Please Undo This Hurt by Seth Dickinson Read Free Book Online

 
    â€œA coyote got my cat,” Nico says.
    It took me four beers and three shots to open him up. All night he’s been talking about the breakup, what’s-her-name Yelena I think, and all night I’ve known there’s something else on him, but I didn’t know know—
    â€œFuck, man.” I catch at his elbow. He’s wearing leather, supple, slick—he’s always mock-hurt when I can’t tell his good jackets from his great ones. “Mandrill?” A better friend wouldn’t have to ask, but I’m drunk, and not so good a friend. “Your cat back home?”
    â€œPoor Mandrill,” Nico says, completely forlorn. “Ah, shit, Dominga. I shouldn’t have left him.”
    He only goes to the Lighthouse on empty Sundays, when we can hide in the booths ringed around the halogen beacon. I expect sad nights here. But, man, his cat  …
    Nico puts his head on my shoulder and makes a broken noise into the side of my neck. I rub his elbow and marvel in a selfish way at how much I care , how full of hurt I am, even after this awful week of dead bikers and domestics and empty space where fucking Jacob used to be. It’s the drink, of course, and tomorrow if we see each other (we won’t) it’ll all be awkward, stilted, an unspoken agreement to forget this moment.
    But right now I care.
    In a moment he’ll pull himself up, make a joke, buy a round. I know he will, since Nico and I only speak in bars and only when things feel like dogshit. We’ve got nothing in common—I ride ambulances around Queens, call my mom in Laredo every week, shouting Spanish into an old flip phone with a busted speaker. He makes smartphone games in a FiDi studio, imports leather jackets, and serially thinks his way out of perfectly good relationships. But all that difference warms me up sometimes, because (forgive me here, I am drunk) what’s the world worth if you can’t put two strangers together and get them to care? A friendship shouldn’t need anything else.
    He doesn’t pull himself up and he doesn’t make a joke.
    The lighthouse beam sweeps over us, over the netting around our booth, over Nico’s cramped shoulders and gawky height curled up against me. The light draws grid shadows on his leathered back, as if we’re in an ambulance together, monitors tracing the thready rhythm of Nico’s life. We sit together in the blue fog as the light passes on across empty tables carved with half-finished names.
    â€œI’m really sorry.” He finally pulls away, stiff, frowning. “I’m such a drag tonight. How are things after Jacob?”
    I cluck in concern, just like my mom. I have to borrow the sound from her because I want to scream every time I think about fucking Jacob and fucking I’m not ready for your life . “We’re talking about you.”
    He grins a fake grin but he’s so good at it I’m still a little charmed. “We’ve been talking about me forever .”
    â€œYou broke up with your girlfriend and lost your cat. You’re having a bad week. As a medical professional I insist I buy you another round.” Paramedics drink, and lie sometimes. He dumped Yelena out of the blue, ‘to give her a chance at someone better.’ The opposite of what Jacob had done to me. “And we’re going to talk.”
    â€œNo.” He looks away. I follow his eyes, tracing the lighthouse beam across the room, where the circle of tables ruptures, broken by some necessity of cleaning or fire code: as if a snake had come up out of the light, slithered through the table mandala, and written something with its passage. “No, I’m done.”
    And the way he says that hits me, hits me low, because I recognize it. I have a stupid compassion that does me no good. I am desperate to help the people in my ambulance, the survivors. I can hold them together but I can’t answer the plea I always