Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“He was on the phone earlier.” JC nods at the living room door. “He was in there when I got up.”

Did he stay in bed through the night at all?

I walk into the living room with its leather furniture and huge TV screen, and find Merc fast asleep on the sofa, his earphones around his neck. His cell phone is resting on his chest, as if he got tired in the middle of calling and dozed off—and Hiccup is asleep curled on his thigh, a ginger smudge.

Aw.

Ignoring the urge to touch him, I watch him for a few moments, noting how much better he looks than he did last night, face relaxed, color healthy, breathing regular.

I smile.

He needs his sleep. Again I wonder if he slept last night or if he wandered the apartment, thinking and listening to music.

So I tiptoe out and go grab a shower. Standing under the hot spray, inside the bathtub where he made love to me, I have to fight the tactile memory of his hands, his lips on me, his cock in me, to focus on the day ahead.

Still smiling, I dry myself, and hurry to the bedroom to get dressed. I grab the least wrinkled items I spot in my suitcase, then try to close it again, but no such luck. I should sit on it.

Or leave it open, like a statement. I’m here. I’m staying with Merc. We’re together. He wants me here.

So it’s okay if my suitcase won’t close.

Like my heart. It used to fit in my chest, but now it feels too big, too full. I think of Merc again and it just about bursts.

I’ll get this job, or the next, and show him that I’m serious about this, about staying. That I’m no longer a shadow of my sister, but a real girl who loves him.

Still it’s reluctantly that I walk out ten minutes later, still tugging on my hair, trying to wrestle it into a semblance of classiness. My heels click on the floor as I slip outside into the gray morning and ask for an Uber.

Nothing feels real, I notice as the car stops at the curb, and I climb inside, smoothing my black pants over my legs. Yesterday I was in Destiny, hunting clues to an old murder gathered from dreams, last night I heard a dark fairytale of how a little boy was almost captured and killed by said murderer, and almost drowned in the stream—my boy, my love—when today I’m rolling through a smog-covered city on my way to an interview I haven’t prepared for.

I feel unprepared for everyday life, and that’s the truth. There’s this unresolved riddle back at the ap

artment—back home, where Merc is lying asleep with kitty in his lap. An unresolved crime—against the unknown woman, against Merc, and who knows who else.

Yeah, I’m convinced his dreams aren’t just dreams, and now it’s as if I’ve dreamed them with him, images from the stream and the blackened trees torturing my thoughts.

The company people make me wait long enough to be just on this side of uneasy, then usher me in and ask me about my background and my thoughts about the future.

I want to be with Merc, I think, and stumble over my words, but at least I have worked in such companies before, done this sort of work, and reply on autopilot. My smile feels pasted on, kind of plastic, but they seem pleased as they release me back into the wild.

Unreal. This should feel more important than it does. Eventually it will hit me hard if I am left without money and a job, knowing I could have done much better at the interview, but it’s like brain fog.

Maybe it’s the tension of the past days hitting me.

Or is this love?

I’m still wondering when my sister calls me, says she wants to see me and that she has news. I wonder if good or bad. She wants to tell me in person, she says, but sounds torn over it.

So I direct the Uber to her place, pay and climb up the stairs, taking some time to mull over everything.

To think about the lie Merc told us last night.

About knowing who the murderer was. Ergo, he knows who it is. Why? Why would he hide the identity of the bogeyman? This makes no sense.

I stop on a random landing and call him, but the call goes to voice mail.

Frowning, I continue up the steps. Maybe it was my impression. He was very tired. All of us were.

Unless he knows the killer, a little voice whispers at the back of my mind, and I almost swat at it, like an annoying buzzing insect.