Everything You Are(22)
“My dad killed himself. When I was fourteen.”
“Oh my God. That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “Long time ago.”
“Not that long.” The words feel strange leaving her lips, slow and heavy. The whole world seems to have slowed down. The waves have a pattern she hadn’t noticed before. Three smaller ones, followed by a bigger one, and the sunlight reflecting on the water is a wonder.
“I still don’t get why you brought me here.”
“It’s a thing in common,” he says. “I needed . . .” His voice drifts off.
“So this is what—a club? Grief ‘R’ Us?”
He laughs. “Survivors Anonymous? Guilty as Charged? The thing is, the other kids don’t get it, right? They don’t have a clue. And I do like you, so I hope you don’t take that all wrong.”
Allie considers. This girl Ethan wants to hang out with isn’t the real Allie, it’s Grief Allie, this stranger she has turned into. Nothing to lose, she reminds herself. She might as well go with it.
His arm still rests on her shoulders.
“Cool,” she says. “Again, not what I was expecting.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
She shrugs, feels heat rising to her cheeks, and says what she would never have said before. “Sex, I guess. I figured you’d worked your way through all the usual girls and were looking for innocent and unsuspecting.”
He’s looking at her, now. Directly into her eyes, and he’s so close his breath whispers against her cheek.
“And are you? Innocent and unsuspecting?” His voice has changed, deepened, there’s a bit of a growl in it.
“Try me.”
And then one of his hands is tangled in her hair at the base of her skull, and his lips touch hers, gentle at first, a question.
Allie answers by deepening the kiss, letting go of memory and guilt in a rush of sensation that drowns, blessedly, everything else.
Chapter Ten
BRADEN
When the bus lurches to a stop on Mercer Street, Braden still hasn’t made up his mind whether he’s going to get off or not. Phee’s scribbled scrap of paper is folded in his hand like a talisman. He doesn’t need it; the address is engraved in his memory along with the color of her hair and the low, sonorous timbre of her voice.
She’s crazy. Obviously. But she’s managed to get under his skin like an itch he can’t scratch.
In his before life—before the accident, before he lost his family, before the alcohol—he hadn’t thought of her as crazy at all. At least once a year, more often if something seemed off, he would bring her the cello and she would croon over it as if it were a living creature. The two of them had been a team, united in the quest to bring out the most mellow, resonant tones possible.
In what he thinks of as the after—the long alcoholic haze in which he’s been living—Phee showed up twice, once at the house, once at the hotel he’d moved into when he was still hoping the separation would be short and he’d soon be back home. On both of those occasions, she’d spouted insane nonsense about some contract between him and the cello, an idiot piece of paper he’d signed when he was still a child—rambling on about a curse that would befall him if he didn’t play.
He remembers that last conversation vividly, one of few clear memories in the days and weeks after he’d lost his music. She’d stood with her foot in the door so he couldn’t slam it in her face.
“You have to play.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t understand. Granddad said there’s a curse if you don’t.”
His laughter in response to those words had hurt more than the tears he’d been unable to shed.
“I’m already cursed. How much worse could it get?”
Plenty worse, as it turns out. Not that the cello or any mysterious curse is to blame. Braden is his own curse. Everything that has happened is his fault. All of it.
As for Phee, he doesn’t hold her behavior against her. He’s done plenty of crazy shit when he was drunk.
He’s so lost in thought, he’s surprised to see that he’s gotten out of his seat and begun following an elderly woman up the aisle. She moves at a snail’s pace, letting out a little puffing breath of pain with every step. When they reach the door, she pauses, preparing herself.
“Can I help you?” he asks, offering a hand.
She elbows him in the ribs and hobbles down alone, one painful step at a time.
There’s a bar right across the street, its neon light flashing: You Are Here. Laughing people sit in chairs out on the sidewalk, an advertisement better than anything television could come up with. See? Drinks are harmless. Fun. Come on in and join us. It’s even happy hour.
He crushes the folded paper in his hand and stuffs it into his pocket as he walks into the bar, breathing in the familiar smell of beer and sweat. He slides onto a stool and smiles at the young girl who appears as if summoned by magic, ready to take his order.
“What will it be?”
“Whiskey. Neat. Make it a double.”
The words have been spoken so many times they are automatic.
“You got it.”
She’s young enough that he wonders, idly, if she’s really old enough to be serving drinks. Not much older than Allie. He watches her open a bottle, pour the amber liquid into a glass. His brain puts Allie’s face in place of hers, the expression on Allie’s face when she offered him a drink.