"Tim—" Curly wafts his hand in front of his face, disgustedly— "you gotta snap out of it, man."

He's kind of got a point, which is that our room is so thick with smoke right now, it's starting to resemble a Bangkok teahouse; I have to squint to make out his features through it, as I move the hand with the joint like I'm spreading incense around. "Did I ask?" I still say, falling back down onto my creaky mattress and shifting away from the broken spring. After I've reached the roach, I think I'm going to take another nap; I can already feel my eyelids growing heavy from this shit that just came in from Sinaloa, stronger than my usual potency. Almost strong enough to make me forget, both the recent and the more distant memories swirling around my mind like oil dripped in water.

"Tim… it's been a week, come on. You can't just smoke grass all day because you're sad your girlfriend broke up with you."

Curly's supposed to be moving out, but there's no concrete date yet, because Hector has no intention of letting that happen. That's why, in a stunning feat of role reversal, he's still here riding my ass. "Your job called," he just keeps talking, rooting around my chest of drawers for a t-shirt now— I don't even have the energy to tell him to get bent. "I told them Ma died, and I think it worked for now, but if you don't come back soon, they might start askin' for the obituary."

This is deeply fucking embarrassing, I realize with the last part of my mind I haven't doped into oblivion. I'm more torn up over some chick I was seeing for three months than the one I dated for close to five years. Worse, I'm acting like my mother, right down to having to be coaxed out of bed with promises and threats. I just can't bring myself to care. "When you so much as get your dick wet for the first time—" I narrow my eyes into slits so thin, I can see the imprint of my lashes— "I'll take your advice on girls, manito, how 'bout it?"

"I can smell you from here," he continues ruthlessly, pulling open the blind with a snap— I squint harder at the sudden influx of sunlight, reflecting off the melting snow outside. It's coming on spring. "That smell is not fuckin' good."

"Don't even get me started on smell, considering you and your little friends' attitudes towards deodorant—"

"You got room for one more in this intervention?"

I guess the devil's moved beyond 'speaking' nowadays. Just thinking about her can summon her presence.

"Yeah," Curly says with a shrug, "I'm pretty much done," and stalks off, probably looking for trouble I can't be bothered to try to keep him out of— leaving me alone with her, in my vulnerable, incapacitated state. This might just be the last nail in the coffin of our relationship.

"Swore I made you return your house key," I mutter as Bonnie, of all the fucking people I want to see right now, strolls into my room. Rakes her eyes over me, once, twice, and clearly isn't impressed. She's gotten a new haircut and blow-dry, flipped at the ends, looks nothing like the drunk girl melting down like Mount Vesuvius I left behind at the Nightly Double. Thank God for that much of a small miracle. "Don't know why you seem to think you still got free rein of this place, but—"

"I'm takin' Angela out— to a diner, not a round of drinks at Buck's," she adds once she sees the equally unimpressed face I pull back at her. "Think she needs some girl time, and I want to talk to her, 'bout how she's been messin' around at school lately." I want to tell her to hit the bricks, but I could use all the help I can get in that department— with Bonnie on track to graduate and me a dropout, she might be less of a lousy hypocrite than me spouting off at her. "So what made you drop this one, if you're so fucking despondent over it? You was back in the saddle twenty minutes after you called it quits with me."

"None of your damn business, that's what—"

"Don't tell me you want me to start guessing— oh. Oh, wait, now I get it." A cruel smile starts to unfurl on her face like a birthday party noisemaker. "You got dumped, didn't you?"

I try to stammer a denial, but seize up on the words. "No, God, this is priceless," she says with a hoot of laughter. "I think this is gonna be real good for you, Tim, a real valuable life lesson. She let you know which one of your character flaws finally did her in?"

"You sure talk a lot of shit, for a chick who was beggin' me to take her back a few months ago." I feel like an exposed nerve in a broken tooth even with the help of the pot, all raw pain, and I'm just not in the goddamned mood to deal with this. "Hell, for a chick who was throwin' another fit at the drive-in, beggin' me to take her back yet again. That still ain't happenin' now that I'm newly single, by the way."

