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“Hey.”
I opened my eyes with a jolt to see Harry standing before me, and I said, “Man, you’d make an awesome thief, you know that? Nobody would know you were coming.”
He chuckled and offered a kind smile. “I think I’ll stick to my day job, thanks.”
Then, he handed me what looked like a piece of paper. “Here.I came to give you this.”
“What is it?” I asked skeptically before accepting the white bundle that turned out to be a folded-up paper towel.
Inside was a slice of pizza.
“Oh, man, Harry …” It was stupid, the way my eyes teared up at the sight of the melted mozzarella and sliced pepperoni.
“We had pizza for dinner in the break room. So, I saved you a slice.” He nudged the toe of my beat-up canvas slip-on sneaker with the toe of his shiny shoe. “Happy birthday, Soldier.”
“Don’t ever let anyone say you’re not my favorite,” I said before taking a big bite.
It wasn’t the freshest, and it was a little cold, but, holy God, nothing had ever tasted better, and I groaned like I’d just received the best blowjob of my life.
Fuck. I missed that too. Women. Blowjobs. Sex. The guys and I talked about it sometimes, remembering the people we’dhadat one point or another, but most of the time, I preferred not to think about it at all. It didn’t suck so much that way. But right now, with the pizza and pepperoni mingling joyously in my mouth, I recalled other things I wouldn’t mind tasting, and it left an ache so dull in my chest.
Harry chuckled. “Good?”
“You have no fucking idea.”
I took another bite, and as I chewed, I left behind the memory of women and instead thought about a time from even longer ago. A whole other fucking life really, and I said, “The last time I had pizza on my birthday was the only time I had a party. My grandparents—I told you they raised me in the beginning, right?”
Harry nodded, a hint of melancholy touching his eyes. “You’ve mentioned it a few times.”
I’d known Harry for eight years, and there were only so many things to tell.
Hell, it was likely he’d heard this story before too. But he didn’t stop me from telling it.
“Right. Anyway, my gramma wanted me to have a normal birthday, I guess, and had me invite a couple of friends over. Billy was one of them. We ordered pizza, and right before I sat down to eat, I went to the bathroom to take a piss and walked in on my mom popping pills.” I studiedthe pizzacrust. The hardened bubbles of sauce. The crispy edges and softer middle. “All my grandparents had ever wanted was to give me a normal childhood while still protecting my mom. She was their only kid. I always got that they genuinely thought they were doing the right thing, and I don’t blame them for anything ever, but …”
“All we can do is our best,” Harry said, injecting a bit of wisdom into my moment of reflection. “Even if our best isn’t all that good at all.”
I nodded thoughtfully, turning the piece of crustover inmy fingers. “It’s crazy. Like … sometimes, we have these moments, you know, that are so profound in our lives, but we have no clue they’re happening when they’reactually happening. And all Gramma wanted that day was for me to be a normal kid, but there was Mom, fucking it up again. Gramma could never stop the inevitable. The only way she could’ve done that was to stop protecting her own daughter, and no matter how bad shit got, she could never abandon her.”
Just like me.
“You know, Soldier … the thing about the past is, it isn’t always up for speculation. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to simply accept that what’s happened has already happened and move on.”
I laughed and took a bite of the crispy crust. “You say that shit like the very nature of my situation isn’t because my past is under speculation.”
“True,” Harry said, nodding reflectively. “But rumor has it, your present has been looked at quite a bit as well. And what I hear is, you might be getting out of here soon.”
I nearly dropped the rest of the crust as I looked up at him and gawked, so fucking scared of letting hope take control. “Wait. You heard that?”
Harry shrugged, but the little smile tugging at his lips was unmistakable. “Like I said, rumors. But I thought you’d like to know. Anyway, it’s almost lights out. So, grab a book and head back, all right?”
I could barely nod as I considered the possibility that I could maybe get the hell out of this place sooner rather than later. “All right,” I replied, staring off toward nothing at all but a potential future I could almost see, taste, and smell. “’Night, Harry. Thanks for the pizza.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOMEWHERE TO GO
Six months after my thirtieth birthday, nine and a half years after my time behind bars had begun, I was officially up for parole. I’d been given the notice that my hearing was coming, and I had a pretty good feeling what the outcome was going to be. And, hey, maybe that was a little cocky of me. Maybe I should’ve expected the worst—hell, I’d only been doing that my entire life. But like I’d already said, I had woken up on my thirtieth birthday with a good feeling settled deep in my bones. Maybe it was safe to believe it had something to do with getting out of here.
