by Mina Hardy
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Cole
I ask Diana if she wants to spend the night, but I’m not surprised when she asks if I’m okay to take her home instead. She does let me make her cinnamon toast, though. Her hair is a mess, and her mascara is smudged under her eyes, but she’s still so gorgeous it makes me want to take her back to bed again. It makes me want to tell her everything, all the truth of us.
“I love cinnamon toast,” she says.
I know she does. The same way I know her favorite seltzer. Her favorite classical composer. The scent of her perfume and the worst thing she ever did in her life, and so much more.
“Cole,” Diana says, catching me daydreaming. “This wasn’t a mistake.”
“I didn’t think it was. I thought maybe you would, though. Glad to know you don’t.”
She finishes the toast and dusts her hands into the sink. Her lips glisten with sugar, and when she licks them, my cock twitches. She rinses the sink when she’s finished, and even though I hadn’t even come close to forgetting it, at her consideration of my space I am stunned once again at how fucking much I love her.
“But I don’t want you to think that I think it’s okay to be unfaithful,” she says.
I know she doesn’t. She’d said the same words to me already, after the first time we went to bed together. I guess nothing has changed.
“No. Of course not. But sometimes it’s justified,” I tell her.
Diana frowns. “You can always justify your own bad choices. That’s what people do.”
“So … we aren’t going to see each other again, then? Is that it?” I keep my voice calm, even though I think it will kill me to have touched her only to lose her again.
“No. We’re going to see each other. If you want to. I’m a big girl. I make my decisions. I’m just not promising you anything, that’s all. I mean, if there was anything you even wanted me to promise.” She lifts her chin, her voice a little strained. She meets my gaze head-on, though.
She’s going to hate me when she learns the truth, but for now, I can just … have this. Can’t I?
“I’ll take you home now,” I tell her, even though I don’t want to. I want to keep her here with me.
Forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Valerie
AUGUST, TWO SUMMERS AGO
I’d stayed in this motel before. Back in high school, the kids with the fake IDs would rent a couple of adjoining rooms, and we’d party with wine coolers and cheap beer. Someone would lose their virginity. Someone would pass out in the tub. The motel hadn’t changed very much since then, but it was both cheap and the only option in town, especially since I didn’t want to stay at my dad’s house even for the day or two I planned to stay.
I didn’t want to be there at all, but when your dad calls and says he’s dying, you either rush to him because you love him and want to spend time with him or, in my case, so you can hope to be there to see it happen. As it turned out, he wasn’t as close to death as he’d wanted me to believe, but it had come out that he didn’t have a will or an executor, no medical power of attorney, or any of that. I’d finished the final paperwork with him earlier that day, and I’d be heading back to Brooklyn the next, as fast as I could go. He claimed I was just there to make sure I got his money, what little was left of it. He was right.
When I headed outside to get some ice from the machine tucked into a narrow alcove between two of the rooms, I saw a woman going into the room next to mine. I hadn’t seen her since I was in middle school, but I recognized her anyway. Diana’s mother. For a second, I almost called out to her, but she’d already closed the door.
Diana had told me her mother had come back around a few weeks ago, asking for, if not a fresh start to a relationship, at least forgiveness for the way she’d treated her in the past. We’d traded texts about it, but I’d been so busy dealing with what was going on with my dad, traveling back and forth, and also with my job, that we hadn’t managed to connect beyond that.
She’d been happy, though. Cautious, but willing to see what might happen if she gave her mother a chance. I made a note to give Diana a call in the morning, before I left town. If I couldn’t make at least an hour or two for my bestie, I’d be a really shit friend.
Shouting from the room next door woke me in the middle of the night. Two raised voices, both female, but before I could rap on the wall and tell them to shut the fuck up, they both went quiet. I was so exhausted even the hard motel bed couldn’t keep me awake, but a thought jolted me out of sleep—Diana was next door.
I couldn’t be sure it was her voice. I’d been thinking about her when I fell asleep, and maybe even dreaming about calling her. The thought wouldn’t leave me, though. I got out of bed and pressed my ear to the wall.
Nothing.
Moments later, the door slammed hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall. I jumped back, my heart pounding, and went to the window to pull the curtain aside—just enough so I could see out, but not enough that anyone could have seen me watching.
