When My Heart Joins the Thousand(52)

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” he says.

The alarm bells in my brain clang louder. Pull back. “About what.”

“Us.”

At the word, I twitch, fingers digging into the upholstery.

The air has shifted. Though my eyes are open, I can see the doors of the Vault in front of me. They’re dull gray, flecked with rust, so close and real I could touch them. I blink rapidly. “Can we talk about it later.”

“I really need to get this out.” He runs a hand over his hair and rubs the back of his neck. Then he picks up his coffee cup and sips it, as if taking time to collect his thoughts. His hands are shaking. As he sets the cup down, it rattles against the coffee table. “I’ve wanted to say this for a while, but I waited. Because what we have now is really important to me, and I don’t want to lose it.”

There’s a tiny crack on the wall, near the floor; my mind latches on to it.

“I wanted to take things slow. But I feel like I need to know where we stand. I need to know what this is. What we are. And I . . .”

“Stanley,” I blurt out.

He stops.

I’m having trouble breathing. The wall crack is jagged and dark, and it seems to grow, opening into a void. “I need to go.” I start to stand.

“Alvie, please.”

The words freeze me.

“Don’t run away. Please.”

I’m sliding backward, falling deeper and deeper into myself. My body’s gone numb. I’m floating somewhere outside it, above it.

“Just let me say it, and then you can go, if you still want to. I—”

“Stanley.” My voice is faint and hoarse.

“I love you.”

The words hang in the air between us, and for the space of a breath, there is nothing. No reaction, no movement—as if we’ve plunged off the edge of a cliff and we’re hanging suspended in midair, the world frozen in that single breath before the plummet.

“Alvie?”

“You can’t,” I whisper.

Something has shifted in his expression. His brows draw together. “But I do. I . . . I know you might not feel the same, but—”

“Stop.” My hand drifts to my chest and clutches, fingers clenching and twisting on my shirt, over the ripping pain beneath. “Just—just stop talking.”

Stanley reaches across the space between us, and I flinch away.

Static fills my head, growing louder. No—not static. Water, rushing and swelling, pressing in around me, swallowing me in icy blackness. My vision blurs, and the room tilts. I lurch to my feet and back away until my back hits the wall.

“Alvie? What’s going on? Talk to me.”

I shake my head, braids swinging. “No.” The word escapes on a breath, faint and panicked. “No. No.” My knees buckle, and I crumple to the floor, hands pressed to my temples. Stanley is still frantically calling my name. I hear him dimly, his voice muffled and distorted, and when I look up I can only see a blurred shadow coming toward me. He stretches out a hand.

I hit him. I don’t decide to do it; it just happens. I watch my fist flying out, watch it connect with his jaw.

He cries out and stumbles backward, almost falling to his knees. At the last instant he grabs the arm of the couch, steadying himself, and he stares at me, eyes huge, face white as a skull. There’s a red mark on his face. His hand drifts slowly up to touch it. We stare at each other across the room.

There’s a sensation of falling, as if the floor has vanished.

I have to get out of here. Now.

I run out into the night, panting, and get into my car. My hands are shaking as I start the engine, and I drive away without looking back, windshield wipers slicing through the rain. A dull roar drowns out my thoughts, and I can’t tell if it’s thunder or if the sound is coming from within me.

In my mind, the image of Stanley falling to the floor replays over and over. I don’t think I broke any bones. But the impact was hard enough for me to feel all the way down my arm.

He’s not safe around me. I need to get far, far away.

I drive and drive. When I finally stop, I’m staring out at a dark expanse of water. A lake. The lake. The one where I went with Mama so many times.

Moving like a sleepwalker, I get out of the car. Cold rain hammers my head and back, drenching my shirt. The sky is dark. The water froths and churns like the storm clouds above; when lightning flashes, the waves reflect it, so there’s no boundary between sea and sky, and the whole world—except for the thin line of shore beneath my feet—is a dark, roiling mass. My feet carry me forward. The water pulls me to itself as if there’s a fishing line hooked into my navel, running into the cold depths of the lake, trying to drag me down. Lightning cuts the sky in half, blinding me for a few seconds.

It’s calling me. The lake is calling. I love you, Alvie.

No, no. Clutching my head, I run back to my car.

Once I arrive back at my apartment, I collapse onto my mattress. I’m still wearing Stanley’s clothes. They smell like him, that mild, warm smell, like cinnamon and old books. I rip them off, ball them up, and shove them into the deepest corner of the closet, and I stretch out naked on the sheets, gasping, but it’s not enough. I still feel like I’m suffocating. My apartment’s heater rattles; it’s old and only half works, and the air is frigid, but despite that I’m bathed in sweat. If I could peel off my skin like a wet suit, I would.