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about his name is obvious, but I can sense there’s more.
“No,” I say. “That can’t be it. If smoking cigars was the reason to call you Smoke then you would have already told me.” I think for another minute and decide to change tactics to find out what I want to know. “What’s your real name?”
“Smoke,” he answers around the cigar now back between his lips.
“Will you tell me if I guess?” I ask, deciding to ignore the obvious lie about his real name being Smoke.
“Sure,” he says. “I’ll play along. What you got?”
“Max?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Jerry?”
He rolls his eyes and gives me a look that says try harder.
“Tim? Killer? Sven?”
He scrunches his nose. “Those all sound like dogs,” Smoke scoffs, taking another puff of his cigar. He blows it out, clouding his features in puffs of white. “I’ll save you some trouble. It’s also not Fido, Spike, or Spot.”
“Well, all the other names I can think of are so…regular. So…boring. They wouldn’t suit you,” I tell him, although I could be here all night, and I still think I’ll never come up with something that does besides Smoke.
“I don’t know my real name,” he admits, flicking the ash at the end of his cigar into an empty beer bottle. “Some shit went down with my folks, and after that, I just couldn’t remember it. Still can’t.”
I’m taken aback and don’t know what to say to that. Thankfully, I don’t have to come up with something because he continues after taking a long pull from the bottle of whiskey. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“The first time I went to a group home, they wanted to know what to call me, and since I didn’t know my own name, they called me Johnny, for a while, anyway, but it didn’t stick.”
My heart stung for the child version of Smoke. Abandoned without so much as a name. And not JUST abandoned.
Thrown away.
Smoke clears his throat and looks out over the horizon. He seems almost peaceful here. Well, as peaceful as Smoke could be. His hard edges are still there but not so sharp I’d prick my finger on them if I stand too close.
“The kids there were cruel, especially the older ones. Those little shits thought they were better than me because they had it in their heads that their mom and pops were coming back for them someday.”
“But not you.”
Smoke put the cigar in his mouth. “No, not me. The running joke around the home was that my parents took one look at me after I was born then vanished into thin air. Gone. Poof.” He met my eyes. “Up in smoke.”
Smoke was right. Kids can be cruel. “So that’s why they call you Smoke?”
He nods. “Yeah, I figured it’s better than Johnny,” he says, taking another long puff of the cigar.
“Wise call.”
Smoke chuckles, and there wasn’t a single bit of malicious intent in the laughter. No mocking. No eye roll. No threat of punishment or manipulation. This laugh is genuine. Like this one single sound is the gateway through which all sexual things began. My body needs to chill the fuck out. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me wise before.”
“I’m not going to make a habit of it,” I say, and then the moment is lost, and we’re both silent. Both thinking the same thing. There isn’t time for a habit.
“I’m getting tired,” I lie. “I’m going to go inside.”
I stand up off the chair and head into the house. I pause at the doorway when he calls my name, and for a brief moment, my hopes rise, and I think he’s about to tell me that he’s changed his mind. That he’s found some way for us to both get out of this situation whole.
“What?” I ask my back still turned to him.
There’s another pause.
“Nothing, never mind,” he says, turning his head away.
My hopes fall along with my shoulders. I’m glad he can’t see the tears that instantly spring to my eyes. I keep my voice as steady as possible although I’m shaking inside.
“Nothing,” I repeat, pushing open the door. I shake my head. Now, I really am tired. Exhausted is more like it. “Funny, nothing, is exactly what I thought you’d say.”
I go back into the house, and the door slams behind me. I’m not surprised when I hear the door screech open and his heavy footsteps follow me into the bedroom where I’m already under the blankets with my back to him. He can’t even allow me to have one moment of peace to clear my head.
I hear his boots hit the floor, the jingle of his belt as he undresses and gets into bed beside me. It’s not even dark out yet.
He pushes the heat of his body against mine. He smells like cigars, whiskey, and soap, and it takes everything in me not to inhale deeply. Not like I have to. His scent is already imprinted into my brain, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.
However long that is.
Smoke wraps an arm around me, and I stiffen. His affection is just making it all worse.
“I wish I could hate you,” I whisper, feeling the world around me closing in more and more with each passing hour.
“Me, too,” he responds, his lips kissing the back of my head. “What do you want from me, Frankie?”
I’m not sure what he wants me to say. It’s not like it matters.
“Nothing,” I whisper, closing my eyes. “I want absolutely nothing from you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“You remind me of someone,”I say to the messy-haired man standing in the kitchen. Smoke had introduced him as Kevin before taking off to god only knows where. Maybe he’s creating another wooden bust of me to throw off the roof when I’m long gone.
“Actually, they call me Nine now,” he corrects after Smoke’s long gone. He smiles proudly. “And let me guess, I remind you of someone…from your dreams?” He wags his eyebrows suggestively.
Nine opens then slams every cabinet and drawer in the small kitchen in search of whatever it is he’s looking for to make his ‘world famous pasta sauce’. His words, not mine.
“Not quite,” I say.
Nine is big but not Smoke big. He’s leaner than Smoke, and a few inches shorter. He’s also about a decade or so younger from my guess, which makes him around my age.
There’s a newer-looking tattoo on the side of his neck depicting a bleeding heart with a knife stabbed through it. It’s gruesome but skillfully done, whoever created it is a true artist.
Nine’s smile is lopsided. His eyes bright. His eyelids naturally hooded. He’s chain-smoking cigarettes as he barrels his way through the kitchen as gracefully as one-footed duck.
It hits me who he reminds me of.
“I was thinking that you remind me of a friend of mine actually. His name was…is…Duke. His name is Duke.”
Nine puts out his cigarette under the tap and plucks a joint from behind his ear. “Duke? Is there a duchess?”
I smile because I can’t not smile at Nine. He’s attractive and witty and, unlike some people, warm. “Why Nine?” I ask.
