make money’ is truer than I can stomach, only I’d say it goes back farther than that. The problem runs deeper.

You’ve gotta have money to make money.

So late one night a couple years ago, when Harrison and I were closing up alone, I told him what I’d done; that I’d sold prescription drugs to our classmates. I told him I wanted to do it again. He told me he was in. I didn’t even ask, dude just told me he was part of this. Like he knew I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I wasn’t looking for a partner in crime. And he was right. He’s a smart guy.

We started combing the school, looking for hookups. Anyone with drugs to spare. They’re easier to find than you’d think. People are on sleep aids, antidepressants, diet pills, painkillers; the entire university was a fucking pharmaceutical convention. We couldn’t believe how easy the drugs were to find. But they were nearly impossible to get our hands on. No one wanted to hand them over for free, and when they heard how much we were going to be able to get for them, they suddenly realized what a gold mine they were sitting on. Either that or they realized we were drug dealers in the making and slammed their door in our faces.

That’s when we took a chance on Ritchie. It paid off, with dividends.

“Maybe we can get some stuff from Ritchie on consignment,” I say, not feeling real optimistic about the idea.

“You’ve asked about that before. He said no.”

“Maybe he’ll say yes this time.”

“Yeah, and maybe Bryan will grow a conscience and bring the drugs back,” he snarks.

I rub my hand over my eyes tiredly. “Okay, alright. I get it.”

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Josh.”

“We never do.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

I drop my hand, wincing against the growing daylight pouring in the front windows. Class will be starting soon. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I need to take a shower, patch up my face, and get some sleep to make sure I’m sharp tonight when I go back to the bar.

“The only thing we can do,” I grunt, nearly vomiting from the pain as I stand. “We’re going to sell our souls to The Devil’s Due.”