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“Because it’s the fucking truth. Even when we had sex you were elsewhere. Ever since Rennix died it’s like he took a piece of you with him.”

My hearing begins to fade until I hear his name. Not that it stops Kent. He keeps going on and on until I have to swoop in and stop him.

“Okay, I got it! Please, enough. Clearly—” I motion between us. “—we weren’t compatible. And, not that it matters, but he didn’t die,” I say with more confidence than I or anyone, investigators included, have evidence for.

He looks at me with pity steeped across his brow. “Yes, he did.”

“No.” He can’t be dead. I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. “He was presumed dead.”

“Exactly. No body was ever found.”

I want to continue to argue my point, but it’s useless. Nothing I can say will change anyone’s minds on what they’ve labeled Rennix’s case. I may be delusional, but it’s how I’m choosing to cope.

Kent reaches out his hand and the second it lands on my shoulder, the disgust his touch brings me is enough for me to snap and get it together. As he parts his lips, I take the opportunity to stuff my badge in his mouth.

“As entertaining as your never-ending feud and jealousy with a questionably dead man is, I’m over it.” I squeeze his cheeks as hard as I can, practically force-feeding him the plastic badge. “In fact, I’m so over it that I quit.”

Kent tosses the badge out of his mouth. “Wait, what?”

“You heard me. I. Quit.”

“You can’t.”

“I just did.”

“I need…”

“What you need to do is get out of my way. I’m done.” With you. With this day. With everything.

“You can’t allow your entire life to implode because your best friend’s brother died.”

Too late.

I storm out of the office, gathering my belongings as fast as I can. I ignore the stares from my coworkers—well, technically my old coworkers since I quit—without so much as a clue as to what to do next. If I acknowledge them, the gravity of my situation will only eat me alive…and I’ll start crying.

And as I’ve said, I don’t have time to cry. Not until I make it out of the lobby and sit in my useless car. Then while I wait for AAA, I can get a good cry in while smoking a cigarette from my emergency stash, all the while blasting my 2000s playlist, like any sensible brokenhearted millennial would.

Kent is wrong about a lot, but he knows as well as I do that Rennix wasn’t just my best friend’s brother.

He was also my best friend.

And if I’m being honest with myself, he was a lot more than that too.

3

NATALIA

Live, laugh, be haunted by your past

Good news. I got my tire fixed. And by fixed, I mean I pickpocketed Kent’s wallet on the way out and used one of his credit cards to pay when AAA arrived. Please, hold your judgment. I’m not a complete monster. In my haste I made sure to take the least “premier” of his credit cards. Sapphire something. I don’t know. But I do know it’s not his beloved ultra-premier cards that he totes around like it’s an extension of his dick. I also made sure to leave his wallet in the break room where I’ve seen him leave it a time or twenty. I’m sure he won’t even notice the card missing or the charge. Not that I care if he does. Serves him right. A new tire is the least that man can do for me after humiliating me time and again. I should’ve left a long time ago, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m free and he’s free to be my stepsister Tania’s sex puppet for the rest of their days, and I am now the proud owner of a new all-season tire. Looks like we all win.

Although I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m winning right now given my location. When Lacey said she wanted to meet up for my birthday and that she’d drop the address, I assumed we’d be meeting anywhere but Ron’s Burger Shack. I triple-checked our text messages to make sure in all my hot mess express stupor this morning I didn’t misread the location but sure enough, this is where I’ll be spending the evening of my thirty-fourth birthday.

I glance at the digital clock on the dashboard. I still have some time until Lacey will be here and I wonder what else I can do to pass the time until she arrives. I’ve already spent the last two hours sitting in my car and listening to music, throwing myself a pity party for one. I could’ve done that at my apartment, but that would mean risking Harold knocking on my door like he did poor Mrs. Torres’s door. And unlike that angel of a woman, when I’m already in my feels and someone like Harold has the audacity to be a selfish jerk, I channel Cardi B energy and take it to hell. With the way I’ve been wailing, bawling my eyes out, the safer choice for all involved would be to stay in my car. I’m already jobless and on the verge of eviction, I don’t need to expedite the process by knocking Harold out and having to reap whatever consequences that will bring. I can only handle so much disaster in one day.

As I light up the last Parliament from my emergency stash, a restless feeling settles into my veins competing with the buzz I’m craving from the nicotine. I ignore it for as long as I can until the temptation becomes unbearable and before I know it, I’m lifting my elbow off the center console and reaching for the paper I’ve kept in here for years but haven’t had the emotional strength to open.

After Rennix went missing, and after my initial denial wore off, I came to the sobering realization that whether I wanted to believe it or not, Rennix was gone. It’s at that exact moment I realized another equally depressing fact: I had nothing other than memories left of him. He and I both shared a severe dislike for pictures. Neither of us knew how to act or stand or even breathe the second a camera came out. The awkwardness that was summoned from both of us during an attempt at taking a picture was something that should be studied. It’s no surprise with us both practically being allergic to pictures that we had none together. I was distraught until I realized I never closed out of our instant messenger chats.