Play Me Real (Play Me 4)

“He went to rehab again in the middle of senior year. He was in bad shape and it was kind of a do-or-die situation.”

“You paid for it again.”

“I got the first part of my trust fund when I turned eighteen, so it was no big deal.”

“You paid for it,” I repeat again.

“Yeah. I did. And this time it seemed to take. He finished senior year, managed to graduate. I was going to Harvard in the fall while he was enrolling at UNLV, but still. It felt like things were finally back to normal, like we were both on track. Summer was good. He stayed sober, toed the line.”

“And then you went off to college.”

He nods. “And then I went off to college. And he fell off the wagon. Within a month I was getting calls begging me for money to stop some guy from beating him up. I paid, because I didn’t want to see him get hurt, or worse. We’d talk after and he’d promise me that it was the last time. That it would never happen again. Except it did. Over and over again. More with the gambling than the drugs—he’d definitely switched addictions. But he was drinking heavily again, too, and shit was falling apart all over the place. And I was going broke trying to keep up with his gambling debts.

“When I got home the summer after freshman year, I barely recognized him. He was twenty pounds lighter, looked ten years older and he was jittery—like constantly-jonesing-for-a-fix jittery. I’d never seen him like that before. Even with the worst of it, he’d always had some semblance of control before, but this time it was different. He was…gone. I couldn’t find him inside the addictions. It was almost a relief to go back to school.”

He turns away from the window then, turns away from me. Instead, he paces over to the couch where he’d been sitting earlier and picks up his discarded glass of scotch. He tosses it back, downing the whole thing in one long swallow before walking to the bar to refill the glass.

“Do you want something?” he asks, glancing at me with raised eyebrows and a relaxed expression that belies the story he’s in the middle of telling. It could be the alcohol, but I tend to think it’s an act. Especially when it registers that his hands are still shaking.

“Water would be good,” I tell him, fighting the urge to cross the room and fling myself at him in an effort to take even a modicum of his pain away. I want to ask what happens next, to get him talking again so it can be out there. So it can be over and he won’t have to talk about it anymore.

But I understand stalling techniques—I use them often enough with the therapist I see every week. He’s taking a break, focusing on something else, because he’s gearing up for the hard part. The part that will tell me just why Janet felt the need to call him a murderer.

He pours the glass of water, brings it ov

er to me even as he drains his own glass. “By the time I was home for winter break my sophomore year, we had grown completely apart. Dylan wanted nothing to do with me, and honestly I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to do with him, either. He’d changed so much I couldn’t recognize the friend I used to have.

“When we talked he was always high, when we went somewhere he was either high or trying to get high. After my first couple days at home he stopped answering when I called and then I stopped calling. It just seemed easier.” He runs a frustrated hand over his face. Repeats, “Easier.”

“That’s normal, you know? Growing apart from your childhood friends as your lives and interests change. It’s nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Is that what happened to you?” he asks, and his gaze is laser bright again. “You just drifted away from your friends?”

I clear my throat, look away. It’s impossible to lie when staring into those eyes. “Something like that.” Or, more precisely, something like I excised them from my life at the same time I walked away from my father’s rules and his roof.

Sebastian looks like he wants to press more, but I’m not about to let him get derailed this close to the end. It would be bad for both of us. “So what happened then? Was that the last time you saw him?” I ask softly.

He shakes his head. “I was going to Europe for the second half of break—my dad and I have never been what you would call close and spending the last few weeks of break with a couple friends from Harvard seemed infinitely preferable to spending it here where everything was such a mess.

“I was packing for the trip when Dylan showed up at my door for the first time in over a week. He was a fucking mess. Beat to hell and back, I mean. Broken arm, broken ribs, a couple broken teeth, two black eyes, a probable concussion. And he was tweaking hard, desperate for a fix. For anything.

“I wanted to take him to the doctor, but he wouldn’t have any part of it. Instead, he begged me for money. For drugs, I’m sure, but for the bookies and the card parlors, too. He’d finally gotten himself into a mess he couldn’t talk his way out of—probably because he was so high most days he could barely remember how to form words.

“I knew I shouldn’t give him the money, knew I should make him go into rehab again. But this time he owed money—real money—to the wrong people. If I didn’t bail him out…I didn’t want to think about what would happen to him. To Janet.”

I freeze in horror at his words. Wrong people. Card parlors. Bookies. Money. And suddenly I’m much more disturbed than I was before he started this part of the story. It was bad enough to think that Sebastian’s best friend had gone into a downward spiral that had ended in an overdose and death. Hell, I was sure that’s where this was going. I was prepared for it.

But this…to find out that he’d been involved with the Mafia, because when you start talking about broken teeth and “the wrong people,” everyone knows that that’s who you’re referring to. Especially when you’re talking about gambling debts and Las Vegas. The mob rules it all around here.

I find myself praying that it was an overdose that killed him, with drugs paid for by Sebastian’s money. Or that it was a car accident with Sebastian behind the wheel. Or some freak accident involving New Year’s Eve firecrackers or a bowling ball or nuclear war. A mistake. Something, anything, but what I am suddenly so desperately afraid that it was.

Please, I pray to a god I’m not sure I believe in, to a universe that hasn’t heard my prayers in years. But it’s to no avail. There is no divine intervention, no miracle that turns back the clock. Instead, there is just Sebastian and me and the wild agony that suddenly runs between us.

Unable to bear the uncertainty anymore, I prompt, “So you gave him the money.”

“Of course, I did.” He nods. “What else was I supposed to do? Let them come back and finish him off? Let them set fire to him in the middle of the Strip, like they promised? There was nothing else I could have done.”

I don’t disagree. I know how the Mafia works—you don’t grow up in Vegas without a healthy understanding of what they do and how they do it. Protection money, racketeering, gambling, drugs, guns. In this city, it all runs through the mob. Getting mixed up with them—owing them money—is a really, really bad idea.