Faster We Burn

apart.
    “Wanna do another?” he said, nibbling on his bottom lip.
    “Sure. Can I pick this time?”
    “As long as it’s not that Beaver kid.”
    We all laughed.
    “Nope. How about ‘Stay’?” It was a song that he’d gotten from my collection. I wasn’t the only one who needed a musical education. I’d widened his range as well, and that was one of the songs I’d caught him playing more than once. It was also a real duet, with me taking the Rihanna part and him taking the Mikky Ekko parts. Stryker’s and my voices were completely different from Rihanna’s and Mikky’s, but no one seemed to care.
    We got another round of applause, and shared another sexy kiss.
    “Okay, that’s enough of that,” Allan said, throwing an empty can at us. “Time for some real music instead of singing intercourse.” Everyone else took up their instruments and started playing a new song, and I sat back and watched Stryker do his thing again, but kept one eye on Trish and Max. She caught me watching and gave me a wink. Oh, we were soooo going to have a little chat.
    They played a few songs and then it was time for a smoke break and I nabbed Trish before she could escape. Max gave me a kind of scared look and stuttered something about enjoying secondhand smoke and scurried away.
    “You have some serious explaining to do, Trishella.” Instead of slapping me for using her real name like she probably would have a few weeks ago, she just watched Max walk away.
    “What?” she said, tearing her eyes away from his back to finally pay attention to me. The girl was completely gone on him.
    I snapped my fingers in front of her face.
    “I said that you have some serious explaining to do. When and how being the most pressing questions in my mind right now.” She motioned me into the kitchen so we could have some privacy. Stryker had gone out with the smokers to get some secondhand. He was still having trouble quitting, but he’d get there. Plus, he’d probably seen that Max had gone outside and was interrogating him. He was probably about to start the waterboarding any moment.
    Trish leaned against the counter and looked down, a little smile on her face.
    “Honestly, I don’t know. It just…happened. I was so upset at the funeral and he came over and made some stupid comment that made me want to punch him, and then I just started crying again and he hugged me. Out of the blue. And I let him, and it felt nice. He started talking about how he’d lost his best friend when they were kids and he knew what it was like. And I don’t know…I just started talking and he talked and we’ve been talking ever since.” She shrugged.
    “Why didn’t you tell anyone about him?”
    “For the same reason you kept the whole Stryker thing in the dark, Miss Kettle.” Oh yeah. I had done that. “I just didn’t want a big deal made out of it, which is exactly what happened anyway, but at least I got to give Max some warning ahead of time.”
    Half of the smoking crowd came back, loud and boisterous, but Stryker and Max weren’t a part of the group.
    Trish looked concerned. “God, I hope Stryker isn’t trying to beat the shit out of him. Max is a third degree black belt in Tai Kwan Do, so I’m pretty sure my brother would be shit out of luck.”
    “I don’t know. Never underestimate a brother trying to protect his little sister.”
    “He always does that,” she said, tossing an empty cup into the trash. “But it’s like he doesn’t want me to do anything. Even when he’s screwing things up, he refuses to let me do the exact same things he’s doing himself.”
    “He doesn’t want you to make the same mistakes he has. My sister’s the same way.” Kayla always used to catch me sneaking out of the house, usually when she was doing the exact same thing. She might have been my parents’ golden child, but that didn’t mean she had been absolutely perfect. She just hadn’t gotten caught.
    “There they are,” she said as Stryker and Max came back inside. Neither of them had a black eye, and they were talking at a normal volume.
    “Everything looks okay,” I said.
    “I’d better check,” she pushed herself away from the counter and went over to Max, putting her arm around his waist. His arm went around her automatically, like he wasn’t even thinking about it. As if it was natural.
    Stryker said something and then shook his head, and I saw that he was smiling. He shook Max’s hand and looked around the room, stopping