Chapter 6 Ronan
Six
Ronan
Saturday afternoon, Miller and I lugged a tall wingback chair from the parking lot nearest the path to the beach, all the way to the shack, hauling it over boulders and sweating under a relentless sun.
His Lordship directed and guided us along, not breaking a sweat. Once there, Holden wedged the chair inside the little cabin and flounced into it, grinning at us.
“Perfect, right?”
Not remotely. It was too fucking big, for one thing, but since we’d brought Holden to the shack last week, he’d wasted no time filling it with upgrades.
Like a mini fridge and a generator to run it.
The fridge stored my beer and Holden’s vodka, but I knew he’d bought it for Miller’s snacks and juices to keep his blood sugars even.
Holden had also brought a trunk big enough to store Miller’s guitar so he wouldn’t have to haul it around wherever he went.
What was a chair to that?
Miller smiled gratefully at Holden, likely the same thoughts running through his mind. “The chair’s not so bad.” He shouldered his backpack for his job at the arcade down at the boardwalk. “I’m off at ten.”
“We’ll meet you,” Holden said, and I nodded.
Most nights, the three of us walked the boardwalk, getting stares and whispers from Central High students. None of us gave a shit. Since the night of Chance’s party, Holden had become one of us, and now our weird circle felt complete.
That night, around the bonfire, he’d told us a little about his past. About some “wilderness camp” his parents had sent him to in Alaska when he was fifteen.
Whatever the camp was, it had fucked him up.
Hard. He’d spent a year in some fancy Swiss sanatorium to recover, but the effects stuck with him.
Holden wore coats, scarves, and sweaters no matter the weather.
As if whatever happened had been embedded into him like a permanent frost.
I made sure to keep the bonfire high for him from then on.
That afternoon, he sat in one of the three beach chairs around the pit while I gathered wood.
“What about you?” he asked after Miller had gone. “Do you work?”
“I do odd jobs.”
“You’re a freelancer.”
“Sure.”
“And you live with your uncle?”
I didn’t look at him but concentrated on the fire.
“The reason I ask,” Holden continued, “is because I also used to live with my parents and now live with my aunt and uncle. We’re twinsies.”
I could’ve laughed. Holden was a billionaire, had an IQ over 150, and wore clothes that cost more than anything I’d ever owned in my entire life. We could not be more different…until I remembered him baring his chest to Frankie and daring him to stab him in the heart.
“Shit happened in Wisconsin,” I said. “I had to get out of there.”
Holden nodded, thinking, and raised the ever-present vodka flask to his mouth.
The knuckles of his left hand were wrapped in white bandages.
Automatically, my fingers went to the cut on my arm that Shiloh had cleaned up.
She’d done a good job; it was healing fast. I hoped it’d leave a scar to remind me.
Not where Frankie had cut me open but where Shiloh had put me back together.
“What’s that all about?” I asked, taking a seat and nodding at Holden’s hand.
“Oh, this?” He waggled his injured fingers. “Or are you wondering why today is a vodka day?”
“Seems like every day is a vodka day.” Along with the cold that racked Holden in seventy-five-degree heat, he also seemed to have a pretty solid drinking problem.
“True. Today’s been extra special.” He glanced at me, unsure. “You want to hear this?”
“If you want to tell it.”
He looked to the ocean that crashed on shore a good twenty yards from us. “Alcohol keeps me warm because Alaska stole something from me. It stole something and left me with nightmares—memories—to remind me I’ll never get it back.”
“The camp?”
He nodded. “It fucked me up, and I wasn’t entirely solid to begin with. There were seven of us. It broke us down until we were nearly dead. Or wanted to die.”
I listened, my jaw tight.
“Anyway, that’s why most days are vodka days. And why I sometimes put my fist through bathroom mirrors.” He coughed. “Or why I dare people to stab me in the chest at parties.”
He glanced at me again, doubt in his eyes. The same doubt I’d had when I told Miller my story. As if Holden was afraid I’d kick him out of our group. I didn’t have the words to tell him that would never happen.
But I could give him something back.
“I don’t live with my parents because they’re dead.”
Holden had started to sip from his flask. His hand dropped into his lap. “What happened?”
I told him. He listened, hardly moving, though I kept the details to a minimum.
