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The dude leans against a white SUV, but kicks off it as soon as I speak. I can’t place him, but something about him feels familiar. A young-ish man, definitely older than me, but not old enough to convince me he’s my long-lost daddy, finally crawling back home from wherever the hell he’s been for over a decade. Whoever this guy is, though, he knows me.

“Tommy?” he says, sizing me up like I’m an alternate version of myself he can hardly fathom. “Hell. Last time I saw you, you were just a lanky kid with acne and braces.”

“Uh, who are you?” I come back down the walk cautiously. It doesn’t hit me until the guy introduces himself as Paul Hammel that while he’s not my deadbeat dad, he’s Mav’s.

The front door opens behind me, and there’s Erica coming out the doorway. My first thought is,where’s Mav?But I gettoo caught up on my second thought to ask my first,what the fuck is Paul Hammel doing here?

“Tommy.” Erica comes down the porch steps looking like I caught her stealing money out of Ma’s purse. “Y-you remember Paul, right? We’ll be out for a bit. I thought you had work today.”

Looking between the two of them, I don’t know how to react. Here’s the man who left my sis high and dry when she was pregnant, never to show his face around his own son, and now he’s here. Doing what? Picking Erica up for a date like they’re back in college?

“What’s going on?” I ask Erica.

As if it’s no big deal, she steps past me in favor of Paul Hammel and says, “Paul’s in town, and we’re going to grab an early dinner and catch up.”

Grab an early dinner and catch up?

“Where’s Mav?”

Her eyes turn slightly pointed. “I’ll talk to you later, alright? After you get home from work.”

“Good seeing you again,” Paul says to me before leading the way for my sister to get into his SUV.

The feeling in my gut tells me something’s off, but it’s probably my hatred for Paul that’s causing it. I just don’t know where Erica’s hatred for him went off to now that she’s sneaking off into his Durango tocatch up.

By the time I change into my work shirt, I’ve got two texts. One from Erica telling me Ma took Maverick to Costco with her, and one from Rowan—a fresh addition to my endless bank of dick pics.

At least he’s feeling better.

While Rowan is the one I’m texting in each of my spare moments at work, as soon as I get home, the only thing on my mind is finding Erica to take her up on her promise to “talk to me later.”

It’s almost ten o’clock. Mav’s asleep and Ma is in her room with the TV on. She texted saying she put my dinner in a Tupperware in the fridge. When I go into the kitchen, Erica is coughing up a lung in the sink with the water running.

“Hey, hey, you alright?” I give her middle back rhythmic pats that make a dull, hollow sound as Erica retches speckles of crimson into the white porcelain. I whip a dish towel off the oven rung and have it ready for Erica to take and clean the blood from her chin.

“Erica—”

“It’s okay,” she says, shutting off the water.

“You’re not okay. Let me take you to the ER—”

“Tommy.” She grips my biceps and looks up at me with earnestness in her sad eyes. “It’s okay. It’s going to get worse now. That’s how it works, but it’s okay. I’m okay. I don’t want to go anywhere, and I don’t want you to worry.”

“How long have you been coughing up blood?”

She answers by darting her eyes around, like checking to make sure Mav isn’t hiding behind a cupboard. “Want to go for a walk?”

The nights are getting cold. I wait on the front porch for Erica to find a coat, then we pick a direction at random and head down the street. We walk slowly, but Erica still stops me three times to tell me I’m going too fast. I end up heel-toeingdown the sidewalk with Erica’s hand on my elbow, neither of us speaking what’s on our minds until we’re a block and half from the house.

“Where were you last night?” she finally asks.

The answer comes out easier than I expect. “Stayed with Rowan.”

“You never used to stay over at Annalese’s.”

“That was different. That was Lese. Besides, her mom’s got all those cats, and I’m more of a dog person.”

“You’ve never had a dog,” Erica chuckles.