Lost Ones

by Nicole French

  But older siblings don’t leave their little sisters in the lurch when they need help. I should know.

  Layla’s not having it either. Without responding to Quinn, she limps back to me, takes my hand, and pulls me into her room, where she shuts the door. I drop the garbage bags on the floor, and while I sit down on her bed, Layla immediately starts pulling things out of them and putting them away, despite her limp, moving in that fast, forceful manner I recognize clearly. They’re the same jerky motions my sisters use when they’re pissed off about something but trying to hold back. Human equivalents of a kettle put on to boil.

  Slam, two pairs of boots hit the floor of the closet. Smack, smack, belt buckles flying into the door of the closet. A bag of makeup hits the desk hard enough to send stray papers flying.

  “Hey, NYU?” I ask as I pull my hat off and set it on the desk. Her shoulders tense. “You, um, you sure you don’t want to rest or something? That stuff can wait.”

  My girl is about to drop. Her movements are sure, but her body droops. She pauses for a second at her closet. The only thing I want to do is curl up with her on this tiny-ass mattress of hers and fall asleep. I’ll hold her until she starts to forget this entire shit storm of a year. Forever, if I have to.

  But forever is going to have to wait.

  “What the fuck?”

  Quinn marches into the room without knocking with a determined look on her doll-like face. I sit up straight. Fuck, no. This bitch is not about to start something with Layla. Not now.

  Layla turns around wearily from the closet. “Quinn, what is it?”

  “You just gave me the silent treatment, that’s what!”

  “Quinn,” I warn from the bed.

  “Hush, FedEx!” she snaps at me before turning back to Layla.

  Her hands find her hips, making her look a little like Peter Pan. A curly-haired, imperious, crazy bitchy Peter Pan. I sort of want to toss her out the window. Be all like, you can fly, bitch.

  “You’re unbelievable,” she snaps. “You waltz back in here with Special Delivery on your heels, looking like Night of the Living Dead, and expect me not to say anything? Give me the cold shoulder and expect me just to take it?”

  I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything. This chick has always looked at me like that, unable to see past the day job. She’s the kind of person who likes to box people in. Layla was fine as long as she was willing to play her part: best friend, whatever. But she didn’t stay in her box, and Quinn isn’t taking it well.

  “My ex-boyfriend just sprained my ankle,” Layla points out as she limps toward Quinn. “I hardly think that allows me to waltz in anywhere. I’m just tired. I was going to put my stuff away and go to sleep, if that’s all right with you.”

  Quinn rolls her eyes. “This is my room too,” she continues. “And you need a reality check. I don’t think I’ve been out of line by asking you not to screw my life up with yours. Speaking of which, what’s he doing here?”

  Quinn nods at me like I’m a fucking lamp or a coat rack. For real, this girl has always bugged me. She has that way about her, that thing rich people do when they treat everyone else like inanimate objects. Like they don’t fucking matter.

  “Don’t talk about him like that,” Layla argues as she steps toward me. “He just saved my life.”

  Without thinking, I take her hand and squeeze it so she knows I’m here if she needs me. I’ll save her ten times daily. And tossing this chick out would be no hardship.

  “Look,” Layla tries again. “I’m sorry. I’ve just…this day has been really hard, okay? I need some space.”

  “Because it’s about you, right?” Quinn’s tone turns nastier with every word. “I forgot. It’s always about you. So fucking selfish.”

  Layla wilts into herself, wrapping her arms around her waist. It’s a posture that, if you know her at all, is a dead giveaway for when she’s feeling like shit. Unsure. Saddened. Worried. I glance between them, seeing clearly for the first time just what my girl has been going through all year. A family that basically checked out of her life, friends who chink away at her self-esteem, and a boyfriend who took advantage of that vulnerability.

  You should have been here. The thought rages through my head.

  Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t have. But I’m here now.

  “Quinn,” I say as I finally stand up. I keep Layla’s hand firmly in mine. “Step off. She’s had a day. We’ve had a day, all right?”

  “Oh, she doesn’t need this?” Quinn whirls around to me, her Peter Pan face twisted into a wicked witch. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been gone all year, Romeo. You have no clue what kind of ridiculous fucking drama she’s put the rest of us through.”

  “I think I do.” I grit out, fighting like hell to keep my patience. “I think I know because I’m the one she called. And do you know why she’d call me instead of her supposed best friend? Because she knows I’m the one who will actually show up instead of judging her half to death.”

  “Right,” Quinn says. “Showing up to jump into her bed. Half this shit is your fucking fault, FedEx! She was fine before you came around, and now you’re here, just like you always were, to fuck her and leave her!”

  “You know what?”

  Layla’s small voice behind me somehow breaks through the conversation. She hops in front of me, and instinctively, I wrap an arm around her waist from behind. I don’t want to admit it, but some of Quinn’s nasty words hit a little too close. Some of this is my fault. And I’ll carry that guilt for the rest of my life.

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Layla says to both of us. She presses gently on my chest, forcing my arm to unwind and let her free. “You’ve done enough fighting for me today.”