“I was pretty messed up,” I said, watching the fire. “I had to repeat fourth grade and did ten years in foster care. Eventually, social services tracked down my dad’s brother. That’s how I ended up here.”
Holden was quiet for a minute, then said, “I’m so sorry about your mother, Ronan.”
I nodded, and we didn’t say much for a while but watched the sun sink toward the ocean.
“Well, aren’t we a jolly pair,” Holden said just at the right time, before the quiet got too heavy. “Tell me something good that happened to you today, Wentz. Anything. Before I throw myself into the ocean.”
Shiloh Barrera happened.
I tossed a rock into the fire. Cut that shit out.
Impossible. I remembered every damn word of our conversation, which was longer than any I’d had with anyone in years.
I remembered every glance of her brown eyes and where they skimmed over me.
I remembered every time she touched me and where.
I could feel her gentle fingers on my skin and the sting of alcohol while she cleaned my wound.
Like her—sharp and soft at the same time.
She was something good, but I had to leave her alone to make sure she stayed that way.
“I didn’t get suspended,” I said finally.
“Hey, there you go! A two-day streak.”
Holden offered his noninjured hand in a high five. I hated high fives. I slapped his palm hard, and he hissed with pain, laughing.
“Easy, tiger.”
“Your turn. Something good.”
“Hmm, don’t know that it’s good so much as doomed and hopeless but…” Holden sighed dramatically. “There’s a guy.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t say who, so don’t ask.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Of course you weren’t. That’s one of your most endearing characteristics. Anyway, there’s a guy, and I don’t want there to be a guy. Not one that I might…”
“Want to fuck?”
“That’s a given.”
“Care about?”
“Exactly. And I can’t care about anyone.
Bad for me, worse for them.” Holden shook his head, watching the fire struggle against a breeze that had picked up.
“It’s stupid. And too soon. I didn’t come here to immediately have my every waking thought hijacked by someone I’ve only known for a few days.
” He laughed at my wide eyes. “No, it’s not Miller.
And I hate to break your heart, but it’s not you either. ”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that the guy in question is not my type, to put it mildly. An all-American good boy. Warm, gooey, everyone loves him. He’s the human equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“So?”
“So? It doesn’t make sense. Yet I can’t stop thinking about him and feeling guilty, because…I may have said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m shocked,” I said into my beer. Holden was a smart-ass with zero filter.
“Oh, shut up,” he said. “But yes, I stirred up some shit for him that I had no business stirring. I even gave him my number in the event he wants to talk. To me. As if I could actually help somehow.” He snorted a laugh. “It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“I’m not one hundred percent positive that he and I are on the same page, if you catch my drift. I need to leave it alone. Leave him alone.”
I rolled my eyes and hurled a rock into the fire.
Here we go again.
Both my friends were hell-bent on being miserable instead of making a stand for what they wanted.
Holden read my scowl. “You disagree?”
“If you care about him—”
“Let’s not go that far.”
“—then tell him.”
“That proves difficult, since he specifically asked that I never speak to him again. And even if by some miracle he is gay, nothing good can come of something with me. Except for sex. I can do meaningless sex.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “That’s not an offer, by the way.”
I snorted a laugh. A short silence fell, and Holden shivered a little as he took a sip from his flask. I sprayed more lighter fluid over the embers until they flared in a wall of light and heat.
“Is that what they stole from you in Alaska?”
Holden’s head whipped to me. “What?”
“You said nothing good could come of you being with that guy,” I said. “Is that what they taught you? That you’re no good?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But it began earlier with my parents. And it’s more complicated—”
“It’s bullshit is what it is,” I snapped. “Whoever made you think that, no matter when it started, it’s bullshit.”
I finished my beer and strode to the shack to get two more. I stood over Holden, offering. He looked up at me, gratitude in his eyes, and took one. The flask went into his coat pocket.
We drank our beers while the sun sank lower, and then Holden turned to me, his voice more subdued than I’d ever heard it.
“What was it like? Seeing something like…what you did?”
Instantly, my body stiffened. “What the fuck do you think it was like?”
“I have no idea,” Holden said. “I can’t fucking imagine it, actually. As much as I loathe the sentient viruses in human form that are my parents, to witness something like that…” He shrugged. “I guess what I’m really asking is are you okay?”
I shot him a glare, and he held up his hands.
“Don’t bite my head off. It’s a valid question.”