Marie Ferrarella - Romancing The Teacher

“You sound pretty coherent for a drunk,” Officer Holtz commented.

“Practice,” Ian replied. In truth, there were more pills in him than alcohol, and maybe he was a little dangerous. Reckless even. Most nights—because nights were when it was the hardest—he could keep a lid on it, could go on. But tonight the pain had won and all he wanted to do was still it. Make it stop.

But it was still there. The physical pain would go away. This never did, no matter what face he showed to the world.

There was a street lamp not too far away and Ian could make out the officer more clearly now. His face was redder than it had been a moment ago.

“Think you’re immortal?” the officer jeered.

“I’m really hoping not.” His voice was so calm, Ian could see that he had rattled the man.

“Wipe that damn smile off your face,” Officer Holtz ordered. “Calling this in is procedure.”

Ian gave up attempting to stand. He needed to wait until his limbs could support him. Or maybe until his head stopped bleeding.

Very gingerly, Ian laid back on the damp grass, his head spinning madly like a top off its axis. Oblivion poked long, scratchy black fingers out of the darkness to grab hold of him.

Ian laughed shortly. “Wouldn’t want to mess with procedure.”

It was the last thing he said before the abyss swallowed him up.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Marcus Wyman’s question reverberated about the small, clean square room within the police station where lawyers were allowed to talk to their clients in private. Anger swelled in his voice and glowed in his small, brown eyes as he regarded his client and friend.

Ten feet away, on the other side of the door, a guard stood at the ready, waiting for the minutes of their allotted time to be over.

Ian leaned back in his chair, tottering slightly on the two back legs. He sat on the far end of the rectangular table. His face was turned from his lawyer as he stared out the window.

That side of the building overlooked a large parking lot that was landscaped with ficus trees that some gardener had shaped like beach umbrellas, an example of city life attempting to appear rustic. City life would win out in the end.

The bad always ate the good, Ian mused, detached.

When he finally responded to Marcus, he sounded oddly hollow. “As a matter of fact, I was trying not to think.”

Marcus was a short, stocky man with the nervous habit of massaging his chest, moved restlessly around a room. The man knit his thoughts together in a slow, plodding fashion until they emerged into a complete, meticulously constructed whole. He claimed his nervous habit helped him think. Graying at the temples, his mouth lost in a perpetual frown, it was sometimes hard for people to believe that he was only a year older than Ian.

Having Ian for a friend, he claimed, had aged him.

They’d known each other for close to twenty years, since Ian was eleven, and Marcus liked to think of himself as Ian’s one true friend, even though, any so-called in-depth article would claim that Ian Malone—otherwise known as B. D. Brendan, the bestselling author of fifteen science-fiction novels—had a squadron of friends.

Hangers-on were all they were and Ian knew it. His dark good looks, bad-boy reputation and razor-sharp wit lured people, especially women, by the legions. Ian attracted crowds wherever he went. But within his dark, somber soul, Ian Malone was very much alone. Deliberately so.

His friend, Marcus knew, was punishing himself. Punishing himself for something he’d had no control over, no hand in planning. Fate had spared him while taking his parents and his older sister in a devastating earthquake two decades ago. And he never forgave himself for surviving, never stopped asking why he wound up being the one to live while they had died.

Knowing all that, there were still times when Marcus wanted to take the much taller Ian by the shoulders and shake him until he came around. This afternoon was one of those times.

He’d been unceremoniously woken out of a deep sleep at five this morning. Ian, calling from the city jail. He’d been on the case since six.

Ignoring Ian’s reply, he went on to make his point. “I had to pull a lot of strings, but I think I’ve managed to keep this out of the newspapers.”

He was talking to the back of Ian’s head and it annoyed him. Worried about Ian, he’d snapped at his wife as he hurried out of the house and had skipped breakfast entirely. Neither of which put him in a very good mood.

Receiving no response, no sign that he’d even been heard, Marcus raised his voice. “And I think I can get the standard sentence commuted.” Even first-time offenses for DUIs were strict. The courts had made it known that this wasn’t something to be viewed lightly. Licenses were immediately suspended, stiff fines and penalties imposed. Not to mention the threat of jail time. “Ian, are you even listening to me?” he asked impatiently.

Ian had heard every word. He remained exactly where he was, staring out the window. “Do you know what yesterday was, Marc?”

Marcus sighed and moved his hand over the everwidening expanse of his head. Up until four years ago, his hair was as black and as thick as Ian’s. But then nature decided to take back what it had so generously given and now there was only a fringe around his ears to mark where his hair had once been.

“The day you wrecked your Porsche?” Marcus guessed wearily.

“No.” Ian paused, as if it physically hurt to utter the words. “It was the twenty-first anniversary.”

Marcus stiffened.

“I forgot,” Marcus admitted, his voice small, apologetic. Had he remembered, and knowing what his friend could be capable of, he would have spent the day with Ian.

Ian exhaled. The small huff of warm breath clouded the window pane. “I didn’t.”

Crossing to him, Marcus placed his hand on Ian’s shoulder. Despite his girth, Marcus was a gentle man and compassion was his hallmark. His wife referred to him as a giant teddy bear. He was the only one, outside of Ian’s grandparents, who knew the story. Even so, Marcus always suspected that there was more to it, that Ian had kept back a piece of his grief to torture himself with.

“Ian,” Marcus began softly, “you have to let it go sometime. Don’t you think that twenty-one years is long enough to wear a hair shirt?”

There was an anger raging within him, but Ian kept it tightly wrapped. Marcus didn’t deserve to be lashed out at. He meant well and only tried to help. But Marcus didn’t understand what it was like. What it meant to be buried alive, to have the people you loved dead all around you.

Ian moved his shoulder so that Marcus was forced to drop his hand. As he did, he could feel Ian’s smoky-blue eyes boring into him.

“No,” Ian replied. The word was uttered softly, but there was no missing the underlying passion beneath the word.

Marcus suppressed a sigh. Returning to his end of the table, he slowly ran his hands over the sides of the expensive briefcase Ian had given him when he’d passed his bar exam. At the time, Ian had scarcely been able to afford to pay rent on his rundown studio apartment. But by hocking the gold watch his grandfather had given him, Ian had gotten the money together to buy him the camel-colored leather briefcase. Whenever he lost his temper with Ian, Marcus always looked at the briefcase.

And cooled off.

“Look, this is your first offense, thank God—” Quitting while he was ahead, Marcus didn’t ask if there had been other times, times when his friend managed to avoid detection. What he didn’t know wouldn’t keep him up at night.

“There’s a reason for that,” Ian said.

He’d never driven under the influence before. When the need to blot out the world overwhelmed him, he’d always drowned his grief at home, alone. Away from prying eyes. Last night represented a crack in his control. And he didn’t like it.