Page 90 of The Woman By the Lake

But Riggs was beyond caring.

“Not sure this will get through the drugs and you processing what happened to you, or your thick fuckin’ skull,” Riggs continued. “So it might be a waste of breath, but when I walked into this room, I gave a shit about you, and after listening to you spout your damage, I’ve got about a half an inch of that shit left. So I’ll use the rest of it by sharing, a friend doesn’t hold markers when he’s doing something for a buddy in need. He also doesn’t sell him a bottle of wine that’s gonna swing his bud’s ass out there. He sure as shit doesn’t lay his damage on him. You got a problem being this version of Bubbles Novak, don’t foist that on me. Seek change. Now I’ll leave you with this. I hope you get better. I really fuckin’ do. Like I said, I’ve been worried about you, and seeing you, I can see you went through hell. But lose my number, man. We’re done.”

“Doc—” Bubbles called.

But Riggs was out of there.

Harry was studying his boots, but when Riggs came out of the room, his head came up, and he looked expectantly at Riggs.

Then his eyes narrowed a nanosecond before his expression turned concerned.

“Jesus, what went on in there?” Harry asked when Riggs stopped at him.

“I probably should have eased into it, but Bubbles would have known something was up if I was all about apologizing I didn’t bring him a get well card. But we can just say, I got a crystal-clear understanding of what Bubbles thinks about me, and it’s too much, and not in a good way.”

“What does that mean?”

“It sounds arrogant, but he’s jealous as fuck.”

Harry swayed back, and said quietly, “Can’t be the first time you faced that, Doc.”

“Not that ugly, and not from someone I’d call a friend.”

“He’s not in a good place right now,” Harry noted.

“With what came out of his mouth, I don’t care if that fucker was on his death bed.”

Harry gave him a long, hard look before he said, “Shit, brother, I shouldn’t have sent you in there.”

“You didn’t know.”

“It was a bad call.”

“Harry, you didn’t know. One thing I learned the hard way, and it wasn’t an epiphany, my old man spent about twenty-three years teaching me this lesson, people do what they do. We wanna make it about us. With my dad, I actually wanted it to be about me, because, even if it was in a jacked way, something with him would be about me. But it’s never about you. Especially if it’s filth they got that they want to get rid of. That’s not about you at all. You can take that on, but that’s them winning.”

Riggs let out a long breath.

And then he finished it.

“This is saying, I didn’t get dick. He admitted he didn’t get that wine in Sonoma and said that’s all I’d wanna know about it. He also referred to whoever did that to him as ‘they.’ I don’t know if he was being cagey and that ‘they’ was singular. But the state of him, we both can guess there was more than one of them. So your hunch that this is something else, and it’s big, I reckon is right. But that’s all I got for you, brother.”

“It shits me you came all the way out here to do me a favor, and you’re leaving with the look you got on your face right now.”

Riggs shook his head. “Let that go too. I wish I’d learned this when I was a freshman in high school, and I first met Bubbles. At the very least, it would have saved Nadia her back door and a lot of anxiety. But I know now. And that’s also winning.”

“You’re about as fucked up as you are adjusted, and that fucked-up part is only what we talked about last night.”

“Takes one to know one,” Riggs retorted.

Harry grinned at him.

Riggs cuffed him on the arm.

Then he walked out of the hospital and put that scene and his friendship with Bubbles where it belonged.

In his overflowing shitcan of memories.

TWENTY

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