“Sic ’em, Half-Breed!” screams X.

I’m out of the truck bed, happily wailing on the closest motherfucker I can get my hands on.

Sucking in a deep breath, I yanked myself out of my head and wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand.

“Why you, man?” I asked softly.

Next to me, my Baby Girl stirred. The sight of her eased the pain in my chest a little. Her love was the only thing that could come close to healin’ me in my world of hurt. If I had known back then what sort of woman was waiting for me, Danica would never have crossed my damn mind.

Reaching for the walker, I hobbled my weak ass to the fridge and got myself another beer. Sucking it down, I grabbed a few more and headed back to the bed.

I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want this bleedin’ hole in my heart anymore. I don’t know how to make it stop.

But I knew how to numb it. Poppin’ two more pills, I downed another beer.

Kenna

“Um…babe?”

“Uhngh?”

“Did you go on a bender after I fell asleep last night?”

“Uh…yeah, maybe.”

Phil rubbed his face and opened a bleary eye at me. Standing on his side of the bed, I counted seven empty beer bottles and a pill bottle that was suspiciously low.

“We have to talk,” I told him.

“Ain’t nothin’ to talk about, Baby Girl. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Alcohol and painkillers aren’t the answer,” I said, sitting next to him.

“Really? ’Cause it sure worked like a charm last night,” he replied, all snarky.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Like fuck-all,” he grumped in reply.

“You don’t say,” I said sarcastically. “I’m letting you know right now, the second that bottle of Vicodin is gone, you’re on fucking Tylenol. You keep popping them like candy, and I’m going to tell every physician in the state that you’re an abuser. You got it?”

Phil looked at me as though I’d suddenly sprouted horns from my head. “What the fuck?”

“You’re joking, right?” I scoffed.

“No.”

“You’ve seen me come home from the fucking rehab center, and now, you’re going to make me live in one? Hell no.” I was fucking furious with him.

“How can I be a fuckin’ addict?” he snapped, pushing himself up into a sitting position. “So I took two pills an hour ahead of schedule last night. I was havin’ a hard time sleepin’! One early dose, and I’m a fuckin’ addict?”

“It’s how it starts. And you mixing it with alcohol…” I tried to keep my voice calm, tried to rein in my alarm and the tears, but I just wasn’t strong enough this early. I’d woken up and had to run to the bathroom to puke.

To come out and see the empty beer bottles and the missing Vicodin had compounded everything, and I was close to losing it. Yesterday, I’d let the drinking slide because Phil hardly ever drank more than a beer or two. I’d understood the urge to have some liquid courage when facing the pain of losing someone. But he could do much more harm to himself while being on opiates, and that scared the shit out of me. I’d just faced the possibility of losing him. I wasn’t ready to go through that again.

“Naw, Baby Girl, don’t cry.” Reaching out and pulling me into a hug, he sniffed me. “Did you puke?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “My stomach’s been hell with the stress.”

Sighing, he kissed the top of my head. “I won’t do that again, all right? Don’t need you gettin’ sick over my ass.”

When we learned that X’s memorial service was to be the following day, Phil, Jason, and Flipper got together with a couple of bottles of whiskey and drowned their sorrows. Connor joined in for a few drinks, but he stopped well ahead of them to ensure everyone would make it through the night. The drinking didn’t prevent Phil from popping his pills, and I lacked the courage to tell him to stop.

Somehow, the doctor in me had shriveled up, and the woman who was watching her man try to ease his pain with a slightly more than moderate abuse of alcohol and prescription painkillers didn’t have it in her to make a stink. Instead, I hung out with my girls, and we left Our Boys to sink into the pits of despair.

“How are you holding up?” I asked Alys as we sat on the back porch of my house, listening to the guys get wasted on their back patio.

Damn, they were loud.

“I don’t know,” replied Alys before hitting the blunt.

She passed it to me, and I passed it straight on to Lili.

“What? You’re not smoking?” Lili asked in surprise.

Shaking my head, I replied, “I need to be fully functional when shit goes down over there. It’s been so long since I’ve smoked that I’ll get ripped and be useless.”

“I’ll stay sober with you,” volunteered Sheri. “Jason’s a shit when he’s hammered.”

Sheri had bounced back from the accident better than the rest of them, that was for sure. My respect and admiration for the woman had only grown. In her life, she had faced so much, had suffered such horrific physical and mental anguish, that for her to walk out of the hospital after having her liver lacerated and refuse any additional medication—using her knowledge of diet, gentle exercise, and meditation to heal instead—was amazing to me.

If only Phil would get a clue…

Alys took my hand and laced our fingers. “Sometimes, I feel so angry,” she told us, her voice soft. “Other times, I think I’ll drown in my tears because I’m that sad. I feel lost and then furious that he left me at all. Then, it’s like all of it clears, and it makes sense that he was the one to go, you know?”

“No,” said Lili. “What do you mean by that?”

“Only the good die young,” said Viv. “Out of all the guys, X was the one who made everyone laugh. He was the joker, the peacemaker, and the shit-taker. Flip would get so pissy, chucking his drumsticks at him.”

“X was special,” said Lili. “He kept Phil grounded in a way. You could see it. Well, until Kenna came and snatched the Gigantore’s ass.”

“He drove Jason nuts.” Sheri laughed. “They were worse than brothers, always snapping at each other, but the love between them…it was like they could rag on each other, but no one else was allowed to, and anyone who did would get their ass kicked.”

“He made Connor feel welcome,” I said. “He made Connor feel like a brother.”

Alys nodded in agreement. “He really did.”

“Flipper and X were like sneaky ninjas when they got a whiff of mischief,” said Sheri. “Those two pulled the best fucking pranks.”

“I remember the first time we saw NOLA’s Junk play, and—” I started to say.

“And Kenna fell so fucking hard in love with another one of her species,” said Lili.

“Besides that.” I laughed. “I just remember looking at X and thinking he had the brightest eyebrows I’d ever seen. He was more ginger than ginger.”

“You had to wipe the drool off your lip, Alys” Lili quipped. “You’ve always loved the gingers. Yeah, X was more ginger than ginger.”

Alys smiled…and then burst into tears. “You see?” she wailed. “What’s going to happen now? What…how do we move on from this?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “We just do. One day, we’ll all wake up and remember him for the happiness he brought us and not the pain losing him caused.”

My mother’s words echoed through time with my voice. She was right. She was always right. Knowing this spread a healing balm of hope over my raw heart.

Xavier James Johnson’s memorial service was held in the early afternoon on a gorgeous sunny day beneath a sky that matched the color of his eyes to perfection. His parents had agreed with his young widow that his life needed to be celebrated out in the open. The sweet cool breeze of late March would give everyone a sense of freedom. His ashes would be scattered into the muddy waters of the Mississippi.