  I open my mouth to tell her that I’d fight for her any day, all day. That I’ll fight for her for the rest of my life if she’ll let me. But her face is defiant, and for some reason, it sparks a little pride. She needs this, to stand up for herself, to say what she has to say.

  So I step back, hands up. “Whatever you need, baby.”

  Layla turns to Quinn. “You don’t need to worry about me anymore either,” she says in a voice that’s a lot softer than I think she wants it to be. If it were any other day, she’d be shouting. But right now my girl is tired. Broken. She needs a rest.

  That Peter Pan fantasy starts to sound better and better.

  “What?” Quinn balks. “Of course I do. We all do, clearly. You need to get your shit together and––”

  “No,” Layla puts in again, her voice quivering. “I mean you don’t have to worry about me. You made that pretty fucking clear when Jamie and Shama walked into that room without you.” She shakes her head and pulls on the end of her ponytail. “I don’t blame you for what Giancarlo did or the choices I made with him. I really don’t. But, Quinn, you could have helped instead of pushing me away. You could have called my parents. Even just listened sometimes instead of telling me everything that I was doing wrong. In the last nine months, I have never felt more alone in my entire life, and a lot of that has to do with the way my best friend treated me.”

  Quinn stills. I smirk a little. She was spunky enough in the beginning, with her little threats to me. What’d she say? That she’d feed my balls to the pigeons if I ever hurt her girl? I thought at first that she was that friend, the one who was protective, who wouldn’t let her roommates come to any harm. But where the fuck was she when Layla was hanging around a guy like El Tango Shithead? Where was she when her friend was in danger? I’ve watched and heard enough to know that Quinn’s the other type of girl––the catty kind my sisters cycle through from time to time. Layla’s better off without her.

  Layla continues: “I learned today who my real friends are. Who will really be there for me when things get legitimately tough. Not tough the way we think of it, with tests and final papers and oh, my dad forgot to call me. But really, really fucking hard. Quinn, I’m sorry, but I just don’t have room in my
life for people who can’t hack it. And I guess…that includes you.”

  Her hand reaches for me. It’s a slight movement, maybe six inches from her hip, but I see it. She needed space before, but now she’s ready to take it back. And I thread my fingers through hers and squeeze.

  I got you, baby. If there’s one thing I want her to know in all of this, it’s that. I got her back. Always.

  Quinn’s mouth falls open, reminding me again of a creepy doll. The old kind with the eyelids that open and close and the porcelain skin that cracks over time. She looks between us, at our joined hands, then shuts her mouth, her eyes glazed and angry.

  “You don’t want to be friends?” she asks finally. I don’t miss the way her voice quavers. “Fucking fine. I’m better off without your dead weight anyway.” She looks between us. “I’ll take the couch tonight. You two losers fucking deserve each other.”

  She spins out of the room and slams the door behind her, leaving Layla to fairly collapse into me.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpers into my chest. “That was hard.”

  I wrap my arms around her slim form, pulling her as close as I can. “It was the right thing to do. She’s a bitch.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Not anymore.” I tip Layla’s head up. “Best friends don’t say that kind of shit to each other. She should have had your back. She didn’t. Case closed.”

  I kiss her, gently, if only because now I finally can again. She’s still, unmoving without a sound. Even with her red-rimmed eyes and banged-up face, she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  Layla sniffs. “You should probably go, huh? It’s getting late.”

  I pause. “Do you want me to go?”

  She doesn’t have to answer. Her blue eyes, so uncertain, so conflicted, spell it out. I brush some loose hairs out of her face so I can see it clearly, then tip her chin so she has to look at me.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her solemnly. “I belong with you.” I nod at her bed. “Even if we do have to sleep in this tiny-ass bed of yours.”

  She giggles. It’s small and sweet, and I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been standing inches from her face. But it was there, and the sound of it lights something inside me I haven’t felt in a really long time, and something the day’s events had doused like gallons of water on a campfire. But there it flickers in her smile: hope.

  “Can we––can we turn out the light?” she asks quietly.

  “Sure, why?”

  “Because,” she says. “I’m tired of you looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m about to break.”

  ~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Layla

  We listen to the sounds of Quinn bustling around the apartment, gathering her stuff before slamming the front door behind her when she leaves. I know her. She’ll be back later, after she goes to the gym, maybe studies at the library. She’ll have a bunch of backhanded apologies, and she’ll expect me to forgive her, just like always.

  Except this time, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’m not sure what the immediate future looks like right now––I honestly don’t have the strength to think about it––but I doubt it’s going to include Quinn.

  After the door shuts, Nico flips off the light, casting the room in sudden darkness lit only by the streetlamps shining through the window blinds.

  I’m not sure what I’m doing. What I’m asking him to do. Two days ago I was staying with another man. Someone who was supposed to love me, who had convinced me that he was the only person in the world I could trust, right before taking that trust and shattering it––and me––completely.

  I’m still not sure what to do with that. What to do with my mangled body. I knew, of course, that these things happen. That women get caught up in all sorts of unhealthy relationships. That studies and facts and things like that say that it’s the people closest to you who often do the most damage. But it’s something totally different when it actually happens to you.

