Page 60 of Freedom
“Hey,” Toby said, and Jake forced himself to look him in the face.
His first thought wasfuck, he’d done it again, scaring the crap out of Toby. It had been ages and it was Jake’s fault again, always fucking things up, always making Tobias flinch and cower. But then he realized this wasn’t the same blind terror he knew too well. Tobias was worried. Intensely worried. Maybe... for Jake, rather than because of him.
Christ, he was a fucking mess.
“Jake,” Toby said, very softly. “Are you okay?”
Jake ran a hand through his hair, twisting around to catch sight of the Eldorado, gleaming where it was parked in front of their room. “Tell you what, Toby. I gotta go out tonight. Wanna come? I think... I think I could use you watching my back because I’m not... yeah, I’m not, so if you could... You cool with that?”
Toby drew a quick breath, but he didn’t hesitate for so much as a second. “Yeah, Jake. I’m cool.”
~*~
Jake started off thenight with a double shot of Jack Daniels and kept going full speed from there.
Tobias watched, nursing his Coke and trying to keep his eye on the rest of the bar. They’d gone to bars before, usually in the afternoon or early evening, so he wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the smoke and noise and press of people laughing, increasingly loose-limbed and clumsy, but tonight was a magnitude greater, louder and less controlled. Maybe this was a busier night or a different mood, or there was a party. Maybe it was the way Jake drank like he was burning straight alcohol to fuel his smile and shoved back at anyone who gave him the smallest excuse when every other night he had glanced at Tobias and deflected.
It was getting easier to be around reals. Mostly because he was pretty confident that he wasn’t the center of attention here; no one seemed to take any notice of him, in fact. He wasn’t giving off any freak vibes because he’d learned how to blend in, at least for this kind of situation. Sure, he was much younger than everyone else in the room. But he was safe with his innocent, nonalcoholic drink and by pretending to be a real like them, he could stand up for himself, especially when doing anything less would make more trouble for Jake.
Tobias didn’t know what Leon had said, except that it had been abouthim, and that had enough guilt wracking his stomach that he had been relieved when Jake forgot about dinner. Jake certainly had a right to be upset with him, to do many worse things that Tobias had almost stopped thinking about every day, but while Tobias could tell that Jake was upset, it wasn’t yet directed at him. All the same, Jake’s behavior now worried him. It reminded him of the first times Jake had returned drunk to the apartment or motel, how Tobias hadn’t known what to expect. But at least there it had just been them without other reals to get involved. And he hadn’t had to watch Jake barrel toward that stage of inebriation.
Not that Jake ever left him, really. No matter how many drinks went down his throat, Jake circled back to him, squeezing his shoulder, going on about this chick he’d been chatting up, or a guy giving him the stink-eye from across the room (I could take him, Toby, wouldn’t cost me more than a half a minute and a couple lungfuls of air, you know). Tobias nodded, smiled, let himself clench the edge of Jake’s jacket in a bone-white grip. If Jake noticed, he never said. Every time Jake started to slide off the barstool and back into the crowd with another drink, Tobias let him go.
By one a.m., Jake had lost two games of pool, almost stabbed a guy in the eye trying to throw darts, and was slurring so badly Tobias could barely pick out anything butTobyand ’nother drink. The bartender interpreted every gesture as a demand for another shot.
When Jake started flirting with an equally drunk woman who had earlier been hanging off a muscular man, Tobias pressed his lips together, paid the tab from Jake’s wallet—Jake had pressed it into his hands sometime after the dart game but before he started flirting with anything that moved—pushed his way through the crowd, and caught Jake by his sleeve. “Jake, we should go.”
Jake looked at him and flushed, jerking his hand off the woman’s neck, where he had been kneading the line of skin between her see-through black top and hairline. “Toby,” he slurred. “I din’ mean to... Gawd, it doeshn’t mean. Ahh, fuck, I din’ mean...” Jake swayed, his eyes blanking, expression lost. “’M fucking washted, Toby.”
Tobias saw a dark head leaving the bathroom, and his grip tightened on Jake’s jacket. The boyfriend was coming back. “Jake, we need to get out of here,” he said, low and urgent. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Too late. The boyfriend—taller than Jake and heavier by about fifty pounds—tapped Jake hard on the shoulder, while his girlfriend stared at him and gasped dramatically. “You messing with my girl, punk?” he demanded.
Jake looked at the guy, then at the woman. “She really didn’t sheem much like yours, dishclout. An’ you’re not my fucking dad.”
Yeah, Jake,Tobias thought as the guy growled and threw a wild haymaker at Jake’s face,thatwouldbe the first coherent thing you’ve said in an hour.
Maybe Jake couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a dart right now, but he dodged the fist okay and punched the guy in the jaw. The boyfriend stumbled back, crashed into the table behind him—the table held, but the beer bottles didn’t—and got up with a roar. The fight spread, the boyfriend’s buddies jumping in, along with the men who had lost their beer, and Tobias suddenly stopped giving a damn if they were reals if he had to break some fuck’s arm to stop him from cutting up Jake with the jagged edge of a bottle. No one here knew he was a monster, and it was always easy to go for the throat when Jake was on the line.
Tobias picked up a pool cue.
When he heard the distant wail of police sirens and the boyfriend was knocked out beneath a table, the girlfriend nowhere in sight, Tobias decided it was time to, in Jake’s words, blow this joint. He grabbed Jake before he could get brained with a broken piece of barstool and towed him out the back door.
At the Eldorado, Jake stumbled to the door, half slouched and half fell into the seat, and fumbled the keys into the ignition while muttering about his swollen eye and people who brought beer bottles to a fist fight. “I kin do thish, Toby. Promishing, promishes, promishory promintary...”
The entire time they drove, Tobias kept his eyes closed and his hand on Jake’s thigh, feeling the muscles tense and flex beneath his jeans as Jake braked abruptly, accelerated in jerks and starts, and swore.
They didn’t get very far. Jake had barely pulled into a mostly deserted Walmart parking lot before he killed the engine and put his head on the steering wheel.
The longer he just sat there, the jumpier Tobias felt. Jake was drunk. Really,reallydrunk. Drunker than Tobias had ever seen him, and Tobias hadn’t researched nearly enough to know if Jake would be fine, or if he needed food, water, blankets, or an emergency room, or if he needed something Tobias didn’t even know about.
When Tobias had just decided to reach out, feel for a fever or shaking and bleeding at the very least, Jake spoke without looking up from the wheel. “I’m so fucking sorry, Toby.”
Tobias jerked back. “It’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re good.” He tried to smile, wishing Jake would look up, meet his eyes.
“Yeah.” Still not looking at him, Jake opened the door, took three steps away from the Eldorado, and emptied his guts across the asphalt. Then he straightened shakily, walked back, closed the door, curled up, and went to sleep.
Tobias stared, swallowed, and then very cautiously brushed his fingers through the edge of Jake’s hair before tucking himself up against the window and bracing his arms over his knees to watch Jake sleep.
