“But it affects you,” Jack answers, straightening up and gently slapping me on the shoulder. For just a flash, I believe his touch will shatter me I'm so tense. Yet, somehow, the contact reminds me that I am still alive despite all my misery.
“Just think about it,” he adds. “I'm not asking anything from you, just letting you know what's up.”
He turns back toward the kitchen. As he pushes through the swinging door, someone cranks up the house system. Stevie Ray's guitar cries from the speakers and with it, my bleeding heart. Dark clouds are rolling in.
Chapter 9 Ghosts and Secret Wars
Joshua
“Let's walk,” Isaiah says upon eye contact.
His tone is gruff, gaze glassy, and it's almost like he was waiting for me to walk in the apartment door. He grabs me with a look the color of faded jeans, expression one of tolerance, tone not quite a question. He's got a cigarette in one hand that he sucks on so he doesn't have to look me in the eye anymore.
His distaste toward me is never something he's made any pains to hide. My curiosity flicks toward the kitchen where I can hear Maria's voice cracking. I've barely made it inside the door and he is blocking my way. If it weren't peaceable Isaiah, I'd think he was challenging me, instigating at least.
Frederick shoots us a guarded look from the chair. One dark eyebrow rises. I know he's assessing my intoxication and the possibility of an altercation between Izzy and me. I answer with a challenging look. Go ahead, say something. But he won't.
He shrugs openly, standing and ambling into the kitchen to rummage in the fridge, seemingly oblivious to the serious conversation that comes to me in pieces. I feel something cold in my stomach for him right now, at the way he can so readily dismiss what he feels is not his business, or of his concern.
Isaiah pushes past me to open the door. For a moment, I consider ignoring him. I want to scream, “Fuck off!” to anyone who can hear me, but the rum has lulled me to a dull roar. This apartment is too small for this many people, and the air is thick, barely moving. I think it's hotter in here than it is outside. So I find myself turning back out the way from which I came.
I trudge down the stairs into a cloud of Camel smoke and I feel sick. It's not the alcohol, it's the nerves. Part of me hopes he wants to fight. I need to let off some steam. At the bottom of the stairs, he takes off down the sidewalk. My feet drag me to a stop, staring after him. Surely he doesn't really mean to take a fucking stroll now?
“It's a nice night,” he says over his shoulder, flicking some ash into the air.
I huff through my nose. I'm not in the mood to take any shit, yet something compels me to keep following. The rich and pleasant cool of late night in the city is refreshing after barely five minutes inside the apartment above the restaurant. Not that I would ever admit to him that this was a good idea. Somehow I know Jack's question has already been presented.
I can't get a sense of the group dynamic now that Charlie's gone. He was a central post for all of us. Now the atmosphere is shifting. I can't read the signs and it's frustrating. I feel like a blind child.
“It feels like a funeral in there,” I say bitingly, catching up to Isaiah's easy stride.
His curiosity hits me sidelong, glinting the tiniest bit in the streetlights above. He looks tired and stoned, which must explain his civility now. Isaiah is one of the hardest people to provoke. He is almost always at a distance. I'm the only person I know who can bring him to violence in less than an hour.
“Did you have something to say?”
He sighs then takes another drag, seemingly in no hurry to make sense. Although cigarettes are never something I've had any use for, I consider asking him for one just to have somewhere to direct some energy. I speed my steps just a little so that he has to adjust his leisurely pace. His slow-draw-deadly-aim attitude is making me angry in a way I can't explain. How can he be so calm when our lives' foundation is shaking so much?
“Shit's changing, Josh,” he says thoughtfully.
We pass a dark café with some tables chained to the cement. I watch his face tint red for just a moment in the neon from a sign. Tiny shadows accentuate the beginnings of crows' feet at the corners of his eyes and gentle creases around his mouth. In this light, he almost looks friendly, but we pass it by soon enough. I won't make pretenses, so I let my skepticism run cold and unchecked. I stop.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Here it is, my defense system, my guilt that I wasn't there to do something. The fight rises in me like flames against a Mississippi night, like the Molotov cocktail. My body burns against the breeze so that it almost feels cold around me.
He turns toward me with eyebrows raised. The violence he breeds in me is apparent in my tone and it rises damn near instantly. I don't know what it is about him that never fails to make me so fuckin' mad. Maybe it's that look he always wears, like he knows something no one else does, and if he'd just fucking say it everyone would laugh and see the light, like maybe if he'd speak up someone would agree.
But he never just says anything.
“It means that she's not satisfied with a few of them dead in a house fire,” he answers, his
