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Back Destroy All Monsters
Chapters (79)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Praise for Destroy All Monsters
  77. Books by Sam J. Miller
  78. Back Ad
  79. About the Publisher

Crazy fears filled my head. But then Connor opened his mouth, and it was so much worse than anything I’d been imagining.

“I don’t want to be your pick-me-up anymore. The person you hook up with when you’re feeling down,” he said, avoiding looking at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be insensitive. I know it helps you. But it’s been messing with me, and I can’t handle it anymore.”

I put my hand on his leg. He pulled it away. “Are you okay?” I asked.

The words looked superhard for him to say. “I care about you, Ash. A lot. And I can’t just do this and pretend it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Oh, honey,” I said, and reached for him, and then stopped. Because I didn’t want to touch him if touching him made him upset. Like even that would be leading him on. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

He looked at me, for what felt like the first time. His eyes were round, hazel, electric. “Didn’t you?”

And I had. On some level, I must have. I didn’t want to see it, because seeing it would mean I was an awful person, playing with his emotions, hurting him, ignoring his pain for my own momentary sense of well-being.

Humans are so strange like that. When we don’t want to see something, we just don’t see it. Or we tell ourselves it’s something else. That’s pretty much an essential part of how we survive in this world.

The smell of his sweat was strong in the air. Normally the scent was sexy to me, exciting. Now I could see it more clearly. All this “manliness” . . . it didn’t match up with the soul behind his eyes. He was something softer, kinder, more sensitive than the world wanted him to be.

An image flashed in my head: irrational, absurd. Connor as a six-year-old, being carried piggyback by a fully grown Solomon . . . in a weird little hut. Laughing like the happiest kid on the planet.

“If you want to go out on a date sometime, call me,” he said. “Roller-skating. Bowling, over in Catskill. But without that? I’m sorry. I thought I was mature enough to handle it, but I’m not.”

I didn’t answer, not right away. The easy thing to do was say, “Yes, let’s go roller-skating.”

But the thing was, I couldn’t. And he deserved better than that. So all I said was okay.

For a second he looked surprised, and then he nodded. “See you around, Ash.”

I wanted to say more. It felt wrong, after everything we’d done together, to have so little in the way of goodbye. But I didn’t want to make things worse. So I just went out the door.

Me, and all my unanswered questions.

Thirty

Solomon