"I'm sorry."

"... You're what?" I'm about as shocked as I would be if Jesus came back to earth to rapture us, right here and now— I don't think I've ever heard an apology leave Bonnie's lips, from the time our seventh grade homeroom teacher caught her passing notes to the time I caught her with another man, unless it was sarcastic.

"I said I'm sorry, Jesus, Tim, don't make this harder than it has to be," and I guess she hasn't been lobotomized since I saw her last, after all. She huffs, then stares up at the spiderweb crack in the ceiling where Curly beaned a baseball at it. "I shouldn't have messed around on you, you had enough trust issues to be gettin' on with already—"

"You don't fuckin' say."

She gives me a look that suggests she thinks the character flaw, or at least one of them, was being a poor listener, then carries on with her confession. "I shouldn't have messed around on you— acted like it was nothing, that it was a done deal you'd forgive me. And I sure as shit shouldn't have been makin' a fool out of myself at that drive-in. Bringin' up…"

I never thought this moment would come, that she'd reach the end of her litany of excuses for her actions, but I always imagined I'd savor it a lot more than I am now. Rub her nose in the mess. "Don't rake yourself over the coals because of it." I've been propped up on the pillows, like a terminal patient surprised with visitors, slump back down and flick my roach onto the carpet. "You didn't say anything that wasn't true."

"I think we should start pushin' some 'ludes, maybe."

"… Huh?" I've got to shake my head like a fucking Etch-a-Sketch to realize that Rafa's spreading a baggie of white and orange pills out in front of me, send a persistent drop of water snaking down my neck— I showered before I came here, at least, reckoning that if Curly was telling me I reeked, I was in pretty dire hygienic straits indeed.

Rafa snaps his fingers in front of my face, which is some shit I would've broken them for a few months ago. Temper like chained lightning. "I'm tellin' you, man, my primo Chava in El Paso gave me some of these, he says Quaaludes is crazy shit. They knock you out like nothing else, everyone's takin' them down there."

God, do I want to be knocked out like nothing else right now. I don't let myself touch the Valium anymore, though— since I went off, I've been craving it like I imagine a heroin addict craves that needle sliding into their skin. And the fact that I want it so much is why I know I can't let myself have it ever again.

"Sounds promising," I say instead of dwelling on it, try to get back into an entrepreneurial mindset. This is the same brain I analyzed The Prince with once, for fuck's sake— I just need to stop acting so pathetic, like some bored housewife. "You sure nobody's staked a claim on distribution of this stuff yet, though?" Last thing I need is trouble for homing in on somebody's territory.

A heavy hand falls onto my shoulder and clamps down, and I about jump out of my barstool when I see who it is— Diego. "Do y'all ever hang out anywhere that ain't this chimuelo's cross between a house and a bar?" he asks, surveying Buck's with a judgemental eye. "I didn't even really have to go searchin' for you."

"Don't call him that, c'mon," I say like that's the real pressing issue here. Buck's one ugly motherfucker, sure, looks like a scarecrow you'd put up in the middle of a field, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let any jumped-up River King talk shit about him. "Look," I add with a sense of resignation, twisting myself out of the stool to face him, "Buck says if I get into one more fight in here, it's a lifetime ban," ever since Dallas and I knocked over an eleven dollar bottle of whiskey. "We gotta take it outside."

"I didn't come here to beat you up."

I give him a sidelong glance, and he backtracks. "I don't have to beat you up, do I?" He shoots me a shark-toothed smile, the kind Luis's debt collectors wear before they start threatening to smash valuables. "Because you're gonna haul ass right out of here, buy a bouquet of flowers you can't see over the top of, and apologize to my sister for tellin' her to go kick rocks."

Reckon I'd prefer the ass-beating. Might be less painful. "Your sister dumped me, compa, and that's the honest truth."

