He looked to me gratefully. “The chair’s not so bad.”
Warmth flooded me and I looked away. I still wasn’t used to having real friends and had to constantly remind myself not to get too attached. It’d only been a few days. Still plenty early for Miller and Ronan to come to their senses.
“Beer?” Ronan asked, his huge frame bent over the mini fridge.
I tapped the flask in my pocket. “I’m in a vodka mood today.”
“Stratton?”
“Can’t. Have to work,” Miller said. “I’m off at ten.”
He worked at an arcade down at the Boardwalk, and we’d made a habit of meeting up with him and strolling amid the games and rides like the fabulous trio of degenerates we were.
“We’ll meet you,” I said, and Ronan nodded.
Miller’s grateful expression came back as he shouldered his backpack and headed out. I suspected he hadn’t had many friends either. I learned he’d once been homeless, living out of his car with his mother. Kids at school had spent the last four years bullying him for it, Frankie Dowd in particular. Hence the ugly little scene at Chance’s party.
The idea of anyone giving Miller shit made me want to break something. True to form, Ronan had broken something—Frankie’s nose. If I hadn’t already loved the big lug, that did the trick.
“What about you?” I asked, sitting on my rock chair beside the bonfire. “Do you work?”
“I do odd jobs,” Ronan said as he gathered bits of driftwood. The sun was hours away from setting that afternoon, but I’d never say no to a fire and he liked to watch things burn.
“You’re a freelancer,” I said.
“Sure.”
“And you live with your uncle?”
I was treading on thin ice, asking Ronan to actually talk about himself—his least favorite subject. He grunted a response that might’ve been yes, no, or fuck off.
“The reason I ask, is that I also used to live with my parents and now live with my aunt and uncle. We’re twinsies.”
Ronan didn’t crack a smile but drenched the charred wood—remnants of last night’s fire—with lighter fluid and struck a match. The fire roared and then subsided, and he took his seat on his rock.
“Shit happened in Wisconsin,” he said finally. “I had to get out of there.”
I glanced at him without letting on I was observing him, taking in his details like an artist might make a rough sketch. Ronan was eighteen going on nineteen with at least six visible tattoos. He’d packed on muscles like armor, and his gray eyes looked as if they held decades’ worth of bad memories.
“What’s that all about?” he asked as I took a pull from my flask with my bandaged hand.
“Oh, this?” I flexed my aching fingers. “Or are you wondering why today is a vodka day?”
He shrugged. “Seems like every day is a vodka day.”
“True. Today’s been extra special.” I glanced at him. “You want to hear this?”
“If you want to tell it.”
Did I? Dr. Lange was always saying the more you talked about something, the less power it had over you. I found that impossible to believe. I could spend the rest of my life talking about what was done to us in Alaska, and the cold would never leave. Imbedded forever.
I turned my gaze to the ocean, waves crashing against the shore in bursts of white foam, then retreating. Ronan was silent.
“Alcohol keeps me warm because Alaska stole something from me,” I said finally. “It stole something and left me with nightmares—memories—to remind me I’ll never get it back.”
“The camp?”
I nodded. “It fucked me up, and I wasn’t entirely solid to begin with. There were seven of us. It broke us down until we were nearly dead. Or wanted to die.”
Ronan was silent. When I glanced at him, his gray eyes were stormy, his hand balled into a fist, flexing the inked muscles on his forearm.
“Anyway, that’s why most days are vodka days. And why I sometimes put my fist through bathroom mirrors. Or”—I cleared my throat—“why I dare people to stab me in the chest at parties.”
A silence fell and I hunched deeper into my coat.
Welp, if he was on the fence about hanging around with me, that should push him over.
“I don’t live with my parents because they’re dead,” Ronan said suddenly.
I held very still. Ronan offering a piece of himself was like finding a diamond in a pile of coal. But I’d offered a piece of myself and now he was giving in return. Keeping the scales balanced. A feeling expanded in my chest, warm and soft and utterly foreign to me. Unfamiliar.
Acceptance. This is what acceptance feels like.
“What happened?” I asked gently.
“When I was a kid, my father killed my mother. I watched it happen.”
“Holy shit… How old were you?”
“Eight. He went to prison and died there. I went into foster care.”
My heart ached and I couldn’t think of anything to say, except that I hated Ronan carried that kind of pain. I wished I could erase it or carry it for him. I had enough baggage. One more shit-tastic memory wouldn’t kill me.
“I was pretty messed up,” Ronan said, his eyes on the dying fire. “I had to repeat fourth grade and did ten years in foster care. Eventually, social services tracked down my mother’s brother. That’s how I ended up here.”
“I’m so sorry about your mother, Ronan.”
He nodded and a silence fell that should’ve been awkward or uncomfortable, but instead I felt our friendship cement into something more solid with every passing minute. The sun began to sink, the sky bruised yet beautiful. Peaceful.
“Well, aren’t we a jolly pair,” I said
