Chapter Twenty
Brick
I woke up, once again, to pounding on my front door.
After going six months without a visitor, suddenly my place was Grand Central Station.
“What the fuck now?” I groaned into the pillow. I had cottonmouth from all the drinking, and it took me a few minutes of blinking and cursing to pull myself back together.
I tried to figure out how many days it had been since I started my bender. Four? I had driven out of town, picked up a couple bottles of whiskey and a bag full of groceries on the way, and obliterated myself in the woods for at least a couple of days. It probably made more sense to count it in whiskey bottles, anyway.
Waking up yesterday, finally sober in the back of my truck and the middle of the mountains, it had taken me a few confused, foul hours of driving down backroads to find my way back to the city. Once I returned to the apartment, I had finished the whiskey and passed back out.
Until, that is, some fucking knocking woke me up.
I rolled out of bed, kicking my legs into a pair of boxers. Fuzzy memories came back to me of the bonfires I had made and the tree I had punched the shit out of. When I glanced down, I saw that my knuckles were raw.
Lilith could be showing back up again. That wouldn’t be surprising. I had disappeared without giving her a good explanation, and she was probably worried. I could handle it if it were Lilith. I’d feel shitty about myself having to face her anger, and the fact that I’d abandoned her and the bar, but that was fine. I was going to keep feeling shitty about myself for a while anyway.
The problem was it might not be Lilith. It might well be some of Frisk’s guys. Or one of Frisk’s guys, in particular. I had given the man at the bar a good run for his money, and I imagined he was the kind who held a grudge.
Guys in fucking suits in the middle of my bar…
I grabbed the baseball bat I kept near the front door, spinning it in my hand. I thought about chugging a glass of water to clear my mind, but then the banging on the door started back up, setting off pyrotechnics in my head.
“Who the fuck!” I yelled, grabbing the door handle and opening it with a slam.
“Whoa, dude!” Ezra yelled, holding his hands in the air. “Chill the hell out! Do you always open the door like that at two in the afternoon?”
Irving was standing beside him with his hands up in the air and his eyes squinted shut.
Fuck. Those two.
I dropped the bat by my side and ran my hand across my forehead again, my heart pounding. A wave of guilt bit at me for threatening them, but everything still felt so groggy, sleep still clouding my vision. “I told you to leave me alone,” I growled, turning on my heel and walking back inside. I heard them follow me in as I walked to the kitchen. I downed a glass of water, rubbed my forehead, and then grabbed an egg out of the fridge. I cracked it on the counter and swallowed the slimy mess whole. When I turned around, they were both standing in my living room, staring at me with expressions somewhere between disgust and shock.
“It’s a hangover cure,” I mumbled defensively. “Listen, I don’t know what you want from me, but I can’t help you out. I tracked down the guy who was messing with your store and tried to scare him. If he came back, I can’t help you anymore. Anyway, I’m on my way out of town. I just have to shove some food in my mouth and throw my stuff in boxes, and I’m off.”
Ezra and Irving shared a glance. “Thanks for cleaning up the graffiti,” Ezra said.
I took another gulp of water from the glass, washing down the egg taste. How they had figured out that I cleaned the window, I had no idea, but it didn’t really matter now. “Sure, whatever. Is there anything else you need? Because I should really get moving.”
As soon as I said it, I realized how true it was. If Mr. Frisk did send another person to track me down, it wouldn’t be that difficult to find my home address. Hell, Ezra and Irving had figured it out somehow. That meant some asshole with a knife (or worse) could show up at any minute. And there was no way in hell I was going to let one of these two get hurt because of me again.
I saw that Ezra still had a pink streak across his cheek from where he fell, the scratches not quite healed. Irving didn’t look any worse for the wear, but that didn’t mean there weren’t bruises in places I couldn’t see. Standing there in the middle of my living room, they seemed incredibly vulnerable to me, and I realized it was my responsibility to make sure they were safe.
I stepped forward to walk them toward the door again. “I need to apologize to you for the other night. In the heat of the fight, I didn’t see you both on the sidewalk. I never meant to hurt you, and I’m truly sorry for that.” I stopped at the door, gesturing again outside. The longer they were in my house, the more I thought about the looks on their faces after the collision, and the more urgent it seemed that I get them out. “So, sorry, and you should go now.”
Ezra and Irving turned to look at each other again. Ezra leaned forward, then whispered something to Irving. I tried not to get distracted by the way his lips made soft, gentle shapes against Irving’s ear and the way Irving wiggled in response.
“We can help you move,” Irving said. “Then you can get out of here sooner.”
I rubbed my forehead again, wishing that they would just get a move-on before I had to act like a real asshole and shove them out the door for their own sakes. “What I want is for you to get out of here sooner. Do you hear me?” I scratched my chest, and remembered that I was only wearing a pair of short plaid boxer shorts.
Damn it.
Irving turned, whispering something in Ezra’s ear this time, and I felt a tingle in my gut when I noticed the way his hands landed on his friend’s shoulder while they talked.
“Will you two please stop whispering to each other? It’s very distracting.”