"That's not how she tells it," he says calmly. "And I'm gettin' a little tired of hearin' the same thing around the clock, every time I show my face at home. Can't even get a hold of the damn phone anymore, she's always talkin' with her girlfriends about you." He raises his voice a couple of octaves, and his impression is not good. "Ooh, that Tim Shepard just makes me so mad. You wouldn't believe what that Tim Shepard had the nerve to say to me. That Tim Shepard's been keepin' secrets from me like crazy, and he thinks all this is my fault— You can see where this is goin' without a blow-by-blow of the whole conversation, I reckon."

I let my arms fall to my sides, limp. "And you don't want to deck me, after hearin' all of that?" If Angela was constantly on the phone with one of her little girlfriends, complaining about some loser who treated her the way I treated Gabi, I sure would— if only to get her to quit yakking about it.

Rather than taking a swing, though, he gets downright contemplative. "Gabi has real bad taste in men," he says. "Last guy she was with, he broke one of her ribs."

Something inside of me goes very cold and still. "He did what?"

"She said she fell down the stairs at school, of all the bullshit excuses, like I got no idea what causes broken ribs. She sure started gettin' a lot clumsier after she met him." He spits on the ground, knocking a peanut shell a couple of millimeters to the right. "Word on the street has it, you was willin' to risk the electric chair for her."

"Your daddy would probably say that after I almost got her killed, that was just me settlin' the balance with the universe."

"Yeah, well, the old man thought the sun shone out of Tenoch's ass, so we can see where she got bein' a poor judge of character from." Diego scowls, and launches another hock of spit onto the floor. "Look, you might be a gangbanger, hood, from the wrong side of the tracks, whatever the fuck— after all of that, you're not gonna convince me that you're such a bad guy."

"I still ain't good enough for her." I play with the pack of Parliaments I have in my jacket, but don't take one out to light. Try to play it cool, too, but a thready note of vulnerability leaches into my voice anyway. I think about their nice little house, her neatly-pressed Catholic school uniform, the way her daddy looked at me, from the moment I passed his threshold, like I didn't deserve to sweep the dirt off his front step. "It's probably for the best, this shit ended before it got too serious, and y'all had to entertain my redneck relatives at the wedding."

"Self-pity ain't such a pretty look on you, Eeyore, I'm gettin' tired of gassing you up," he says, and just smirks as I glare at him. Rafa, who I'd honestly forgotten was still listening to all this unfold, stifles a laugh with his fist. "Quit makin' me listen to this Catholic guilt bullshit, I know you ain't good enough for her. You're better than the last one, though, and you can admit it, so I guess you'll do." He claps me on the shoulder again. "She likes pink roses, by the way. Don't make me actually have to take you out back."

"Here comes the prodigal nephew, huh."

I'm already on edge thanks to my run-in with Diego, without having to listen to Luis's usual bullshit. (I hate myself, for the part of me that's glad to hear that I'm still as tangled up in Gabi's head as she is in mine, the confirmation that she won't be forgetting about me any time soon.) "Rafa's been talkin' my ear off about these new pills he got a hold of, called Quaaludes," I say as I slide onto a barstool beside him, plan on giving him the report and then heading straight out. That plan's dashed when I notice Joe at his other elbow.

"I see someone's wasted no time movin' on," he says, tipping his beer bottle at me like he's aiming a pistol. Jesus Christ, this town ever have anything better to gossip about than the sorry state of my love life? "Got to admire that single-minded devotion to the business, I really do."

I don't like the idea that Luis might've been right, back during our Christmas party, that Joe wants to serve her up to me as an incentive to stay loyal— hell, he told me as much when he pulled up to my house, that I could good as have her as a prize if we backed him against the Tigers. I really don't like the idea that Diego might be a little less keen on having me as a future brother-in-law, and a little more keen on keeping him happy. I really, really don't fucking like having to entertain this pervertido on a regular basis, and that I couldn't even spend one night in jail without asking for a favor from him. Now I'm in his debt, too. "That lil' girl finally break things off with you?" Luis grunts, plays it off like he couldn't care less, but I know better. "Was it your charming personality, or the bad aim, you reckon?"

