“Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you at school?”
“Yeah.”
I turn away from them. “Bye, Aylee.”
Looking over my shoulder, I give Noah what I hope is a nice smile. “Bye.”
Chapter 4
Maddox
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you had a hard-on for her.” With my gaze trained on her retreating back, I tip back the bottle of Heineken and guzzle down the little bit that remains. Doing what I’ve been doing since we entered the cemetery, I swing my arm back and hurl the bottle. It flies through the air and explodes against the tree in front of her. When she stops, I wait for her reaction, wait to see if she’ll turn around and reveal that startled, wide-eyed rabbit look I saw on her face earlier. I’m thinking she’ll say something, maybe even flip me off, but when she peers over her shoulder, it’s to look at me with those eyes. Eyes that are like the stained-glass windows at St. Peters on Main Street. My mom used to go to that church a lot, to pray to a God who didn’t give a shit about her. I broke in a few months after she died, trashed the altar, spray painted the cross, and shattered the windows with rocks. All simply because I could.
Eyes locked, she shows me nothing but her well-maintained mask of composure. It’s a pretty mask, made of golden skin touched with a hint of flushed pink undertones. She’s like a living doll with that heart-shaped face and sunlight-blond hair. It’s almost wrong of me to imagine her Cupid’s bow lips wrapped around a cock. My cock, to be precise. I can see her on her knees, between my legs, her cheeks hollowing as she struggles to take every inch of my nine inches between those lips. I’d guide her, too, help her out a little because I’m Mr. Fucking Generous. Bria would be there, too, showing her exactly how to take me in.
“Not everything is about sex, Max,” my shadowed self replies, with his typical chastising tone effectively breaking my nice little fantasy. My eyes flick back to where she’s standing just in time to see her turn and walk away like nothing happened.
“But then again, what can I expect from someone who makes a living out of it?”
A switch flips inside of me and suddenly my impartial indifference switches to annoyance. I know where this conversation is going. That little dig is the beginning of Noah’s shit stirring, and honestly, I’m not nearly drunk enough for the lecture. One of the major differences—and there are many—between me and Noah is he has morals. I don’t. It pisses me off that he wants to impose his self-righteous bullshit on me, though.
I scoff, “Not a whole fucking lot, little brother.” Pulling my vibrating cell phone from my back pocket, I glance at the screen. I send a quick reply before putting it away. “Look, we about done here? We did the whole monthly grave visit shit you wanted. I’m ready to head out.”
“I thought we were chilling later?” Bria—not exactly a friend, but someone who did occasionally provide a great distraction—looks at me expectantly.
“Not really my problem, Bree.” Heading to the grave I was sitting on earlier, I set the empty case of beer next to the gravestone marked, “Laura May Moore, Beloved Mother.” Then finally answer, “Got shit to do.”
“Then why the fuck did you call me?”
I shrug. “Don’t need you anymore. But you can tell Noah all about Two-4-One. Tell him how great you look in front of the camera, and don’t forget to mention how much you made last month. I think he’ll appreciate hearing how lucrative fucking for a living can be.”
“Max…”
Walking away, I raise my hand in the air. “It’s been great, Noah. We’ll do this again next month. Mom will be so proud.”
***
When you’re born into the sort of family I was, you’re pretty much fucked before you even realize the meaning of the word. Every time I think of our past, I relive that shit all over again. Dad was a sick piece-of-shit pedo who taught my brother and me the fine arts of fucking at the ripe ole age of seven. Incest kiddie porn put food on our table and paid for our house. I guess people paid a fuck of a lot for illegal shit. Mom was a manic depressive wife driven batshit crazy by her abusive husband. She put thirteen bullets into his head before blowing off her own in front of me and my brother. That’s what’s in our portfolio. The thick folder labeled: Noah and Maddox Moore. People in the foster system learn your story pretty fucking quick when you come with heavy shit like that. Potential foster parents, the good ones anyway, hoping for a good little, parentless kid they can foster and raise to be an upstanding member of society, were always warned about our history. Mine specifically because I’m the troubled twin. They were told about the fights I got into at school. They were told about my supposed disregard for authority. They were told about the frequent run-ins with the law. They were told about my tendency to run away and the time I spent in juvie for repeatedly bashing a kid’s head against the wall at school for calling my brother a fudge packer. They were even warned of my alcohol and drug use and my violent fits of rage. The good ones wisely opted to keep looking, steering clear of me. But not Noah. People generally prefer Noah because Noah is the better twin. He came out of the shit show that was our family relatively unscathed. Noah toes the line while I bulldoze it. He’s the one they chose. The Ridleys. Jan and Alan. They’re an interracial couple who seemed like decent enough people, not the quintessence of suburban living, but they were the closest thing to normal Noah had ever had. Jan’s a lawyer, and Alan is a chef. The best part about them is that they’d genuinely wanted Noah from the beginning. Me? Not so much. They only took me in because Noah begged them.
I didn’t last a month with the Ridleys before they kicked me out. They caught me fucking their oldest daughter on their bed. Apparently that was a big no-no. That one really pissed Noah off. He accused me of fucking up shit on purpose because I didn’t want anything good to happen to me. That wasn’t it. I genuinely didn’t give a fuck about anything. Except for him. I still don’t. Mom had asked me to look out for him before she put a hole into her head. That’s exactly what I did. Noah was happy. He was loved for the most part, and cared for by these people. He had all the elements to thrive. To become something other than a fucking drain on society. He had so much potential. He had what I didn’t want. A future. And I was the only thing holding him back. I was a reminder of the cesspool we came from. A reminder of the fucked-up things Dad made us do. I was something he didn’t need. So I eliminated myself from his life as much as I could. We saw each other in school—when I bothered to go, and did the monthly cemetery visits to Mom’s grave. But for the most part, I made sure to stay away from him.
Six months after Noah was fostered just before our sixteenth birthday, I ended up as some afterthought in a piece-of-shit housing project on the other side of the city. My foster dad was a blue-collar sort of guy, a welder by the name of Droski who liked his booze like he liked his women. Cheap and wet. He dealt drugs on the side. Heroin, pills, and weed.
“The government check I get from feeding your ass ain’t enough, kid. You wanna stay here, you’re gonna earn your keep.” Dealing came surprisingly easy for me. But then again, it wasn’t like it was that difficult selling drugs to high schoolers looking for a good time. I moved the pills and weed pretty damn quick. It was a good flow of cash. Dro took his cut, which was a huge-ass percentage, but he wasn’t a complete dick. He let me keep some of the money I made.
I’ve learned a lot from him.
“You don’t shit where you eat.” I learned that lesson the hard way. Two broken ribs, a busted lip, and a broken nose. “You gonna work for me, kid, you better remember not to fuck with my shit.” My mistake had been thinking I could take a few of his drugs for my own personal use. Apparently Dro had full count of his product. “Here.” On the floor, feeling like I’d gotten hit by a Mack truck and with the taste of my own blood coating the inside of my mouth, I looked past his extended hand at his hard, bearded face, his beady eyes like marbles staring back at me. There was a lot that was said in those few, prolonged seconds of tense silence that words couldn’t have properly expressed. But when I finally took his calloused hand and he hauled me to my feet, I could tell something had changed. Mutual respect and understanding. He didn’t take me to the hospital. He did the next best thing. Lit up a joint and gave it to me. Best fucking medicine of my life.