The Devil Wears Black(44)

“Heightens my senses?” I asked sardonically, feeling my nostrils flare. I’d once eaten an ortolan while covering my head with a napkin to heighten my senses. My senses were higher than the Empire State Building. They didn’t need a pick-me-up.

Madison brushed her thumb along my palm, making a shiver roll down my spine. “Death is no longer an obscure idea. It is real and it is waiting, so you grab life by the balls. When you go through the horror of seeing someone you love die and still manage to wake up the next day to tie your shoelaces, to shove a tasteless breakfast down your throat, to breathe, you realize survival trumps tragedy. Always. It’s a primal instinct.”

I watched our entwined fingers curiously, realizing we hadn’t held hands while we were together. Madison had tried. Once, a couple of weeks into our hookup. I swiftly untangled myself the first chance I got. She hadn’t tried since.

Her fingers were slim and tan. Mine long and white and comically large against hers. Yin and yang.

“How did you concentrate on anything other than your mother dying?” I asked gruffly.

She smiled up at me, her eyes shining with fat tears. “I didn’t. I faked it till I made it.”

I bowed my head down, plastering my forehead to hers, breathing her in. I closed my eyes. We both knew there was not an ounce of romance in that moment. It was a pure this-planet-is-crazy-and-the-human-condition-is-trash moment. It was an end-of-the-world moment, and there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.

Our hairs touched, and I felt goose bumps on both our arms wherever we touched. I didn’t want to let her go but knew with every fiber of my body that I should.

For her.

For me.

I couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, it turned into a hug, but before I knew what was happening, she was leaning into me, and I was leaning into her, and we were swaying in place like two drunks in a sea of summer lights.

She looked up, and her smile was so sad I wanted to wipe it off her face with a kiss.

“You’re brave,” she whispered. “I know you are.”

She knew I was? I didn’t know why, but that made me angry.

“I just wanted to . . . ,” I started, the words dying inside my throat.

Fuck you one last time? Know if you really are having sex with that idiot? Burn down a pediatric practice?

In the end, I didn’t say anything. Just wondered, why couldn’t she be like me? Like Layla? Why couldn’t she want fun and casual and un-fucking-complicated?

“Goodbye, Chase.” She squeezed my hand one last time. She forgot to give me back the engagement ring. I didn’t ask her for it, because (a) I didn’t care about the damn ring, and (b) I knew she’d have to contact me again in order to return it. For all her faults, Madison was the furthest thing from a gold digger I’d ever met.

I leaned down and kissed her temple, letting my lips hover there. She took a step back and went inside.

I watched her disappearing behind her building door.

She kept glancing back.

I kept thinking she’d make a U-turn, like in the stupid movies she’d always tried to convince me to watch. Run back out, jump into my arms. We’d kiss. It would rain (even though it was summer). I’d hoist her up in the air, and she’d wrap her legs around my waist, and we’d go upstairs and make love, fade-to-black-style.

But after a few seconds of staring at me through the glass window of her entrance door, she shook her head and took the second flight of stairs.

I turned around and stumbled back home by foot, pressing my hand against my face, trying to breathe her in from the time she’d rubbed my fingers against her collarbone in the elevator.

Her scent was gone.





CHAPTER TEN

MADDIE

September 1, 2002

Dear Maddie,

Fun fact: The dandelion flower opens up in the morning to greet the sun and closes in the evening to go to bed. It is the only flower to “grow old.” When you were younger, I took you to the park every day. Do you remember, Maddie? We used to look at dandelions and try to determine which ones would turn white and frail first. When they finally did, we’d pick them and blow them. They’d dance in the wind like snowflakes, and you’d chase them and laugh.

I told you it was okay to pick up dandelions and blow on them, because we spread their seeds. Each dandelion that died was responsible for the birth of a dozen like it!

There is a twisted, jagged beauty to the ending of life. It is a bittersweet reminder that it happened.

Seize the moment.

Every moment.

Until we meet again.

Love,

Mom. x



Three Chase-free days had passed.

Three days without Post-it Notes.

Three days where Chase got in, took Daisy, got out, and was out of my hair, just like I’d begged him to be since he’d walked back into my life.

Three days in which Ethan and I were too busy—me with finishing a few sketches that were due by the end of the week, him with his post (half!) marathon rituals. Our official consummation date was postponed, since Ethan needed to sit in a bath full of ice and write a five-thousand-word post in his blog about the medical merits of ice baths (which he sent to me; I skimmed). I tried convincing myself that it was a good thing we didn’t try to have sex the day his muscles were aching and I was still mulling over every single minute from that dinner night with Chase. I was especially bothered by Hug-Gate. I tried to assure myself that nobody thought anything of two adults hugging outside a pediatric clinic. It sounded completely platonic, but the fact that Chase had looked like he was about to maim someone with a butter knife at the table, paired with Julian’s insanely sharp instincts, meant that I was still worried we were uncovered. If that could cause Ronan to faint, God only knew what could happen if he found out the truth.