Aaron’s riding the line again. He isn’t sleeping and jumping at loud sounds. I know what’s coming and I’m trying to head it off, but the asshole standing in front of me isn’t making that easy.
“Bro, we had a deal?”
Aaron throws on his leather jacket and swipes his keys off the table, heading for the front door.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” he assures me, but we both know that’s a lie.
“You heard what the doc—”
His jaw clenches. “I’m going to live my life. Okay? Can you get on board with that, man?”
I grind my teeth together. This is a bad idea and he knows it, but I can see by the look in his eyes I don’t have a shot in hell of talking him out of it. I never do. Not when he gets like this.
Henderson is a walking, talking stick of dynamite just waiting to explode. When we were kids, he was always a self-destructive shit, but adult Aaron is on a whole ‘nother level. We’ve all got baggage, but the shit Aaron needs to unpack is traumatic as fuck, and I only know the half of it. But we made a deal. I’m not about to let him weasel out of it.
“When you stop being a lying sack of shit, maybe.” I shrug and wait to see how he responds. It can go one of two ways. Brotherhood will get the better of him and he’ll back down. Nine and a half times out of ten, he’s true to his word and he hates being called a liar. Addicts are liars and Aaron refuses to be one of them.
I see the flicker in his eyes. The moment of hesitation at my words and then… fuck. There’s that other half. The times when he decides not to give a fuck because he’s too far up his own ass to think straight.
“Aaron—”
“You know me,” he says, and there’s a plea in his voice, so I nod. “You know I’ve been clean. For two years I’ve stayed clean. No missteps. I’ve stayed on the fucking wagon, man.”
“I know.” Which is why what he’s doing now is pissing me off. It’s like he forgot what the first year was like. The depression. The withdraws. He was so fucking sick back then he had to take a full semester off. And now he wants to risk it all for a party and a piece of ass. I shake my head. This was a mistake.
“It’s a pool party. There will be booze, but we both know booze was never my problem.”
No. It wasn’t. Aaron’s issue started as a little recreational weed until he fucked up. Got behind the wheel while high and wrapped his car around a tree, injuring his passengers—Roman, Emilio, and me. Shit got ugly after the accident and we didn’t speak for close to a year after that.
What none of us knew at the time though, was that Aaron almost went to juvie for it. He was a minor driving while under the influence and had over forty grams of weed on him when paramedics picked us up. Once released, he was charged with a class C felony. His lawyer couldn’t make it go away. Not entirely. But the DA’s office offered him a deal and with approval from a judge and his parent’s consent, they signed off on him becoming an informant for the Sun Valley P.D.
Big fucking mistake.
Roman’s dad was chief back then and made the arrangements. If Roman ever found out, there’d be hell to pay, which is why even after shit was smoothed out between us all, Aaron never mentioned it.
Shit should have been straightforward. On paper, Aaron was supposed to tip the cops off about corner dealers selling to kids at our school, but what really happened was they forced him into the deep end. They had a sixteen-year-old worming his way into the drug world and shit got messy.
I don’t know all the details of everything that went down. I know shit escalated with drugs. Weed turned into molly and that turned into coke. There was a girl he refuses to talk about. And a drug deal went south that Aaron got caught up in. He hasn’t shared the full story, but on top of the addiction he got a nice case of PTSD. When he’s having an episode things get heavy. The way he reacts, you’d think he’d been to war. I guess in a roundabout way he was.
Aaron worked on getting clean before we moved in together and I helped get him out of the CI program as soon as I learned he was in it. Fuckers didn’t want to let him go, but I made sure they realized they didn’t have a choice. Sometimes it pays to be a Price. This was one of those times.
But the road to recovery is a long one, and staying clean isn’t the only thing Aaron needs to worry about. “Access to drugs isn’t what I’m worried about. I know you’re good.” The first year was rough but the last two, he’s been solid.
Aaron lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll be fine.”
“You jumped me when I slammed the back door earlier.”
He closes his eyes, hands fisted at his sides. “You caught me off guard.”
Yeah. I’d been doing that a lot lately. It’s why I’ve made it a point to be around as much as possible. I go to class, the field, and then straight home. I’ve met up with Aaron for lunch between classes all week, and when he’s felt up for it, he kicks it at the field and catches up on his schoolwork while he waits for me to finish.
It’s not ideal. We don’t do secrets in our crew. But, this … this is Aaron’s damage. It’s not my place to tell my boys. Aaron will do that when he’s good and ready, so for now, this is what works.
But part of why it works is because we avoid scenes like what Aaron is about to put himself in. Greek parties are loud. Rowdy. People get into stupid shit and no, I don’t think Aaron will slip up when it comes to drugs. He worked too fucking hard for his sobriety. But this week he’s been off and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“There’s going to be loud music. Probably shit with a heavy bass. People are going to be shouting. People are going to rub against you when you walk by. How do you think you’ll react?” I’m not his dad. I’m not going to order him around, but he needs to see this for what it is. A bad idea.
“I’m going. You wanna babysit, be my guest, but I’m climbing the walls here, Dom.” He slams a palm to his chest. “I can’t breathe and I know I’m fucked up in the head right now, but this is what I’ve come up with and I’m seeing it through.”
I grab my phone and slide it into my back pocket. “Let’s go, then.”
Aaron’s shoulders relax and we head out. He tells me on the way that the party we’re headed to is at Kappa Mu. Kasey’s sorority house. Shit.
We haven’t talked since the classroom. I’m a dick. She knows that already. This isn’t some new revelation. But I took shit too far that day. And if Aaron finds out what I did to his baby sister, what I still think about doing to her, I’m fucked.
