Play Me Real (Play Me 4)

“I’ve known—” He starts, but then breaks off before he can say anything important. Pulls me closer still, then rests his cheek on the top of my head.

We’re so close now that I can feel the frantic beating of his heart against my own, can feel his trembling inside myself. “It’s okay, baby,” I tell him. “I promise. There’s nothing you can tell me that I can’t handle.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” It’s true. There isn’t much I haven’t seen, haven’t heard. Sebastian doesn’t understand that because he doesn’t know who I used to be. But it’s true nonetheless. Short of telling me he murdered Janet’s son in cold blood, there isn’t much that will shake my belief in him.

He nods, and this time instead of pulling me closer he pushes me away. Shoves his hands in his pockets. And gazes out into the night.

“I first met Dylan and Janet when my father still owned the Tuscany. Janet worked there—she was one of the housekeepers who handled the top four floors. The high roller suites, you know. And my family’s suite.

“My mom died when I was five so for most of my life it was just my dad and me. And, if you’ve worked here long, you know he’s not exactly the parent of the year type.”

His tone is flippant, his eyes carefully blank, and it’s that care that infuriates me. Because I can read between the lines, can hear all the things he doesn’t want to say. My dad might be a monster when it comes to those outside his family, but he always tried to be a good father to my sister and me. And the Carlo debacle notwithstanding, he pretty much succeeded at it, too. Somehow I can’t see Richard Caine caring about anything but where his next dollar comes from.

“So Janet used to bring me treats. A homemade chocolate chip cookie one day. A lollipop another day. A coloring book every once in a while. I wish you could have known her then. She was always smiling, always laughing. So in love with the world, and with Dylan, that every day was an adventure.

“She used to bring Dylan with her when he had a vacation day or when her babysitter fell through. She’d hide him, so that her supervisor never knew he was there. But I knew. He’d peek around her cart and sometimes if my nanny wasn’t looking, we’d play for a little while. Legos or action figures, whatever he brought with him or I had lying around.

“This went on for a few months. And then summer came. And I don’t know if Janet’s daycare fell through or what, but around July she started to bring Dylan every day. I had a new nanny, one who didn’t realize my father had a strict policy about my fraternizing with any of the staff, so on days when I wasn’t at some camp or lesson, she would let Dylan hang out in the suite with us.”

“How old were you?”

“Six, I think. It was the summer before first grade, so however old that is,” he answers with a shrug that tells me his mind is far, far away from the mundane question. “We got to be friends, and soon Dylan was coming down to the pool with the nanny and me. I’d beg for him to come when we went to the arcade or the movies and more times than not, she let him. I don’t know if Janet was paying her something on the side or if she just did it because she was kind and she knew how lonely I was…either way, it only took a couple months for Dylan and me to become inseparable. By the time my dad found out a few years later—when that nanny went on to a different job—the damage was done. Dylan was my best friend.

“Dad tried to put an end to the friendship, and I think he figured when the Atlantis opened and he moved us over here, that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. Because by then we were old enough to walk a few blocks on the Strip by ourselves. We’d get into all kinds of trouble—not bad, just mischievous. You know the kind. Dylan was great at finding trouble—it was his idea to dye the fountains at the Bellagio different colors and to go skydiving off the top of the pyramid at the Mirage. And it was his idea to change the music during one of the follies shows from their normal stuff to hardcore rap.

“To this day, watching the showgirls pretending it was perfectly normal to be trying to high kick to a rap song is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Though I was pretty sure the production manager was going to kill us.

“In high school, Dylan got a scholarship to the private school I attended. It was the first time we ever had a chance to be around each other every day and at first it was great to have my best friend at school with me. We tried out for the basketball team together, hung out together after school, even our girlfriends were best friends.

“But sometime around the middle of freshman year things got weird. I mean, a lot of the guys drank or smoked weed, but Dylan started doing some pretty hardcore drugs, just to see what they were like, he said. Before long, he was drunk all the time, constantly getting into trouble that I had to bail him out of. By junior year, he was a mess. He lost his scholarship, had to go back to public school.

“Things went downhill after that. He OD’d at the beginning of senior year and I gave Janet the money to get him into rehab. He got out and went right back to drugs, right back to alcohol.

“By this time he was gambling, too. In back alley poker places, online, wherever he could. He was also fucking everything that moved—which, whatever. But he wasn’t safe about it. Caught a couple different diseases through the years. Addictive personality, the therapists and rehab counselors called it. If there was something he could become addicted to, he managed it. Booze, drugs, sex, gambling. Didn’t matter what. As long as it was fun, he was all in.”

Sebastian closes his eyes, lowers his head, rubs the back of his neck. He looks so lost, so tormented that I want to tell him to stop. To tell him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to do this. But he does—for himself more than for me—and the last thing I want to do is cut him off now that he’s so close to the end. So close to where everything went wrong.

I reach for his free hand, lace my fingers through his, and squeeze. Not hard. Just enough to let him know that I’m listening. To let him know that I’m here.

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he squeezes back, which is more than I was expecting.

“I helped him out with all of it. Gave him money when he was broke, took him to the doctor when he needed treatment. Paid off his bookies and the mob when the gambling got out of control. Basically, I was his enabler. If he got into trouble, he knew I’d fix it. If he needed money, he knew I’d give it to him.” He shakes his head. “Christ, what incentive was there for him to stay clean when I kept bailing him out?”

“You were a kid yourself. You were being a friend.”

“I was being a dupe. I was letting him get in deeper and deeper and doing nothing to stop it.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

He laughs, but there’s no mirth in the sound at all. “That doesn’t make it not true.”

“Sebastian—”

“Don’t,” he tells me. “If you want to hear the story, I’ve got to do it now. I don’t have the heart to go over all this shit again later.”

Because I know exactly what he means, I nod. But that doesn’t stop my need to hold him. To let him know how much he means to me. I don’t say a word, but I do lift his hand to my mouth. Do press soft kisses to his fingers and the back of his hand.