EZEKIEL
Two years before Seth.
Fourteen years before Aurelia George…
All right. Here it is,” Thorin announces. He pans the laptop’s camera around the sparsely furnished room. The line is silent as Khalil and I try to think of something to say that won’t make Thorin regret signing away his life to the fucking Marines.
The dorm room is depressing as fuck and pretty much what you’d expect, but if you pictured the poverty line as the ocean’s surface, Thorin and I are somewhere around where theTitanicsank. It’s impossible to reach it without imploding. Needless to say, military barracks are a giant leap up.
At least now, he’s guaranteed three meals a day and a roof over his head that he doesn’t have to share with Annalise’s smoker friends. It would get so bad at times that he’d come home from school and find that he’d have nowhere to sleep because the house, along with his room and his bed, had been loaned out for a fix. The three of us would usually run them off, but that would only solve his troubles on the surface and none of the ones that ran deep.
We have that in common—except Thorin can remember all the reasons why.
Khalil is the only one of us who came from a stable, loving home, and even though he’s doing a better job masking his thoughts, his background inside the five-star hotel suite stands out in stark contrast to Thorin’s. The cinder block walls of Thor’s room remind me of the cells I spent a lot of time in as a kid alongwith the simple wooden twin bed, nightstand, desk, and four-drawer chest. He has a better view than I did though—a single window with a view of the neighboring barracks brick wall.
“It’s um…bigger than I expected,” Khalil lamely remarks.
“That’s what she said.” Khalil and Thorin groan at my even lamer attempt at humor while I peer into Thorin’s background. “I don’t see another bed. It’s just you?”
“Yeah,” he answers with a sigh as he takes a seat at his desk. “Most of the rooms are doubles, but I lucked out and got a single.”
“That’s pretty cool. You can jerk off whenever you want. I know how much you like your alone time.”
Thorin flips me off.
Khalil laughs with his fist poised over his grinning mouth. He says something, but I only catch half of it.
On the path to become a boxing champ, his background is currently filled with the voices of his ever-growing entourage and groupies hoping to be chosen. When Thorin and I give him a questioning look, Khalil suddenly looks over his shoulder and snaps, “Can y’all shut the fuck up?”
The small but loud group that was standing nearest him moves away with mumbled apologies, but the rap music blasting from speakers still makes it hard to hear him, so he shakes his head in frustration before getting up and leaving the room.
The noise fades until he shuts himself inside another room.
“Sorry about that,” he grumbles once he’s alone. “I asked if the girl is cute, and if you hit it yet.”
Thorin cocks his head with a deceptively innocent look. “What girl?”
“The one in charge of room assignments of course.”Lucked out my ass.No way they were handing out single rooms to a grunt.
Khalil is showing all of his teeth when he sticks his face so close to the camera, I can count his nose hairs. “She clearly has a crush on you, my boy.” He pulls back and waggles his brows. “So are you gonna fuck or what? What’s her rank? Is she higher than you? Y’all gon’ role play?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Thorin dismisses Khalil’s prying with a wave of his hand. “How’s the shoulder?”
Khalil took a pretty nasty hit during his match tonight and still managed to knock out his opponent. I caught the whole thing on a friend’s TV since I don’t have cable.
Or power.
Or running water.
The only reason I’m even on the video call is because the girl I occasionally screw let me borrow her laptop and internet while she hangs out at her boyfriend’s place.
Khalil’s win is the reason for the celebration unfolding in his hotel suite, and even though I miss him more than I’ll ever let on because Khalil will only feel guilty for leaving, I’m proud and happy for him. Khalil was living his dream—even if his dream took him far away from me.
Thorin too, except the Corps was no dream come true. It was an escape. But it also took him the farthest away, to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
I’d gone from being one-third of a pack to a lone wolf. Six Forks just wasn’t the same without them, and even though Khalil’s dad had given me a job at his construction company, it was still getting harder to find a reason to leave bed every morning.
I was happy for my best friends. Truly.