  The one thing I do know is that I want Nico here if he’s willing. From the second he burst into that room, at the front of the small cavalry of people still willing to help, it was like the earth shifted a little on its axis––like it had been misaligned somehow and was put right. My body reached for him before my mind and my heart. It reaches for him now, despite all its pain.

  Slowly, ignoring the way the muscles in my neck and arms ache with fatigue, I remove my jeans and crawl into bed in my shirt and underwear. A statue cast in silvery-blue light, Nico watches. I curl against the wall, hugging a pillow to my chest while I look up at him.

  His face is blank, though the muscles of his neck are still corded in frustration. He was holding back with Quinn––this man, who seems to have the urge to save others written into his DNA. How anyone could look at him and not see that is beyond me.

  I close my eyes. How lucky am I that he is what he is? That he came when he did? The numbness of the afternoon is finally wearing off, and what replaces it are the cold chills of what might have happened if he hadn’t arrived when he did. The only cure I can think of is his warmth––his strong, solid warmth that will banish this feeling.

  “Please,” I say, glad the darkness hides the way my chin trembles. I extend a hand. “Come here, will you?”

  Nico swallows, blinks like he’s pulled out of some kind of trance, even though he’s been staring at me the entire time. “Um…I don’t have pajamas or anything.”

  The coldness spreads. “Nico?”

  He crouches down so we’re eye to eye. “Yeah, baby?”

  I bite my lip. He already said he was staying, but now I’m wondering if he was just being nice. “I just need you here, okay? Please?”

  Nico blinks, then shakes his head. “Fuck. Yeah. No, of course, baby.”

  I watch as he strips off his clothes hurriedly. He does so without pretense––it’s not a strip tease; he’s just taking off his pants and t-shirt so they don’t get wrinkled. But even in my wretched state, I can still appreciate the raw beauty of him. The rigid blocks of muscle that have somehow become even more chiseled since last November. The elegant lines of skin and sinew. The way his tattoos, over his right shoulder and the compass over his heart, ripple with his movements.

  He folds his clothes and puts them on my desk chair, then faces me, in just his underwear. He looks down at himself then back at me. “Shit…should I put my shirt back on?”

  I should probably say yes. I’m in my shirt too, and I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I had all of that pressed against me that way. But the chill persists, shaking me through. Having his warm body pressed against mine sounds like the best thing in the world. All afternoon, we haven’t stopped touching. But it was always small, almost platonic. Handholding. This won’t really be that different.

  So I pull back the covers and make room for him to slide into bed with me. He crawls over so his back is against the wall, then pulls me against him, my back to his front, my body fitting to his like the petals of a flower. I hum. We’ve been lost, floundering around apart, finding only after the damage has been done that it’s together that we’re found. Right here, with him. This is where I belong.

  His chest rumbles with contentment as his arms coil around me.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I’m not. Obviously I’m not, and I probably won’t be for a long time.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper into the darkness. Because what else should I say?

  I squirm around suddenly, twisting until I’m facing him instead of the open, empty void of the room. Him. That’s all I want. Him.

  His hands thread through my hair, pulling slightly when they find a tangle or two. Sometimes it hurts a little, but he always smooths it out, runs his fingers back over my scalp to allay any lingering pain. Almost automatically, his lips find my forehead, pressing that same tenderness into my skin. It’s a small movement, but it takes
my breath away.

  I didn’t realize until today how badly I needed to feel a touch, physical or mental, that didn’t hurt. But more than that, I didn’t realize how badly I needed that touch to be his.

  My lips find his shoulder before I can stop them. Nico stiffens slightly. I press them to his neck.

  “Layla.” His deep voice thrums in the dark. “Sweetie, what are you doing?”

  I inhale, my nose buried in the hollow just over his clavicle. The hands in my hair tense, but I can feel the stirrings of something else stiffening lower down. I’m not sure what I feel about that.

  “You make me feel good,” is all I say to him.

  Nico pushes up on one elbow, cradles his head in his hand so he can look over me. He gazes through me, with eyes as black and deep as the night sky outside. He’s searching for something––what, I don’t know.

  “I do?” he asks me.

  Wordlessly, I nod. Please, I want to say. Please kiss me. But the words don’t come.

  Slowly, he leans down and places his lips right under my jaw, to that sensitive spot that used to make me squirm. My breath catches as he flickers his tongue just there. My heart speeds up a little, but in a way that’s good, not bad. This isn’t fear. It’s desire. It’s heat. The opposite of a chill.

  Then he closes his teeth around my earlobe and bites sharply, and I freeze.

  He stops immediately. “What’s wrong?”

  I close my eyes for a second. “That…please don’t…Nico, I just…I.”

  I can’t even get the words out. I’m not sure what they should even be. But his teeth––that tiny hint of pain––struck something deep within me, and something that I thought would be an escape from the horrors of this day suddenly bring it all rushing back, and then some.

  “I can’t,” I squeak. “Please…I…”

  The look on Nico’s face breaks my heart in two. “Did he…”