The blond girlfriend's name was Megan and she watched him sleep. Watched the easy rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers curled toward his palm. When he was asleep the scowling expression disappeared and she could see someone sweeter. She wanted him to be sweet, to be protective of her, to be almost considerate. She thought she wanted that. But all the boys who were really that way bored her. All the boys who wore such clean clothes and studied hard and held the doors, they were insufferable.
She listened to the coffee brew at this stranger's house and watched Brad sleep. She didn't know if you could call him her boyfriend. But he was something. She didn't know why the sudden flares of his anger scared her and excited her at once. She didn't know what it was in the danger that she found exhilarating, but it was something.
He did things she would never do, maybe that was a part of it. He had disowned his parents as they had him. She could never leave her parents in spirit that way. Even next year when she headed for college, she'd still be tied to them. Brad was on his own, answered to no one but himself.
"Hey," he said, half sitting up, smiling at her. The smile was sleepy and slow and broke her heart. His eyes, caught between green and brown, fascinated her. The long lashes. His full lips. His scratchy school boy voice. She swallowed hard, smiled back.
"Hey," she said, tucking the stray blond strands behind her ear, running her tongue along her teeth. She could smell the coffee, cinnamon hazelnut, and it filled the small apartment.
It was Sunday and school weighed on her mind as she sipped her coffee and watched Brad sip his. She drank hers with one spoonful of sugar and a splash of cream. He had poured sugar into his coffee until her eyes widened.
"Having some coffee with your sugar?" she said, and he narrowed his eyes for a second, a shadow of the scowl. Then the look cleared and he smiled his wide smile at her.
He shook out a cigarette from the pack in the pocket of his jeans and lit it up, not caring if the kid who lived in this apartment allowed people to smoke in it. He lived by his own rules. As he pulled the smoke into his lungs and exhaled it in one long steady stream she envied him because he wasn't worrying about school or anything. He had a freedom she didn't have, would never have. She could only look at it through the bars of her cage.
He looked at the shine of her blond hair through his smoke, and the worry he was always filled with was invisible to her. He needed a fix of some kind. Preferably heroin but he'd take whatever he could get. He was not a purist with his substances. He'd swallow, shoot, or inhale them all.
"Want to do something today?" she said, and her voice was almost shy. He looked over at her. Clear blue eyes, straight blond hair. What did this girl see in him? He couldn't figure it out. And he wanted to do something. But he wanted to get high first.
"Yeah," he said, crushing his cigarette against the glass ashtray, standing up and kissing her cheek. It felt electric to her.
"I do, but I have to go and do something first," he said, and ignored the crushed look on her face. She wasn't good at hiding things. Not like he was. But it didn't matter. What he wanted and what he needed mattered. It had been that way a long time.
Outside, the air crisp and clear, he headed toward downtown. He had enough money for a fix, for a hit. Just one. But one was all he needed. The gun was cold against his skin, tucked into his waistband. He could feel the money in the bottom of his pocket. Closed his eyes and saw Megan's devastated look she couldn't even begin to try and hide.