"Your dumbshit idea, actually," I say, hurl the phrase at him like I'm throwing a plate at his head. My surge of anger feels impossible to stop, no matter what the consequences may be, movement outside of conscious control altogether. He runs everything— he ruins everything for me. "You got what you wanted, in the end, you always do, so quit rubbin' my fucking nose in it like you're rubbin' a dog's nose in piss. I've had about as much as I can take from you."

Joe laughs, which is what stops Luis from flattening me into a grease smear right then and there. "You got an even worse temper than usual when your dick ain't gettin' wet, god-damn." I want to kill him, though after all this, I shouldn't be taking that statement lightly. "You want a session with one of my girls, would that put you in a better mood? Hell, I'll even cut you a friends-and-family discount."

I would rather chew broken glass and shit it back out than cash in that coupon, and I'm about to say as much, when Luis starts shooing him out of the room. Probably doesn't want any witnesses for my attempted murder. "Looks like this is shapin' up to be a family matter, so…"

Joe complies amiably enough, but turns to me before he can reach the door. "I think you ought to apologize to her," he says, with a thin kind of smile that makes it clear it's not a suggestion. "Look, I ain't Mrs. fuckin' Bennet, I ain't bored enough to start arranging marriages for all my gangbangers— but I'm not such a big fan of my girls bein' disrespected, comprendes? Especially not by somebody I been goin' out on quite a few limbs for." The way he says it makes it clear he's got every instance jotted down in his mental ledger— or hell, knowing him, it might even be a physical one.

Of all the things that piss me off about this guy, the Spanish slang in his corn-fed Oklahoma accent is approaching the top of the list. Him referring to her as his girl is close— though, hell, ain't like she's my girl anymore either. Luis looks at me with such thinly-veiled irritation once he's gone, it's covered in gossamer. "And this is why I fuckin' told you, not to get involved with any chick he offers up to you on a platter." He pulls out a cigar as thick as a tree branch and manages to light it in my direction the same way Ma's folded socks in my direction before. "You better get down on your knees and grovel, if that's what it takes to smooth this over. Tío needs new brake pads in his truck."

"You want to take this one out back?" I'm itching for a physical fight with him like I've been rolling around in a pit of poison ivy, not yet another verbal sniping match, even if he makes me swallow my own teeth in the process— hell, maybe especially if he makes me swallow my own teeth. Anything to just shut him the fuck up for a moment, shut my own racing thoughts up for a moment.

He doesn't take the bait, even when I dangle it right in front of his nose. "Have you been dippin' into the coke again?" He gets my chin between his fingers and tilts it up to examine my pupils, the insides of my nostrils, while I try to squirm away like a kid getting his face spit-shined by his mama. "Dammit, Timmy, I told you that shit causes paranoia, and you shouldn't need me to tell you. You start gettin' real eager to punch above your weight."

He's not being metaphorical— he's got a solid forty pounds on me, minimum. It's taken me this long to realize that I want to hit everything that moves because I'm going through withdrawal, though he guessed the wrong drug. "Drink this and cool the fuck off," he insists as he shoves a glass of beer across the bar at me, looks like he'd rather pour it over my head instead. "Before I really school you the kind of lesson you've been begging for lately."

I take a sip, to see if it helps any. It doesn't. "Why'd she take off?" he asks again, like it's his business in the slightest.

"I told you, your idea wasn't such a smash hit with her. Turns out not every chick on the East side gets turned on when her man commits senseless violence."

He gives me the tiniest smirk, almost more of a spasm. "Humor me for once. What's the real reason?"

