I’ve had to work hard in my own life to stop getting dragged back down by my family and my neighborhood friends. Distance has been the only thing that has kept the old part of my life, the part where I ended up back in jail every few months, from taking over. My brothers at Deep Repairs have kept me on the straight and narrow. They’ve given me a chance to build something that is worth fighting for. They didn’t give up on me, even when my choices were bad enough for them to leave me behind.
But Tyler is getting dragged down.
I know Sandy doesn’t mean to do it. She might have an idea of what has happened to Tyler since they parted company, but she doesn’t know. She’ll never be able to imagine the full extent, even if he tried to explain. You had to be there to see it.
Her being here is a bad idea.
I told Andrew, and he agreed, but what could we do? There was no way that Tyler was going to push Sandy away. Not when everything in him remembers how good things were between them.
Sandy shifts, sliding her fingers into Tyler’s hair. “Tyler.”
I turn my back, but I don’t leave.
“Tyler,” she says again.
“What’s going on?” From his bedroom door, Andrew’s line of sight catches me standing in the kitchen, but he can’t see Tyler and Sandy yet.
“NOTHING,” Tyler barks. “Get out of here. For fuck’s sake.”
I stride into the hallway, shaking my head as Andrew puts his hands out, palms to the ceiling, searching for an explanation. “They fucked,” I mutter.
Andrew mumbles an expletive under his breath and rubs his face in a way that screams frustration.
Rustling sounds emanate from the kitchen, but I have no idea what’s going on.
Have Tyler and Sandy made up? I doubt it very much. Tyler can’t talk about what happened to Jake, even to the people in his life who know and would never judge him. There is no way he’d open up that way with Sandy.
“Fuck.” It’s Tyler’s voice, laced with frustration and distress, and the urge to go back into that room and yank my friend out of the situation that is only going to cause him to hurt is so strong that I have to grip my hands into fists to control it.
Tyler was the one who brought me back from the brink. He visited me in jail as often as they would allow, and he was there, the last time, to collect me. He was the one who told me I was never going back.
“It’s okay,” Sandy says, her voice soft and soothing. At least she’s not freaking out at him, because that would make everything so much worse.
“Shit.” Andrew paces in front of me, his face constantly turning back to the kitchen door. He’s having the same trouble staying out here that I am.
“I could say that it’ll be okay, but I’d be fucking lying.” There’s a deadness to my tone that I don’t like. There was a time when that was the only kind of tone I used, but since we opened Deep Repairs and I’ve had a chance to see what normal life can be like, that side of me was put to bed. Now it’s back.
“I’m coming in,” I say, losing a grip on my control. I’d rather Tyler was pissed at me, and I had a handle on the situation.
“Stay the fuck out there,” Tyler growls, and I stop abruptly in the doorway. It’s Sandy who rounds the corner, her face twisted, her pajamas still disheveled.
“He’s gone blank,” she says. “He won’t look at me. He won’t let me touch him.”
“Shit.” Andrew puts his arm around Sandy, and she slips into his embrace so comfortably that I’m left with my mouth hanging open. When did he cultivate this level of familiarity? She’s hardly spent time with any of us.
“I’ll go,” I say. “You take Sandy back to Tyler’s room.”
Andrew nods once, and then I’m rounding the kitchen door, searching for Tyler in the darkness. “Hey, T.” I approach him slowly like I would a dangerous animal. It’s not that I’m worried that he might attack me physically. I have him by at least twenty pounds of muscle and ten years of violent experience. I’m the eldest in the group by a long way, the unofficial pop or big brother. It’s more that he’s going to be emotionally volatile, and I don’t want to antagonize him.
“Don’t ‘hey’ me, man,” he says. It’s muffled because he’s sitting with his face in his hands, curved over like someone with a ton of brick on his shoulders.
“How’d it happen?” I ask, leaning against the counter. Getting closer will just piss him off.
“I had a nightmare, and she was there, and I don’t know…it was like muscle memory. It was like it took nothing at all to slip back into what we were.”