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He shook his head. “Charlie, you’re drunk. Look, I’m not judging, but how about we just sit out here? Cause frankly, I don’t think you could make it much past the porch steps.”
I yanked away from him but swayed on my feet, not giving much of an argument to my case when he had to grab me to help hold me steady.
“Fine,” I said, because all right, my feet did feel clumsy. I collapsed in the chair by the little table on the porch and pulled my legs up to my chest, circling them with my arms as I looked out at the night sky.
He lit the citronella candle in the center of the table with a lighter, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “You mind?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I’m trying to quit,” he said. “It’s an old habit, and a bad one. But sometimes, when I get stressed out…” He shrugged, his face boyish with a little bit of embarrassment that disappeared the second he took a draw on the cigarette.
I certainly wasn’t one to look down on vices after my demonstration with the wine bottle inside.
“Look, Orion,” I said, pointing up at the sky beyond the porch.
“Always my favorite,” Reece said. “It was the only one you could sometimes see in the city. I grew up in the Bay Area, so you could rarely see the stars. That was the only constellation that was bright enough to see.”
“No way.” I sat up straighter, surprised. “You grew up in the Bay?”
“Lived there my whole life except for the last seven years when we moved east, why?”
I bit my lip, then decided there was no real harm in sharing. “That’s where I’m from too.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh, yeah?”
I went quiet, afraid he’d start asking questions now that I’d shared the small tidbit. But he didn’t. He just puffed on the cigarette, smoke curling into the air, looking out at the night sky.
Since he wasn’t asking questions, I decided to venture one. “Why can’t you sleep?” Maybe it wasn’t fair to ask since I certainly didn’t want him putting the same question to me in reverse, but I was curious. Forever curious about the enigma of a man sitting in front of me.
He shrugged, looking my way and finally stubbing out the cigarette on the bottom of his boot, half-smoked.
“Told you Jer and I have that bad habit of bottling shit up instead of talking about it, right? Well, at night… it all kind of leaks out of the bottle. I try to sleep but my mind just replays shit, over and over and—” He shrugged again. “It makes sleeping hard.”
He said it all so casually, and I felt my chest constrict in pain for whatever kept him awake at night. He’d once mentioned he and his brother had been homeless. Living in the Bay Area, I’d seen enough of the homeless kids to know that had to be a terribly tough life.
“Well, maybe…” I ventured slowly. “Maybe you should try another way. If, you know, bottling it up and shoving it down hasn’t worked in all this time.”
He looked over at me, blinking a few times like he was startled by my words. “Well, okay.” He paused for a long moment, then went on. “Like there was this one time I’d gotten really sick. January in San Francisco sucks, especially when you’re on the streets.”
Oh. Shit, I hadn’t meant for him to unbottle it and tell it to me, like, right now. I’d meant more that he should try talking to his brother about it. Or a therapist. But I nodded encouragingly anyway. I could be a good listener.
“You know how it is. It doesn’t snow, but the winters still get so brutal. The rain goes on for months and months some years, it just won’t stop. And always with that bone-chilling cold.”
I shivered just thinking about it. He was right. Winters in San Francisco could get cold in a way that wore down beneath the skin and stuck there. I’d liked to take long baths in winter, one of my few reprieves.
But Reece and his brother hadn’t even had a roof over their heads, much less hot water. Jesus, I couldn’t even imagine.
Reece looked outwards, eyes still to the night sky as he went on. “It was weeks, then months, of being so cold, and never getting all the way dry. I got real, real sick, and Jer and I were in line for a homeless shelter. We’d stand in line for those places all day long but they were always full up. So one day we’re standing in line even though it’s pouring rain. And when we get to the front door, they only have one spot left.
I watched Reece’s brow contract in pain as he retold the events. “I was shaking so bad with fever I barely knew what was going on. I was vaguely aware of Jeremiah arguing with the lady that we could share a cot, since we were obviously brothers.”
He gave a little shake of his head. “But the lady didn’t care and was sick of arguing, and about to give the spot to the man in line behind us when Jeremiah shoved me forwards. Then he took off, yelling that he’d find me in a few days. It was getting dark and he just disappeared and I was getting shuffled inside where it was nice and warm.”
Reece shut his eyes, his jaw flexing with the pain the memory obviously still caused him.
“I shoulda gone after him. We had a code. Never separate. No matter what.” He shook his head again. “I shoulda gone after him.”
“But you were sick,” I said, frowning. “You just said you had a fever and barely knew what was going on.”
