“I’m shocked because it’s shocking. Your career is shocking, as is surviving it, and surviving it for eons. But most shocking is that you are back here with me and look at you. Look at how you are.”

“How am I?”

“Well you’re nice! You’re beyond nice, you’re downright sweet. I don’t mean to embarrass you but you are. Look at you! You’re happy and fun and exactly the way you were when we were kids before any of this ever happened, so how can that be? How can you do all this and be exposed to all this and have it not effect you? Ruin you? Because it hasn’t and I’m the one who would know. I sleep with you. I did before and I do now so I would know if you were messed up and I am telling you, there is no effect. You are as kind and good as you ever were. You’re better even and you can’t tell me this makes sense. Aren’t you supposed to be jacked up from this?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to be jacked up from it,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if I wanted to be jacked up from it, I’d be jacked up. I could be jacked up from it but that’s not what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“Well I might have done it to prove something to you.”

“What did you say? Prove what to me?”

“That I could do this and not become a cold-blooded killer.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to hide my shock. “You mean that guy said those things to me. He said you would be ruined, and I suggested this to you and you thought… oh my God. Oh my God. You mean you did all this so you could come back and show me…”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” he said with a shrug. He chuckled and blushed a little.

“Holy shit. Well you did it,” I said with my smile lopsided. “You’re back. You left, you did your gig, you made it back and sure enough, you’re not a psycho killer. You have not disappeared into some freak in a psychotic state.”

He just looked at me. I’m not sure he saw the revelation coming himself.

“You’ve gone through a lot to get back to me,” I said quietly.

“Yes, I have. A whole lot.”

I studied him because I wanted to remember.

“You must be tired then,” I said with a wink and a wide grin. “Are you tired or what?”

He just laughed so I laughed and then we laughed and then after that we laughed some more because we still feel like kids you know.

skip to – Epilogue