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“Eventually, I hooked up with a pimp who wasn’t too bad. He took most of the money but got me into a better apartment with a couple of roommates who worked for him, too. He disappeared off the streets one weekend, and we assumed he was dead somewhere. That’s when Teto came and took us in. He worked for Greco then.”
&n
bsp; She looks at me, waiting for my reaction, but this isn’t new information. I nod for her to go on.
“I never met the guy, just like I’ve never met your boss. I just followed Teto after that, and I’ve been with him for over two years.”
“Did you ever see Zach’s family again?”
“No,” Alina says. “I heard they moved out of state not too long after he died. I never saw them again.”
I close my eyes for a minute, realizing how far my mistakes have reached.
“If Zach had come home, you might not have had to live like that.”
“There’s no way of knowing that.” Alina turns toward me and grabs one of my hands. “You aren’t responsible for Zach. He knew what he was signing up for, and he accepted that. He wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”
“Well, I do.” I try to pull my hand back, but she holds on tight, and I relent. “If we had been two feet to the left, he wouldn’t have been hit.”
“You had no way of knowing that.”
“The cover wasn’t good enough. I should have set up somewhere else.”
“You couldn’t have stopped it, Evan.”
“I fucked it up, and he paid for it.”
“You listen to me, Evan Arden.” Alina sits up a little more and takes my face in her hands. “You are not responsible for that. From what Zach told me, you are the only reason any of you survived as long as you did.”
I can’t agree.
“You were his hero, Evan.”
“Me, a hero? Hardly.” I pull back from her and stand up. I start to pace a little as my stomach gets tied up in knots. “And what about now, huh? How would he feel about me now? Zach was a good guy. He even fucking prayed every night. Why the hell did he get hit and I come back just to kill some more?”
Alina stands and approaches me, grabbing both of my hands this time. She pulls me back to the couch and straddles my lap. She places her hands on my shoulders and moves close enough that our noses are almost touching.
“That man,” she says and then pauses and collects her thoughts before continuing, “that man Zach told me about—that brave, heroic man that he admired so much—that’s you, Evan. It’s you. You were and you are that same man.”
“Everything I’ve done since then…” I close my eyes and shake my head.
“None of that takes away from what you did before. It doesn’t stop you from being that same person. You are still him. You still did all those admirable things that made Zach so proud to be your spotter. He loved you like you were his own brother.”
Brothers in arms.
I glance down at the bullet and letters tattooed on my wrist. I remember the day Zach and I went to the tattoo shop and got the same tat—mine with his initials, his with mine.
Alina must notice where I’m looking because she reaches down and rubs at the letters—ZTM. Zachary Thomas Marshall. She wraps her fingers around my wrist and brings it up to her lips. She kisses each letter in turn.
“I still miss his smile,” she says softly, “and that goofy laugh.”
“He did have a goofy laugh.”
“And he was so loud!” Alina smiles. “He would laugh at the dumbest jokes, too.”
“He couldn’t tell one, either.” I smiled as well, remembering all the stupid one-liners Zach would come up with, claiming they were puns. They never made any sense. “He had the worst sense of humor, but you had to laugh whenever he did.”
“Exactly! Then you would wonder what the hell you were laughing at.”
