“Just because you’re a pussy doesn’t mean you need to eat like one.” I slammed his fridge shut, groaning.
“There’s a stray under my building that I feed. Lost souls connect to one another in a quiet way. If you’re looking for booze, hate to break it to you, but I quit.” He freefell to his couch with a thud, slouching and flipping channels on his TV. Was he expecting a medal? A bright sticker? Or maybe just for me to not punch him in the face.
Phoenix settled on BBC America. I hated that he wasn’t stupid. It made hating him more difficult.
“Mouthwash?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Pot?” Everyone had fucking pot, even my fifty-seven-year-old Eastern European housekeeper, who also had a crucifix the size of my bathroom dangling on her meaty neck.
“Quit everything,” he said. “The alcohol, the drugs—”
“The whores?” I cut in, swiveling around and cracking open a can of root beer. I took a sip, decided it tasted like rotten anus, and dumped it in his sink.
Last time we’d had an actual conversation was when he’d tried to convince me to talk to my father about sending him packing to the Middle East. I’d said I’d try, and I sort of had, but in all honesty, I wasn’t convinced he deserved my sister. Also, I had no power over my father, especially when it came to Cam. He’d barely let me hang out with my own sister when we were kids, deeming me the troublemaker and her his princess.
The time we’d seen each other before that, Phoenix and I hadn’t really done much talking. I saw Camille upset after the entire doped-whore incident and had decided to rearrange the attributes of his face. A broken nose and three cuts in his eyebrows later, Phoenix had a pretty clear idea of my feelings toward him.
Consequently, he knew this was not a social call.
He shook his head, staring at the ceiling, his hands tucked under his head. “I never touched the prostitute. We scored some drugs together, yeah, but she was half-naked because she was an idiot and tried to seduce me. I never cheated on your sister. I was a fucked-up boyfriend, sure, but I never wronged her.”
“I’m sensing I should somehow be impressed by this revelation.” I yanked his fridge open again, this time trying the sugar-free, organic pink lemonade.
Spat it out.
Maybe sober life is punishment enough for Townley Jr.
“Not everything is a battle of words and power, Cel.”
He was the only person to call me that, and I’d never understood why. We weren’t close, before or after he’d dated Camille.
“You know, I tried to call you several times after she died,” he told me. “I couldn’t stop going over the last thing I said to her, the last thing she said to me, when we were about to meet in Turkey.”
I rubbed my jaw, moving it from side to side. I’d come here to warn him that my stay-the-fuck-away-from-Judith warning for Mathias extended to him. But somehow, we were now talking about Camille. It was the second time today I’d had to share her memory with someone else.
Not to be a sappy shit, but I really did miss my sister every single minute. She was the only thing that had resembled normal in my family. With Cam, things had been simple.
I loved her, and she’d loved me.
I’d had her back, and she’d had mine.
Mathias had fucked up, and I’d failed her, and then I’d chosen to tell her the truth when she was standing on the edge of the fucking street, like an idiot.
“Say it,” I spat.
I wanted to have that piece of Cam, too—a new piece that would make her feel alive, even if just for a second.
Phoenix sat forward on the couch, his elbows propped on his knees. He clutched his head, staring down at the floor.
“I told her I was clean, that I’d changed, and that I was crazy about her ass. She believed me. We talked about Istanbul, and she said she was going to wait for me until I came back from the Middle East, no matter when it was. Do you know what I said to her after that?”
He looked up to me, his eyes shimmering. I shook my head. I understood love as a concept, but every time people started talking like Phoenix, I automatically assumed they were reciting a Sarah Jessica Parker movie. It didn’t seem real.
“I told her I’d never wanted to give her up, that what we had wasn’t simple, but it was real. That I needed her. That I didn’t know if we could work it out, but I would damn well try my best.” He looked up at me. “I knew your dad had a bounty on my head, but I didn’t care.”
I filled in the rest in my head. And then Camille had talked to me and found out why Phoenix really left—that they were Romeo and Juliet. That they stood no chance, because their families—my family—would never let them be together.