A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [109]
We started hanging around together all the time, studying, walking to Class, eating lunch, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, drinking beers, doing whatever, and we became really close. My drinking slowed down to night hours only and I also stopped selling drugs.
I take a breath, look at the ground, remember. The memories are good ones, some of the few that I have. I look back at Lilly.
Christmas came around and she went home to Connecticut and I went to Brazil, where my Parents were living at the time. She gave me the number at her Parents’ place and told me to call her, and though I wanted to call, I never did. I figured it was better to let her miss me, the idea being that her missing me would somehow work to change things between us. I wanted more, much much more. I thought I would be happy if she loved me, I thought her love would help solve my problems, and mostly I loved her and I wanted her to feel the same thing I did.
Lilly smiles, shakes her head, speaks.
Bad move.
What?
Thinking love could solve your problems.
I nod.
Yeah.
You mad that I said that?
I shake my head.
Hard to be mad when something’s true.
She smiles.
I wanna hear the rest.
I chuckle.
When we got back to School, she asked why I didn’t call her. I told her I figured she was busy with her family and that I didn’t want to intrude. She smiled and told me that from now on I should intrude whenever I felt like it. I smiled and tried to be calm, but I wasn’t calm. My heart started thumping and my hands started shaking. She didn’t say it, but I knew. She had missed me.
A couple days later we went to a Bar to meet some of her friends. She sat closer to me than she normally did, laughed a little louder at my stupid jokes, touched me more affectionately on my leg, my shoulder, the back of my neck, my hand. She touched and treated me like I was her boyfriend, and I loved it.
About an hour after we got there, some Cops walk in with a Guy I’d never seen before. These were Small-Town Cops, fat stupid Assholes with mustaches and beer guts and guns and badges. I knew them and they knew me. In the years I had spent in that Town, I had openly taunted them and had dared them to try and catch me on something, which they never had. Now they had this new Guy, and they marched up to me, full of bullshit Cop bravado, and they pulled out a warrant, and they said I had to come down to the Station with them to answer some questions. They said there was another team of People searching my House with dogs. I laughed and told them to get the fuck out of my face, and the new Guy pulled out his badge and said Son, I am with the FBI and your number is up, and he grabbed me and hauled my ass out of there. He did it right in front of her, and did it right in front of her friends. I was fucking humiliated. After years of being in love with this Girl, I was sure she would never speak to me again.
The car ride down to the Station was bullshit. I sang the National Anthem at the top of my lungs, and in between renditions, asked the Cops when we were stopping for pie. The questioning session was even more ridiculous. The FBI Agent kept asking me about my trips to Brazil, which had nothing to do with drugs, and about who I knew in South America, and I just alternated answers. I won’t speak until I have a Lawyer. Your mustache makes you look like a fucking idiot. Eventually the Search Team came back and they hadn’t found anything at my House because there was nothing left to find, and they had to let me go. I walked out, and on my way, I told every Cop I saw to go fuck himself.
Lilly laughs.
What’d they say?
A couple ignored me, a couple said it back, one threw a cup of coffee at me.
Did it hit you?
No.
Did you go see the Girl?
When I came out the front door, she was sitting on the bumper of her car waiting