All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(22)

Babulya hadn’t been able to convince Alicia’s mother to go across the street, though. Her father was there for an hour or so before he came home, hollow eyed but clean shaven, his tie still tight at his throat. He disappeared into the den, where he sat in front of the television, watching game shows with the volume turned down so low he couldn’t possibly hear them.

Nobody had cooked a meal in the Harrison house since the news came that Jennilynn’s body had been found on the rocks in the quarry, in the spot where they’d always done their swimming. The fridge was empty. Alicia was hungry.

She didn’t want to be wearing the black corduroy dress with the stupid white Peter Pan collar and cuffs, the narrow red-velvet tie at the throat. It was the only black dress she had. She wanted to slip into jeans and her Converses and a sweatshirt and dive into a bowl of corn chips and sour-cream dip and another of ice cream with hot fudge, or a greasy burger and fries. She wanted to eat herself into oblivion and then roll herself into a cocoon of blankets and sleep until all of this went away.

Instead, she wore that black dress to go across the street and fill a plate with homemade lasagna, a turkey sandwich on a deli roll, a handful of chips. People looked at her, but most murmured as she passed and didn’t actually stop to talk to her. Alicia was glad for that. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She wanted to stuff her face.

Too many people downstairs. She sought the refuge of the upper floor and found the attic, which was quiet and smelled faintly of burnt candles and old sweat socks. Her plate balanced in one hand, she gripped the rail with the other as she climbed the stairs. The last thing she needed was to fall down and break her neck.

Did she know she wouldn’t be alone? She hadn’t seen either Ilya or Nikolai downstairs with the adults, so it made sense that at least one of them would be up here.

“Hi,” she said.

Nikolai looked up from the comic book he was flipping through. He put it down. Swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Hey.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Alicia pointed at a snoring Ilya, curled up on the army cot beneath the eaves.

“Drunk.”

“Shit.” She eyed him. “You’d better put a bucket by his head, unless you want to clean up after him.”

She watched as Niko pulled the garbage can from beneath the small desk and settled it by his brother’s head. She made a place for herself on the folding chair, plate balanced on her lap, and stared at the food she’d piled on it. She’d been starving. Now she didn’t want it.

“I can’t eat this.” Her voice was hollow and distant. She sounded like someone pretending to be Alicia.

Nikolai took the plate from her and put it on the desk. “You don’t have to.”

They stared at each other for a few long minutes. Night was falling outside, an early dark that was more because of the storm clouds that had been hanging low and threatening all day rather than the hour. Alicia looked out the window. Maybe everything from now on would always seem too dark.

“How are your parents?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Shitty. What do you think?”

“We all are,” Nikolai said.

“We aren’t all getting drunk and punching someone in the eye,” Alicia snapped with a wide-flung gesture at Ilya. “Yeah, I know what happened at the funeral parlor. Everyone knows. Everyone was talking about it.”

“Just one more thing for them to talk about,” Nikolai retorted. “Along with everything else about us, like they always do. Those fatherless Stern boys, the one with the crazy mother.”

She was across the room with the front of his shirt in her fists before she could stop herself. She shook him. Tears slid in burning tracks down her cheeks.

“You think it’s about you? It’s not about you! Or him! It should be about her, about Jenni—”

He didn’t try to wriggle out of her grip, but he put his hands on her wrists to hold her still. His lip curled. “Or about you, maybe? Is that why you’re mad? That you’re still not the one anyone talks about? Now that she’s gone, what, you think you can step in and take over as the popular one?”

Alicia jerked her hand from his grip. The slap rocked him. The imprint of her hand on his cheek was first white, then pink and slowly red as he put his own hand up to cover it. His eyes narrowed. Nikolai grabbed her wrist again.

“Go ahead.” She tipped her face up. Taunting. “Punch me in the face the way you did your brother at my sister’s funeral, making asses of yourselves. Go ahead. You want to hit me, Nikolai? I’m right here. Go ahead! Do it!”

She tried to scream, but her breath came out in wispy, whistling gasps. She flailed and tried to smack him again, because why, why did Nikolai Stern always have to be such an * to her? He caught her wrist, holding both again. He didn’t hit her.

He kissed her.

It was what she wanted, all along. It was what she’d been thinking about since the night of the party back in October, all these long months when they’d both pretended it never happened. It was all she ever thought about when she looked at him. The smell and taste of him, the pressure of his mouth on hers. The slide of his fingers in her hair.

Nikolai kissed her with an open mouth. Sliding tongues. Still holding her wrists, although she was no longer trying to hit him, he stepped back toward the bed until they both fell onto it, bouncing on the saggy, old mattress.