"Though the only difference between you and Trey so far is that..." I lean by his ear to whisper. "I've fucked him before." I even kiss his ear just cause I love messing with him. He turns red but for a whole nother reason.
"I know you're tryna get...
"So where you getting at is..." Nana points a finger at me, like she's tracing a connect the dots paper. "...you killed a crewmate, cause he was goin to hurt a friend of yours?"
"Yes."
"Should you even be announcin that out loud, baby?"
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"You'll call me that?" I felt a chain break loose, and that weight fall completely off me. "Like, you don't think of me any different? I'm not a monster to you?"
"Take a deep breath." I listen to her. "Let it out."
"Nana, I..." I'm at a loss of words right now. "...It's kept me up for nights how I would break this out to you. I thought you'd never- No, I just thought the worst."
"Everybody got skeletons in their closets." Nana holds a finger to lips like she's hushing me. "I kinda thought you'd have more bodies than that. Hell, my husband did and he wasn't official."
"Nana, please take the boy serious. He look like he might drop at any second." Megan sits on the armrest of the couch, tryna find a serious bone in Mrs. Jones.
"I'm just tryna lighten the mood a bit." Nana waves Megan off. "What all that happened? It's been eating you up since you got here."
"Our ship got raided by a rogue team, and all of our supplies were stolen. 90% of our food gone, our engines and radio killed and we were left stranded for months." I feel sick just thinking about how that gun was pressed against my head, and how I was on the brink of death from starvation. How no one would have known if I died.
"How y'all let that happen?"
"I think about that too." I give a weak smile. "They got us when we were sleep, it was pitch black. Have you ever seen the ocean at night?" The crowd, made up of Nana, Deon and Megan, shakes their heads 'no'.
"It's terrifying. No amount of light makes anything visible, it's like walking through a wobbly hurricane with your eyes closed and a thick cloth over your eyelids. But continuing on, we were stranded, not able to connect back to anyone on shore, hardly any food to get us by for two weeks."
"Y'all was left out there to die?" Megan asks standing to her feet, a hand covering her mouth catching the hints I'm throwing. "I wondered why you looked thinner than the last time I saw you."
"It was brutal." I nod my head, acknowledging her. "Slowly, we ran out of food, and had no drinking water. So, it only made sense for someone to go crazy, to lose their mind." I swallow, like I was going to puke even though nothing came up.
"A crewmate, Forger, who had been terrorizing everyone..." My hands fold into fists at the flashbacks of his terror. "... had a target on Jeremy, a good friend of mine."
