Or maybe I’m just rolling around too much and I woke him up.
Blue can make fun of our bunk beds all he wants, but the thing is, they’re actuallynotbunk beds. It’s just that we share a room and my bed is lofted over Kit’s.
I mean, I guess maybe that’s bunk beds. Now that I think about it.
We didn’t evenhaveto share a room. But I can’t sleep if I don’t know Kit’s okay.
And right now he’s definitely alive, alive and breathing and pissed off at me.
Sigh.
I’m a bad person, no question. I’m a bad person, in a lot of ways, with a lot to make up for. But I’m not a dick. Not for no reason.
Especially not to Kit.
I wait another minute or two for Kit to fall back asleep, I hope. Then I shimmy down the length of my mattress and slide down the ladder. Our room is mostly his stuff—the desk, the books, the jars of colored pencils—since besides my clothes, all my stuff lives in the garage. And even when I try to walk quietly all the sketches pinned up on the wall flutter like leaves in the breeze.
I glance back.
Kit’s motionless on his bed. Blankets up. Asleep.
I wait for his chest to rise and fall once, twice. See that he’s breathing, just to double check. And then I can go.
The kitchen’son the first floor, the shop level, in the back. It doesn’t really have much actual kitchen stuff, in terms of appliances or pots and pans, or whatever, but it has a fridge that works, and a microwave that works, and an oven that…
Well, that explains one thing. The oven ison. The oven is on, and the whole room smells like spicy charcoal, and when I open up the door there’s a pizza in it. Or what used to be a pizza. Now it’s just a big black crumbly circle.
Classic drunk Fox. Make pizza, pass the fuck out.
I pull it out of the oven and drop it on the counter. Then, just in case, I break off a chunk just to see if it’s still edible and…not really. So I go for Cheerios instead. The bright yellow box.
That must have been it, I think as I chew a ton of tiny Os. The lingering hangover guilt. Or whatever feeling it is. My dumb pizza. I mean, shit, I could’ve burned the whole shop down.
Except that doesn’tfeellike it was it.
I stab my spoon into the mountain of cereal and chew another bite. It tastes…bad. Or not the cereal itself, but the milk part. I grab the carton and sniff. Kinda hard to tell, because it’s empty now, but…
“Oh. Hey.”
I look up. It’s Tink.
“Didn’t think anyone else would be up yet,” he says. I shrug, nod, my mouth full of Cheerios, and as I do, this cold feeling takes over my stomach.
One that I don’t even think has to do with the milk being off.
Tink. Tink.
Did something happen with Tink last night?
I squint into my bowl of getting-mushy cereal, head pounding, as Tink drops his bag on the counter and heads for the fridge. Did I…say something to him? Piss him off? I definitelycanshoot off for no reason, but atTink?
I sidle a glance at him. He’s fully dressed—dressed for a ride, too, jacket, pants, boots, the works—while I’m still fucking around in shorts and bedhead.
“Going out?” I croak.
“Huh?” Tink startles a little, like he already forgot I was there. “Oh, uh. Yeah. Since we’ve got nothing going on, I figured I might…cruise around a bit. Nowhere in particular.” He quickly stuffs something into his bag, but I catch it before it disappears: a bottle of sunscreen. Some nice kind, it looks like, too, not Discount Drug store brand.
Huh, I think.Responsible.
