Free The Best I Could by R. K. Ryals

descended, filled only with night
sounds. Bugs buzzed, crickets sang, and passing cars revved. A
plane flew low overhead.
    Eli shifted. Tugging a pack of cigarettes out
of his pocket, he slammed the bottom of it against his palm, and
then freed one of the butts. Lighting it, he slipped it between his
lips, drawing attention to his frown. The end sparked.
    He exhaled, smoke curling into the night.
“You make a habit of sitting outside?”
    Furrows dug themselves between my brows. “I
prefer roofs, but you know …” My shoulder rose.
    A safety light came on, throwing a dim glow
over the street.
    I cleared my throat. “Look, I don’t know
why—”
    “So, your dad committed suicide?” Eli asked
suddenly, cutting me short.
    I froze, my shoulders stiffening. Deena had
said too much when she’d verbally attacked me in the yard. “I don’t
see how that’s any of your business.”
    He took another drag on the cigarette. “It’s
not.”
    That was it. No emotion. Nothing. Just “It’s
not.”
    My stomach clenched. I didn’t know why he was
here, why the guy I’d first met on a roof was suddenly standing
next to me, but there was something oddly confessional about
it.
    Standing, I stared up at
him. “He didn’t … technically , he didn’t commit suicide.
On paper, his organs failed, starting with his liver.
Realistically, he killed himself. My mother died in a car crash
three years back. Dad couldn’t handle it. He started taking copious
amounts of medications, washing them back with alcohol.” Taking a
deep breath, I breathed, “I guess you could say he died of a broken
heart.”
    Eli snorted, the sound throwing me. I hadn’t
expected sympathy, but I also hadn’t expected the sudden flash of
angry heat in his eyes.
    “Women,” he spat. “It always comes down to
women.” He laughed shortly. “So he killed himself over a woman.”
His head shook.
    Anger blazed a trail of fire through my
veins, but I held it back, my curiosity over his sudden rage
piqued.
    “You don’t like women?”
    He exhaled smoke into the air. “Depends. I
like fucking them.”
    The look he gave me spoke volumes. He hoped
to shock me into silence with his words, but his declaration had
the opposite effect.
    “Someone really did a number on you, huh?” I
mumbled.
    Dropping the cigarette, he crushed it beneath
his foot. “My mother drugged me when I was a kid. Codeine cough
syrup.”
    The way he said it, it was
like he just needed to say it, like he needed to get it out there in the
universe. It didn’t matter who was there to hear it. Like that day
at the hospital. It could have been anyone on the roof, and I still
would have talked. But it had been him. Today, I was that person. I
was here . Right
place. Right time. Or wrong … depending on how you looked at
it.
    The anger I’d felt before vanished, replaced
with devastating disbelief. “Your mother?”
    His lips curled. “Pretty fucked up,
right?
    I nodded.
    “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Eli
continued, distracted. “She can’t handle things. She likes being
pampered, likes not having to deal with anything difficult.
Children are difficult. My father, her first husband, had a bad
temper. He trafficked drugs, and he was abusive. That’s how it
started. She drugged me with cough syrup whenever she thought my
tantrums would upset him, but then I guess she realized how easy
that made me, and later my siblings, to manage.”
    “Oh … wow.”
    He wasn’t looking at me, his gaze on the dark
sky. I wasn’t even sure he remembered I was there.
    “When my father went to prison years later,
she kept doing it. Until my grandfather walked in on her dosing
me.” He laughed again, the sound full of anger. “Going through
withdrawals at eight years old kind of destroys a kid, you know?
Shit, she could have killed me. She could have killed any of
us.”
    My eyes went wide, the desire to touch him
strong. “And that was enough to turn you off women?”
    I didn’t