Page 30 of Pistol Whipped

My headphones make it easy to drown him out. They’re the huge, noise-cancelling kind, and I pull them out from the small storage box beside my bunk and pop them on. Already, that quiet is better. Better still is the voice of Adam Morell, the lead singer of the Dread Knots, screaming in my ears.

My brother shakes his head before ducking into the bus’s small bathroom. There’s a shower in there that is barely big enough to fit me, let alone Dutch’s much larger frame, but he always showers before bed. A habit developed from the last few years of working overnights at the warehouse. He’d come home sweaty from hauling boxes and assembling parts; tonight, it’s the show that did it.

I continue to ignore Cohen, grabbing a seat at the small dining table rather than join him on the couch. He keeps trying to talk to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see his lips moving; I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t make eye contact, nor do I hear a word, not until one track ends and the other begins. In a moment between, I finally catch him scowl and say, “Fuck this,” before sulking away to his own bunk.

There’s no point in moving. It’s late. Sure. But I’m not exactly a great sleeper at the best of times. Sleep is always dangerous, and with the events of tonight, I already know I’m too rattled to find peace. Instead, I let the music play on. The whole album plays; my brother showers, waves goodnight, before turning off all but the light directly above me. I don’t wave back. I let the sounds of a different album, Dead Man Walking by The Casualties, take over.

The music dulls the cravings. It douses the anger. It threads the broken pieces of me back together, one stitch, one note at a time. Time passes. Hours probably, but I don’t notice until the door at the end of the hallway opens a crack and Rain tiptoes out.

Her tiny feet are socked and make almost no noise thanks to the carpet that runs up the bus’s central hall. She’s not alone either; that kitten is with her and moves just as quietly. She doesn’t notice me. Not at first. But when I take my headphones off, the movement catches her off guard, and she jumps. She almost squeaks but covers her mouth at the last second. The music has clearly done its job right because I almost grin.

“Dallas,” she whispers, “You’re still awake?”

“Can’t sleep, remember?” I whisper back.

She nods. She knows all too well about my insomnia. She’s sat through it with me more than once.

“Neither could I.”

“Demons?” I ask. She nods again.

Demons. A word that means something special to Rainy and me.

“Same,” I confirm, even though I doubt she needs me to. She slides onto the opposite bench, so we’re facing one another.

“Do your demons wanna play with my demons, Dax?”

We’re keeping our voices low so as not to wake Dutch or Cohen, yet there’s still a note of teasing in her voice. So, I tease back, “That sounds like a dangerous game, Rainy. I don’t think your demons could take mine.”

An old familiar game, an old familiar conversation, which ends before we start tallying up our trauma by the smallest mew from the cat. It easily jumps into the booth on my side. Taking its time, it rubs against me, strides across my thighs, does three small turns and nestles in my lap.

“Sorry about Kitten.”

“Don’t be. And why Kitten? Aren’t you going to give her, or him, a proper name?”

Rain shrugs but gives a soft smile as she eyes the kitten who’s decided my lap is an appropriate place to nap.

“Didn’t want to get attached because I never thought I’d be able to keep her. So she’s just Kitten. By the time I realized I could never let her go, the name had stuck.”

There’s a lull in our conversation. I scratch absent-mindedly at Kitten’s ears. The looming threat of whatever we say next is tangible. My tongue is thick with the need to confess. Late-night confessions are nothing new between us.

“So, Cohen lied about having a girlfriend, huh?”

I can’t help but chuckle a little with relief. That’s lighter than I expected.

“Pretty sure,” I confirm.

“And your brother?”

“Definitely a lie,” I reply, though mention of my brother brings the heaviness back. “Between his job and taking care of my sorry ass, Dutch barely has time to take a shit, let alone date anyone.”

“And what about you, Dax?”

Her eyes are so dark, but not unkind as she waits. My response is a derisive snort. “I think you know the answer to that, Rainy-girl.”

She’s a lifelong Necker like the rest of us. Hell, her parents were junkies in their own right. She knows better than anyone how the drugs eat away at literally everything else in your life, until they are all that’s left.

“Easier to chase the demons away than to face them,” she sighs. For a second, those dark eyes of hers empty out, like she’s no longer here with me but somewhere else.