Damaged Hearts. Jan St. Marcus

guy, but I also don’t think I want to give too much away. Then the realization hits me that I can’t win. I feel my shoulders slump. He takes another sip and looks out the window at the beach. “Okay. Let’s do it. I go first, right?”

      “Sure, if you want to.”

      “Oh, you’re on like Donkey Kong,” I say, instantly regretting how corny I sound.

      He sits up and looks me in the eye. For some reason, his intense stare rattles me, and I look away. I have to. I forgot what I was going to ask him, but then I remember when I asked him why he helped me last night, he couldn’t answer. “Why did you help me last night,” I ask. Boom!

      He stirs uncomfortably and sips his beer. He looks me in the eye. “Long answer or short?”

      “Let’s try the long one,” I drawl smugly.

      “My brother died about six months ago—”

      “Sorry for your loss,” I say, instantly sorry I asked.

      He waves his hand dismissively, and then gets a faraway look in his eyes. He looks back at me. “And I was walking the beach for about three hours, trying to figure out how I’m going to learn to enjoy my life again when I saw what those ass-hats were doing to you. Something about it just got under my skin, and as much as I tried to ignore it as none of my business, I realized that if it weren’t my business, whose business would it be? And the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. I’m not very good at being pissed off.”

      “Clearly,” I laugh. “Is that all?”

      “Yeah. That’s it.”

      “Okay. Good enough. I’ll buy that.”

      He laughs. “Thank you for your generosity. My turn?”

      “Go for it.” I take a sip of beer and steel myself for his first question.

      “Why are you homeless?” Kaboom!

      “Fuck you.” Oh shit! “Did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean it like that, but fuck, dude. Don’t you want to start with a softball question?”

      “No,” he says, returning my earlier smugness. “I’m happy with my question.”

      “Gimme a minute?”

      “Remember, you don’t have to answer if you can’t be honest.”

      “I know. I know. Let me figure this out.” Now it’s my turn to look out at the beach. Should I tell him everything? It doesn’t seem fair. I knew this shit was going to happen. Me and my big mouth and stupid runaway brain always get me into trouble. But what the fuck? I have nothing to lose. “You want the long or short answer?”

      He laughs at my turning around his own words. “Gimme the long answer. Fair is fair, right?”

      I nod. “I guess so.” I take a generous swig of beer and meet his eyes. “I’m an orphan. I never knew my parents. I guess my mom gave me up right after I was born and there’s no father listed on my birth certificate. So I grew up in foster homes, group homes, and had a couple of stints in juvy for doing stupid shit. Mostly fighting, I guess. When I was fifteen, I had finally landed with a decent foster family, but I was so fucked up by then, I didn’t know how good I had it. Couldn’t appreciate it, you know?

      “Anyway, after about eighteen months, the older kids had really started bullying me pretty bad and when I had had enough, I punched one of them so hard I broke his nose and crushed his jaw with a single punch. And that was it. They pulled me from the foster home and put me into a group home that was even worse. I ran away and never looked back. I lived on the streets in Memphis until I was seventeen, and when I got tired of being cold and hungry and tired and broke, I joined the Marines. I mean, it took some doing because the dickheads at Child Services couldn’t get it through their heads that for me, dying in the Marines was better than dying on the streets. So I got emancipated so I could sign for myself at seventeen, and I joined up.”

      My eyes have drifted down to my beer bottle. When I realize it, I look back up at Michelangelo, and his expression breaks my heart. His eyes are wet around the edges. Is he really about to cry? I look back down and go on. “When I was in Afghanistan . . . wait, let me go back. At first, the Marines were pretty good for me. Nobody there cared about my past or my background. All they cared about was if I could be a good soldier. I guess I could be. Once they realized that I would always be a bit of a smartass, my sergeant, Master Sergeant Kilroy, took a special . . . let’s say he took a special interest in me. He rode me really hard, like all the time. But one night he pulled me aside and told me that the reason he rode me like he did was because he saw my potential and wanted me to pull my head out of my ass so I could survive that shithole and make something of myself back in the real world.

      “Long story short, Kilroy was walking right in front of me one day on patrol and he got sniped. His head exploded all over me, and we had this massive firefight. We lost three more dudes that day, and my squad mates said I walked around with a piece of his brains on my face for like three hours. Shit.” I take a swig of beer.

      “We can stop if you want,” Michelangelo offers.

      “No. Let me get through it,” I say. “Anyway, I served the rest of my tour and we lost four more guys and for some fucking reason, I made it out. I survived. But I’m not okay. Far from it. I can hold down a job for little stretches at a time, but fuck, people are such assholes. I end up fighting with dickhead bosses and dickhead roommates, and I can’t seem to save any money because I can only get minimum-wage jobs when I work at all, and they don’t pay enough to get a place of my own. So being homeless is just easier.”

      There is a long silence and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore outside seems to take over the room. “Damn, dude.”

      “Yeah. It is what it is, though, right?” I sip my beer again.

      “So you didn’t need my help at all, did you?”

      “Not if I wanted to kick the guy’s ass. But I didn’t care. I sure as hell didn’t want to go to jail for beating the shit out of him.” I look at Michelangelo and smile. “Does that count as your second question?”

      “Do you want it to count?” I smile. “Fair is fair, right?”

      “Okay. Your turn.”

      “Why don’t you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other?” Boom!

      “Who says I don’t?”

      “Remember the rules, dude. You don’t have to answer, but you have to be honest. There’s no way you could rescue me and offer to be roommates if you had anybody to answer to. And there’s no sign of anybody else that’s spent any real time here with you.”

      “Fuck you!” he says. But he’s smiling. I nailed it! “I’ve never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. And no, I’m not gay. At least not that I know of. My twin brother was the only significant person in my life, so if you want to call him my ‘significant other’ I wouldn’t lie and disagree.” He gets that distant look in his eyes again and looks out over the beach. “Our parents died when we were eight. Our aunt and uncle raised us, but we were pretty much a burden on them and their family—they had three other kids. So when we both got into college, that was about it. We exchange Christmas cards, but we were never like real family.

      “Did I mention we were twins? Like totally identical. We had our own language and basically spent every waking moment with each other. People who knew us thought we were weird, but they don’t know the half of it.” He stops and looks at me. “Are you sure you want to hear all of this?”

      “Fuck yeah. I just poured out my soul to you, so spill, dude.”

      “Okay. Twins can be a really weird thing. I was like forty-five minutes older, and my mom was in distress when they were trying to get him out, so they had to do an emergency C-section and they thought he was deprived of oxygen for six minutes, so they were all panicked. When they finally got him