Extraits

David: I’m David. What’s your name?

Raymond: raymond

David: Do you ever smile, Raymond?

Raymond: no.

David: Too bad.

Michael looked at me like I was an alien, but the smile inched up a little more. “Do you?”

“Who cares? He ran off as soon as shit got heated. Consoling that dickbrain in the hospital instead of having my back.”

“Are you deliberately ignoring my previous statement regarding the whole Spoiler(cliquez pour révéler) pressing charges thing just so you have a reason to be pissed off?”

“Yeah. I love being pissed off. Makes my dick hard.”

“I could believe that.”

“I’ve been standing here forever,” I groused when he opened the door.

“You just rang the damned bell.” Rolly stood to the side so I could enter. His salt-and-pepper hair wasn’t slicked back with gel like it usually was, and he’d lost his summer tan.

“I texted you ten minutes ago!”

“Texted?” Rolly shut the door. “Fucking kids. Ring the doorbell, for God’s sake.”

I APPRECIATED winter the same way I appreciated a kick in the nuts.

“I’m going to take a shower and make some hot chocolate,” I announced. “If you get up, I’ll give you the rest of the marshmallows.”

“What do you mean, the rest?” Raymond peeked through the blanket he’d wrapped around himself like a cowl. “We just bought two bags the other day.”

“Yeah, but every time you get me to smoke with you, I end up stuffing them down my throat.”

“If you stuffed something else down your throat, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.”

I barked out a laugh on my way to the door. “Shut up and get out of bed.”

I could sense Sharky was curious about me, but he just nibbled on a crust and idly called a suggestion to Chris about how to run the wires.

“I work for the cable company,” Sharky said in a conspiratorial tone. “Ray actually brought me along so I could do this.”

“So why aren’t you helping?” I asked with a laugh.

“Yeah, cockhead.” Chris pointed at Sharky. “Why aren’t you helping?”

“I’m supervising.”

Raymond muttered something in Spanish, and Chris cracked up. I didn’t know what he’d said, but I bit back a smile anyway. Sharky didn’t look fazed.

Nunzio brushed his lips against Michael’s neck, and Michael grinned like a teenage boy getting his first blowjob. You’d think they hadn’t been banging eighty-seven times a day for the past five months.