Save Yourself by KELLY BRAFFET

Author:KELLY BRAFFET
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385347358
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

When he left the house for work that night, Mike and Caro were out. The beautiful day had turned into a chilly night and he was wearing a jacket for the first time in months. In the sky a cartoon moon drifted between clouds and he was glad he was walking. The dirty little secret of his postautomotive life was that he rarely minded walking, particularly at the time of night when he was likely to do it. It would be worse at four in the afternoon, when the grassless Ratchetsburg streets were packed with cars and fumes and noise. At midnight, though, it was a kind of bliss, even if every cop on the road did slow down as they passed him.

Work was Layla-free, for which he was grateful. Caro had told him once that the definition of insanity was expecting a different outcome from the same actions, and if that was the case, he was out of his ever-loving mind. Because part of him wanted Layla to come in. Part of him wanted to drive off somewhere in her big black car, to find some empty cornfield where the fat cartoon moon could reach through the windows and make her pale skin glow. He counted his drawer, restocked drink cups, made new coffee; and all the while that loathsome part of him was back in his bedroom reliving that blow job, standing on the street feeling her hand on his cock. That part of him wished he’d pulled the sheets away from her instead of covering her. The rest of him would have liked to hit that part of him with a brick until it stopped moving, and then dump the corpse in the nearest and deepest body of water.

It bothered him that Caro knew he’d been with her. He didn’t feel like it should, but it did.

When he got home, the sun was rising sweetly and pinkly in the east, but for Patrick it was still the day before. He took a shower and lay down, but he was restless and his pillow was thick with Layla’s smell and with Caro’s, from the perfume Layla had put on. The combination was erotic and upsetting. After a while he got back up and put on his running clothes. On his way out of the house he heard noises coming from the garage and went down to see.

It wasn’t Mike, it was Caro, sitting on a milk crate in her bare feet with her hair pulled back, reading a magazine. Surrounding her were other piles, clothes and papers and all sorts of random things—Patrick’s dad’s things. She was very beautiful: her ankles crossed in front of her, the delicate sweep of her neck. The smell was strong in the garage and she shouldn’t have to do this, he thought, she shouldn’t have to be the one to clean up the old man’s mess. He said something to that effect and she blew him off, so he left her to it, and went for his run.

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