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“What do you need a chair for anyway?” Ronan asked. “We have the bench.”
“I’m not sitting on a splintered slab of wood that some pirate probably pissed on a hundred years ago.”
Miller rolled his eyes. “Can’t argue with that logic.”
The three of us sized up our little haven. The chair took up quite a lot of real estate in the Shack, but there was still plenty of room, even with the rest of the upgrades I’d been making over the last few days: a heavy-duty camping lantern, a mini-fridge with a generator for booze and the snacks Miller needed to keep his blood sugars even, and an old trunk with a padlock.
Miller’s gaze lingered on the trunk the longest. His mom’s new boyfriend was a douchebag with a capital douche, and he feared for his guitar’s safety after he caught Chet messing with it the other day. I’d bought the trunk so Miller could keep the instrument safe and not have to lug it around wherever he went.
He looked to me gratefully. “The chair’s not so bad.”
Warmth flooded me and I looked away. I still wasn’t used to having real friends and had to constantly remind myself not to get too attached. It’d only been a few days. Still plenty early for Miller and Ronan to come to their senses.
“Beer?” Ronan asked, his huge frame bent over the mini fridge.
I tapped the flask in my pocket. “I’m in a vodka mood today.”
“Stratton?”
“Can’t. Have to work,” Miller said. “I’m off at ten.”
He worked at an arcade down at the Boardwalk, and we’d made a habit of meeting up with him and strolling amid the games and rides like the fabulous trio of degenerates we were.
“We’ll meet you,” I said, and Ronan nodded.
Miller’s grateful expression came back as he shouldered his backpack and headed out. I suspected he hadn’t had many friends either. I learned he’d once been homeless, living out of his car with his mother. Kids at school had spent the last four years bullying him for it, Frankie Dowd in particular. Hence the ugly little scene at Chance’s party.
The idea of anyone giving Miller shit made me want to break something. True to form, Ronan had broken something—Frankie’s nose. If I hadn’t already loved the big lug, that did the trick.
“What about you?” I asked, sitting on my rock chair beside the bonfire. “Do you work?”
“I do odd jobs,” Ronan said as he gathered bits of driftwood. The sun was hours away from setting that afternoon, but I’d never say no to a fire and he liked to watch things burn.
“You’re a freelancer,” I said.
“Sure.”
“And you live with your uncle?”
I was treading on thin ice, asking Ronan to actually talk about himself—his least favorite subject. He grunted a response that might’ve been yes, no, or fuck off.
“The reason I ask, is that I also used to live with my parents and now live with my aunt and uncle. We’re twinsies.”
Ronan didn’t crack a smile but drenched the charred wood—remnants of last night’s fire—with lighter fluid and struck a match. The fire roared and then subsided, and he took his seat on his rock.
“Shit happened in Wisconsin,” he said finally. “I had to get out of there.”
I glanced at him without letting on I was observing him, taking in his details like an artist might make a rough sketch. Ronan was eighteen going on nineteen with at least six visible tattoos. He’d packed on muscles like armor, and his gray eyes looked as if they held decades’ worth of bad memories.
“What’s that all about?” he asked as I took a pull from my flask with my bandaged hand.
“Oh, this?” I flexed my aching fingers. “Or are you wondering why today is a vodka day?”
He shrugged. “Seems like every day is a vodka day.”
“True. Today’s been extra special.” I glanced at him. “You want to hear this?”
“If you want to tell it.”