The parking lot was narrow and angled, with one-way entrances and exits. The dark sedan pulling out onto the highway looked boxy, but I couldn’t be sure what kind it was. It might have been a Volvo, the car Diana drove, but it also might not.
I’d turned off my ringer, but my phone vibrated with a call. My dad was dying. I should come right away. I packed myself up as fast as I could and got out of there.
He didn’t die that night.
But, as it turned out, Diana’s mother did.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Diana
Running.
I am running. Branches slap at my face, bruising. I can’t bat them away. My hands are full of something I can’t risk dropping.
Running. I am not running—my burden is too heavy. I am dragging. Step by step, through the night. I can’t see anything but the trees.
The smell of earth. The taste of rain. On my hands and knees, I dig and dig and dig. I make a hole.
I put something inside it.
I cover it up.
Pain. Burning. Ripping. I am doubled over, gripping my side, upright. It’s my heart. My heart is breaking, I think. No, I am dying.
I am dying, and it’s not fair. I’m not ready to go. I just found … something. I just got here, where I am, and now I am going to die.
The pain means I’m going to die, and I scream out.
* * *
Screaming, I wake.
The blankets are tangled around my feet. I’ve sweated through my boxers and tank top, and my hair is a sticky, soggy mess. My mouth is dry, but the bitter acid taste of the orange juice I gulped down at five this morning when Cole brought me home lingers at the back of my tongue.
The house is quiet. Jonathan isn’t due home until late tonight. I hear a ticking clock. Beneath the warm blankets, in my cozy cocoon, I don’t want to get out of bed. I did not wake up feeling as though I’d been dumped in a ditch. Nothing hurts. I luxuriate in this simple feeling of no pain.
Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Until we have pain, we don’t truly know how to appreciate the lack of it. I’m still tired, but no wonder. The clock tells me I’ve only had about three hours of sleep. When I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, it takes my feet a few seconds to find the floor. I yawn, hard, and rub my eyes. I think with longing of my pillow and falling back to sleep, but there is a kind of tired that lends itself to dreams, and then there’s the sort that is better suffered until you can get through it. That’s this kind. But nothing actively hurts in this moment, and if anything, I’m in a happy kind of daze. Maybe it’s the shift I felt last night, that I’m finally ready to take the next steps. Maybe my injuries, at last, are healed enough for me to get back to a normal life.
Maybe it’s Cole.
I wait for guilt, but feel none. Only a rising warmth that spreads up my throat and into my face. I put my chilly hands on my cheeks to cool them and allow myself to think about last
night for as long as it takes my heart to stop thumping. That’s a few minutes, at least. It’s cold enough in the room to help, too. I use the app on my phone to check the thermostat, which has been set to fifty-eight degrees. The HVAC guy said both the furnace and the thermostat were fine, so I check the program, which somehow has been scheduled to swing between freezing and broiling temperatures without any seeming regard to time of day or year or anything that would make sense. Then I take a minute to scroll through the app’s history.
There’s no way to tell if someone’s been changing the program or resetting the temperatures, either manually or remotely. All I can see is how many hours a day the furnace ran. For good measure, I change the pin code to something unguessable and random.
No smell of coffee greets me, which tells me that Harriett is still giving me the silent treatment. I have enjoyed the past few days without her, but I’m going to have to patch things up with her sooner or later. No matter how irritated I’ve been, she’s the only mother I have, and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to have her. Once I leave her son, she will probably never speak to me again.
My stomach rumbles. I’m craving pancakes. They’re usually too sweet and rich for me, but something about a sugary carb overload appeals to me right now.
On my way to the fridge, my feet go out from under me. Liquid on the floor, cold and slippery. I try to catch myself on a kitchen chair, but I miss it. I hit the floor with my right shoulder and the side of my head.
I don’t hear it break again, but ohgodohgodohmyfuckinggod I feel it.
My right clavicle is an inferno of agony. I sprawl in a puddle that soaks my robe. It stinks of white wine, and although I’m not yet able to get up from the floor, from here I can see the edge of the kitchen table and the bottle hanging over it.
A red haze threatens. When it passes, so has my sense of time. I can’t struggle upright without hurting my collarbone, but I roll, gormless and awkward, as best I can toward my left. My feet swim against nothing. My fingers curl into the tiles and slip without purchase. There’s an entire bottle of wine on the floor, wine I did not open and did not drink.
