He heard the floor creak on the other side of the door as Alex chirped, “Come on—you gotta see it!” The doorknob turned. He tried to breathe, but his chest was so tight he thought it might crush his lungs, so he stopped.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Could he make himself disappear if he prayed hard enough? Could he fight Alex if he had to? It wasn’t his strength he doubted, but his conviction. He could easily take Alex out if it came to that, but he didn’t know if he would. He was the not righteous one, hiding half naked behind a bedroom door.
And then he thought, Is she really worth all this? Fighting and hiding and sneaking around for a girl who took every chance she got to make him feel like he’d never, ever be good enough for her, never be exactly who she wanted…
His eyes flew open with a revelation—that he did the exact same thing to her.
He was never kind to her, never gentle. And no matter how much he liked her, he had never touched her with anything but lust and want and emptiness. Because even if she wasn’t with Alex, and they were free to be together, the only chance in hell they had of ever lasting was if they were both completely different people.
Fire and gasoline was a mix meant to burn itself out.
All at once, he felt the fire drain right out of him, the puff of smoke rise up from the ash. It was over. Really over. At last.
And then their voices were gone, and it was only his own heart slamming in his ears. Relief washed through him, and he relaxed a tiny bit, adrenaline still pumping so hard he could taste it, bitter, at the back of his throat.
Moments later Alex’s voice rose from the street below. Ré edged toward the wooden railing of the balcony, jeans still half hanging off his hips. As he leaned, his knee nudged the sun chair, making it scrape against the gritty floor. The sound echoed off the arch of the balcony, amplifying, and he froze, clenching his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, he saw a motorcycle parked in front of the house. Slick, low profile, chopped drag bars, suspended seat, decked in leather and black paint and gleaming chrome, with short silver pipes jutting up on either side of the back wheel. It was as beautiful as it was sinister, like a massive black mud wasp.
Silver letters on the gas tank spelled out Triumph, and Ré knew exactly what it was: Alex’s grandfather’s Café Racer. One of the nicest bikes Ré had ever seen. Looking at it, Ré wondered if Alex ever thought about where his family’s money really came from. Not that Ré’d be too proud to accept such a gift—he’d just never in a million years be offered one.
But despite everything, Ré was actually happy for him.
And then Alex stepped into view, his back to Réal. That filthy denim vest he always wore was now layered over a beat-up black leather jacket. A bike helmet hung from his left hand, Sunny from his right.
Ré stared. Alex had been riding since long before he was legal, and Réal had seen him many times on the back of one bike or another. But there was something different about this one. Standing next to it, Alex looked nothing like the goofy, wiry kid brother he’d always been to Ré and Shaun. He stood so sure of himself. Proud and unfamiliar.
Sunny turned slowly, and her eyes met Ré’s over Alex’s shoulder, whites showing around the black, even from a distance. She, too, looked different. Not herself. She looked…scared.
Ré scuttled backward, grasping for the doorknob, and threw himself into her bedroom ass first.
Inside, he leaped to his feet, swiping his T-shirt from the floor. He dressed as he ran downstairs to the kitchen, to the sunroom and out the back door to the garden, where he jumped over the back fence and took off at a run as fast as he could.
22
R
Réal lay in bed, head cradled in his clasped hands, waiting to feel different.
Last night, he’d walked for an hour or more through the hushed, dark streets of Sunny’s old-trees-and-iron-fences neighborhood, listening the whole while for a motorcycle coming up behind him.
But it had never come. And when it got full dark, he’d doubled back, sneaking past Sunny’s like a thief. Alex’s bike had been gone. Her bedroom light had glowed at the top of the house, but he’d just kept going till he reached the Buick.
It had felt like days, not hours, since he’d sat across from Mark at the Olympia, since Evie’d put her hand down on his leg, since his last-ever day of high school. He’d driven home exhausted and stashed the paper bag in the basement fridge, praying no one would find it there. Then he’d fallen asleep like a dead man.
The second he woke, though, his brain started replaying the whole long day on a jagged loop. Evie’s hand. Last day of school. Sunny. The sun was barely even up yet, but his mind was already miles away at a gallop, like he’d left the gate open in the night.
He lay in bed thinking about the whole mess while the sun curved over the house. It was a rare thing to have this place to himself, but his smallest brothers had hockey on Saturdays, and the other two would stay in bed till sundown if you let them. As soon as he heard his dad’s truck heading for the arena, Réal rolled out of bed.
He pulled on yesterday’s jeans and took the stairs double time to the basement.
He lifted the mason jar from the paper bag, then bundled the bag back up and stuffed it behind a box of peaches on the bottom shelf of the fridge.
In the kitchen, he got a spoon from the drawer and