I just stare off into the distance instead of answering him, my vision growing staticky around the edges, sliding out of focus until the bar's a neon smear, and I'm not here anymore, not really, the floor of the warehouse is spongey beneath my sweaty hands and I can smell the mold, the fresh piss, and I'm not going to see fourteen, am I. I don't want to die, Santi's panicked babble pierces me again, verbalizing what I was too stunned silent to say, please, I don't want to die. He had those rich boy manners right up to his very last moment, still spilling out of his mouth when it was blown apart. Too bad he won't leave me alone now, no matter how hard I beg.

The red lights illuminating this joint make it look like the bowels of hell. I'm not afraid of going there, once I die, though I know that's where I'm headed. I'm already living it.

"Tim?"

My nose is starting to sting, like I've been out in the cold, pressure building up in the base of my throat— then tears spill over onto my cheeks, unbidden, water coming out of a pot that's been left to boil too long. I haven't cried over precisely jack shit since I was thirteen, thought I'd lost the ability altogether, hardened and rusted-over inside beyond caring. It takes me a few moments to realize I even am crying, not, I don't know, bleeding out of my eyeballs. And the more I try not to, the worse it gets.

If my daddy came back from the dead and saw me crying like a little bitch, in public, he would whoop me raw— I am sure not doing this shit in front of Luis, either, any more than I'd projectile vomit into his lap. "I've had too much, I'm goin' home," I say in a choked, nasally voice, though I haven't gotten to do more than wet my lips with the beer. He raises his hand to stop me, and I think it might come crashing down onto my face. Instead, he pulls me to his chest, real tight and close, like I'm Curly's age— hell, like I'm Curly, period. I try to wrench myself free, so embarrassed I want the floor to form a sinkhole beneath me and suck me up, but his grip might as well be a straitjacket. He doesn't let go.

"Mijo, c'mon now, it ain't worth all this," he says with a lot of gentleness by his standards. "Get your shit together. Some three-month broad who wasn't good enough for you anyway… listen, for Chrissakes, the love of my life was a married gabacha who wouldn't give me the time of day after her man got out of jail, and now she's dead. Do you see me cryin' over it?"

What he's saying is so fucking absurd I laugh, but the sound just comes out halfway to hysterical, even muffled into his coat. "It's not her— not just her— 's Santi," I hiccup hard; he freezes in place, then cradles the back of my head. I've never, as far as I can recall, spoken his name unprompted. Neither has Luis. "I see it whenever I close my eyes. I'm always seein' it."

I should've sought out Cisco, maybe, but no matter what he claims, I can't burden him or his family with this. Like a child, like the prodigal nephew, it's Luis I came back to seeking absolution, a snake on its belly in the dust. I'll always come crawling back.

"It wasn't your fault," Luis says, which is when I really start losing my shit, "it was mine. You was just a kid— you still are just a kid."

"Do you wish I'd died instead?"

It's my worst fear about myself, and one I'll regret verbalizing later— I'm just too far gone right now to care. If Santi's given me the gift of life, it's like getting a pair of jeans with the crotch cut out. I want to throw it back in his face and tell him he can keep it.

"Of course not. You was my first one, you always will be," he says as I cry into his shoulder, carding a hand through my hair. "My number one fuckin' boy."

"Best way to get over someone is to get under someone else." Dally leans across the table as he imparts this sage wisdom upon me— like Sylvia's cheating ass doesn't have him by the short and curlies. Everything really does have a way of coming full circle. "Go get 'em, tiger."

"Right," I say, pounding my third whiskey sour, which is starting to seem like a mistake I can't take back. The aftertaste of the alcohol lingers on my tongue like I've been ingesting hand sanitizer. "Gonna go back to my tried-and-true method of gettin' over chicks— meaningless sex with random women— and then I'm gonna put all this 'committed relationship' shit behind me."

I shouldn't have needed multiple people to tell me to do it— I am going to apologize to her, both for being a grade-A prick and for dragging her into a seedy underworld she has no place in, and then I'm going to cleave myself from her life and let her walk away from me for good, with everything settled between us. And the best way to ensure I do just that, is to make sure I'm over her first. The solution to my problem's got her tits pressed up to my back once I circle the bar. "You waitin' on anybody?" she asks, sending a shiver down my spine with her whispery voice, and it turns out I'm not.

