Cracked Kingdom (The Royals #5)(41)

“I promised to buy her a Birkin, so I could run over her dog and she’d still keep my place warm. This is…interesting,” he comments, looking around the apartment. “Are you doing some kind of social experiment for Ethics like Barnaby Pome did last year?”

“What? No.” I kiss the two bottles of Ciroc and line them up on the counter next to two glasses and the bag of ice I discovered at the convenience store on the corner. Who knew ice came in bags? “Pome’s an idiot. Didn’t he get worms or something fucked up like that? I don’t even take Ethics.”

Ethical Lifestyles is a whacked-out class at Astor Park. The intentions may have been good when the class was conceived, but we Astor kids know how to fuck up anything. One guy almost burned down the school trying to smoke his classmate’s hemp-only clothes. Another girl got sent to the hospital after trying to live in a tree for a month. The worst was Barnaby Pome who decided to be a fruitarian and would only eat fruit. As the semester progressed, he said he would only eat fruit that was grown on its own roots, which is apparently super hard in this day and age of biologically cultivated foods. He took to scavenging on the Bayview shore and in the woods over on the golf course. It was only a matter of time before he was going to get sick. Rumor has it they found a foot-long tapeworm in his stomach from something he’d eaten off the forest floor.

“Then what’s all this?”

I glance up from sorting through the goodies Pash brought me to see him standing in the middle of the apartment, turning in a slow circle. “It’s an apartment.”

“I know that, dumbass, but what are you doing here?”

“It’s Hart’s apartment,” I say simply. That should explain everything.

But Pash doesn’t get it because he keeps asking questions. “Then where’s Hartley?”

“At her parents’ house.”

“There isn’t anything here.”

“Gold star for you, Captain Obvious.” I stare at the pile I sorted. There’s a vape, e-juice, a couple bags of chips, a small baggie of weed and some papers. Where’s the good stuff?

“Are you sleeping on the floor of this hellhole because you’re hoping that Hartley remembers where you guys had sex and comes running back here?”

I stiffen and shoot Pash a glare. “First, you don’t talk about Hart like that. Ever.” I stare steadily at him until his eyes drop to the floor. “Second, there’s nothing wrong with this place. It’s cozy.”

“Fine, but you do realize you’re looking like a nutless wonder waiting for the headcase to remember she’s in love with you.”

Pash’s bravery stems from a friendship that started when we were young enough to think that eating dirt was the bomb, but I warned him once. I cross the distance in two strides and have his collar in my fist in the next one, driving him straight into the wall.

“I told you not to talk about her like that.”

His eyes widen in alarm. “S-s-sorry, man,” he stutters, clawing at my grip.

“It’s not happening again, is it?” It’s not really a question.

Pash gets that. He nods furiously. “Never again. Never,” he vows.

I release him and stomp back to the stash of goods on the counter.

“Dude, this was a Prada limited runway edition from the upcoming Paris show,” Pash complains. “I just got it two days ago straight from Milan.”

“I feel real bad for you. Where’s the coke I asked you to pick up? Or Molly?”

He clears his throat. I eye him suspiciously.

“Yeah, the thing is, I’m worried about you, E-man. You’re acting all weird since the accident.”

“Because I don’t want to hear you talk shit about my girlfriend?”

“No. Because you’re ignoring your friends, you nearly ran over a kid in the school zone earlier today, and you look like you’ve already been on a twenty-four-hour bender. I care about you and that’s why I didn’t bring you any hardcore drugs. You want them, get them your own damn self.” Pash jerks his collar into place and stalks toward the door. The flimsy wooden piece nearly falls off the hinges as he slams the door behind him.

The echo of his footsteps is the only sound I hear for a long while. Even the voices in my head—the ones I try to drown out with the pills, the booze, and the fighting—that are always there are silenced. In the quiet, I feel it. The intense loneliness that I try to keep away. The gaping hole in my heart that I’ve tried to fill with girls, girls, and more girls becomes a canyon that has no bottom, no end. I’m no longer on the edge, staring into the abyss. I’m in it. I’m freefalling in this endless darkness.

I grab the first bottle and rip it open, foregoing the glass and the ice and guzzling it down. If I could inject the alcohol into my veins I would.

I take the bottle over to my carryon and sit on the floor. When I close my eyes, I trade the canyon for a different dark. One where the clouds are closer to the sky. The black night is broken up with streaks of red and green and white. Hartley’s hand is in mine. She’s laughing. Her face is close enough to raise my blood pressure—among other things.

It’s been less than two weeks. Her perfume still lingers in the truck. I can still feel her silky black hair sliding over my fingers. Her mint lip gloss tingles on my tongue. I pretend that she’s here and her slight weight is bearing me into the tacky linoleum. That her fingers are unbuttoning and unzipping and that my fingers are tugging and unwrapping her delectable body. I let my hand drift down to my pants, but the sensation of my hand on my own dick only accentuates my loneliness.