With Friends Like These by Dawn Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

drugs, and you know it,” Greg said sourly as he went back to clicking. The bottle was cold against his knee, and he downed it.
    Joe had his leg up against the wall by the TV, almost doing the splits as he stretched. “I’m talking your food, man. The stuff they put in it. Look at my juice. One hundred per cent organic. None of that MSG, pesticide crap. It’s going to kill you. Harden your cells till they can’t move, stick in your brain and make you dumb. Look at me.” Joe leaned in to his stretch to become about a foot thick. “No pesticides in this body. I’m keeping it clean. Only put top-grade into it.”
    Greg put his empty aside and cracked open the second. It burned going down, the heavy tomato flavour spiced with basil and some kind of pepper. The buzz was kicking in good now to make him feel alive. Joe got it where he worked, when he felt like it, at an organic food store. Greg wouldn’t touch half the crap in the fridge that Joe brought home, but the juice was OK.
    “Come on, run with me,” Joe coaxed as he brought his foot off the wall and did a smooth, effortless back arch into a stretch against the floor. OK, maybe that’s how he got the girls. “We can take the river route. Look at the hookers,” he added, grinning.
    Greg threw a T-shirt at him, which had been wedged between the cushions, and Joe put it on, hiding his thin chest and the new passion marks. “We’ll look like a couple of gays down there,” he said, remembering the feeling of watching eyes on them the one time they’d taken the river path after dark.
    Joe leaned the other way, hamstring stretching. “Not if we’re looking at hookers.”
    Staring at the TV, Greg tried to find a way to say no without looking like he was scared. The river route was a dark stretch of winding pavement between the bar district and the carnival about two miles away. During the day, the long riverside park was the realm of mummy daycares and lunchtime athletes, but at night, it became the property of gangs, dealers and stupid-asses that were too stupid to stay out of the stupid park after sundown.
    “Come on, it’s only a mile, then we’ll loop back through the city,” Joe coaxed. “Seriously. If I don’t get out and move, I’m going to explode. Unless you think your vampire is going to come back? Bring your dog sticker if you’re afraid.”
    Dog sticker. It was a shiny length of collapsible steel that Greg used to beat off pony-size poodles and yappy terriers who thought a running man was fair game, but the shiny point on the one end when it was extended would beat off muggers, too. Not that he’d ever had to use it.
    Groaning, Greg clicked off the TV, got up and stretched for the ceiling to feel his back pop and crack. It would be nothing but crack heads, shooters and human trash down at the river once they got past the bars, but like Joe said, it was only a mile before they got to the better lit path beyond it. And he liked to run with Joe, especially at night when the air was cool and it felt like the world was sleeping. He had never been a slouch, but Joe pushed him. One more block, one more mile. He was in the best shape of his life for all the pizza and beer. “I don’t know how you talk me into stuff like this,” he grumbled.
    Joe got to his feet, clearly eager. “Give me a sec to get rid of my bed warmer,” he said, and Greg finished his second bottle in a rush, draining the last thin stream with his head tilted back.
    “Dude. You gotta start treating your ladies with more respect.”
    But Joe was already walking away, cocky as all hell. “Yeah. Being Mr Personality has them lined out our door for you,” he said, vanishing into the black pit his bedroom was. “Hey, bitch!” came his faint voice, joined by a high-pitched protest when the sound of the water quit. “You gotta go. Me and my man are going running!”
    The woman’s confusion grew louder, and Greg turned from balancing his empty bottles on the tower they were