Leigh-Ann isn't exactly pretty, but she's cute enough, and I don't feel like playing the field more when this gal's already landed in my lap. God knows, as Bonnie so lovingly pointed out, I'm no Paul Newman— it's nothing another drink can't fix, and by the time I'm done with my fourth, I'm over it. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of her flat nose, like cinnamon sugar, is intriguing enough to keep me where I am. So are those tits, threatening to spill right out of her two-sizes-too-small top. We've exchanged names before she nudges her knee between my thighs. "I've heard a lot about you," she says, the tip of her tongue darting out past her frosted pink lips. I bet she has. "Been wonderin' just how much of it's true."

That's when I come out with the nastiest thing I've ever said to a broad I just met. It alludes to something written about me on the walls of the Will Rogers girls' locker room, except going into even more gratuitous detail about where I'm going to put it. Then I rake my eyes down her whole body before I look back up at her face again, so that it's absolutely clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I'm not real interested in any more talking. A teenage Brumly boy would find my seduction technique embarrassingly crude— my dumber cousins would piss themselves laughing at me. I'm almost daring her to slap me, slink away in disgust, throw her drink in my face. Save me from myself.

She shoves her hand down the front of my jeans to see if I can back up that talk with some action, then slams her mouth into mine and starts leading me over to the stairs, once she's satisfied with the results. I guess that settles it, this chick is easier than a grade school multiplication quiz, but who am I to judge? She's eager and willing to give me what I want, is all. I just have to convince myself I still want it.

Too bad for my faith in my willpower that once we're on one of Buck's many available beds, the whole charade falls apart like papier-mâché in the rain. Normally I like figuring out what gets a girl going, solving the puzzle, but as I put my hand up her skirt, start feeling her up through her underwear, I'm still not even hard; I have to grind against the mattress to feel anything at all. I shove the fabric aside, panic rising, stroke her directly, mutter some more dirty shit under my breath. I might as well be shaking her hand, for all it's turning me on.

Jesus, I'm barely touching you, I want to say as another exaggerated moan splits the air, annoyance building up inside of me, this ain't some bad porno, but we're both putting on a show anyway. I'm a model JD, fucking broads whose names I won't remember to prove what a tuff hood I am, she's your typical greaser girl hanging off gangbangers' arms, trading her body for status. She doesn't give a shit about me any more than I do about her, except for being able to brag to her friends about getting Tim Shepard into bed.

I really liked you, Tim. But not as much as you like makin' yourself miserable. I don't think any girl is ever going to top that.

Now I'm remembering the time I had Gabi's legs so far over my shoulders I practically lifted her off the mattress, and that fond memory is what finally gets my cock to do a feeble twitch, and also what gets me to put a stop to this once a spark of arousal goes off in my brain. I can't use this poor chick like a human Kleenex while I'm thinking about another girl— even I've got enough standards to balk at that. I take my hand out from underneath her skirt, look at my glistening fingers with disgust. "Just put your clothes back on."

"What?" She sits up against the headboard, her forehead patched with sweat and foundation, more confused than indignant. "Why, I thought we was just gettin' started?"

"Put your damn clothes back on," I repeat in a harsher snap, "what part of that didn't make sense?" Jesus, can I be a bastard when I want to be, but I don't have close to enough emotional reserves left to let her down easy. "Now I'm finishin' it."

She calls me every cuss word under the sun as she puts her bra back on, including trying to come up with a way to call me a cocktease, and I just let her— I can't say I don't deserve it, and I'm not paying attention. For the first time in over a week, my mind's finally clear like the inside of a soap bubble, all the lies I've been struggling to make myself believe dissipating in the face of the truth.

I want my girl, and I'm going to get her back. No matter what it takes.