I make it to my left side. Then to my knees. I sag, breathing hard. The pain is not fading. It won’t. It’s going to rise up and up and up until it kills me this time. Or I will just wish it had. And then, after another few breaths, it eases. Still agony, but I will not let it keep me down.
Standing at the counter, my right arm cradled against me, I see a wine glass shattered in the sink. The pitcher of orange juice I remember gulping from is still on the counter. Only an inch or so of juice remains.
I did not break that glass. I did not spill that wine.
I left my phone upstairs. We have no landline. I cannot face the climb right now. I fumble open the cabinet, looking for the prescription bottles that have been in there every fucking day since October, but they are all gone. My purse hangs over the back of a kitchen chair, but it, too, is devoid of pain pills. I dig in the trash with my left hand, tossing aside junk mail and dirty paper towels, but I can’t see any orange bottles. I threw them all away just days ago. Jonathan is the one who takes out the trash, and he’s been gone. They should still be in there. I dump the garbage can and sort through coffee grounds and stinking leftovers. Nothing. They aren’t there.
I hear the low cry I make, but it sounds like someone else. Or something else, some wounded animal. I don’t sound human anyway, and it feels like that’s what I have become. Something mad and feral.
The front door opens. Footsteps. Harriett, in the kitchen doorway.
“Oh dear,” she says. “Diana. What have you done?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cole
I know I shouldn’t expect Diana to call or text me the morning after. Or ever. That doesn’t stop me from checking my phone when I first wake up.
Putting the tracking app on her phone was bad. Using it is so much worse, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it again now. I expect the small blue dot to hover over her address, but it’s moving. She’s driving. I have half a hot second of hope that she’s coming to see me, but that’s just fucking stupid.
I close the app. Then delete it. It won’t stop me from reloading it, or logging in again, but for now I’m at least attempting to not be a garbage human being. I’m a lot of things, and a lot of them are bad, but this is going too far. No matter what we agreed to in the past, this is wrong.
Diana Sparrow does not do what she doesn’t want to do. I know that because I know her. So last night wasn’t something I forced on her. She was on board. God, was she ever. But I did orchestrate the situation. My reasons for it are different now from they were the first time around, but does it matter?
It’s all a fucking mess. I need to leave her alone, let her figure out her life and get divorced. Or not. Whatever she chooses, I shouldn’t be in the middle of it.
I still haven’t figured out what to do with her money.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Diana
HIGH SCHOOL
Val’s house stunk like puke and piss and shit. Unwashed sheets. Food left to rot on dishes all over the house. The smell was enough to make me cough and gag as soon as I got through the front door. I hadn’t been here in a couple weeks, but even so, how did it get so bad so fast?
“Val?” I called out in a low voice.
She’d missed a week of school at this point. She was going to need more than a doctor’s note, which I was sure she didn’t have. If she was sick, it was nothing any kind of medicine could cure.
Her dad’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, but I was still careful. Gino Delagatti had threatened to run me off his property with a shotgun before. I wasn’t sure he’d actually do it, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. He used to like me, but after Val’s mom died, he started hating me as much as he hated his daughter.
“Val!”
I heard a small, shifting noise from the bathroom at the end of the hall. I didn’t want to go in there. The last time I’d seen my mother, she was overdosing in the bathtub, one wrist only half slit but more than enough blood. I couldn’t find Val like that. I just couldn’t.
But I had to because if Val was dying, I had to stop her. So I ran, down the hall, past the open bedroom doors. I slammed open the bathroom door so hard it bounced against the wall, the knob punching a hole in the flowered wallpaper.
Val sat on the toilet, her head in her hands. She wore an oversized T-shirt. Her panties were around her ankles. I saw the splashes of blood everywhere, and for an instant, I was sure she’d tried to kill herself. But then I knew it was just her period. She got them bad, much worse than me.
“I ran out of tampons.” Her voice was hoarse. Dark circles under her eyes made her look like death. “I only have those big fucking diaper pads.”
“I have some in my purse. Why don’t you get in the shower? I’ll bring them.”
She didn’t fight me about it. Only nodded. Slow, like it hurt her. I turned on the hot water and waited until she got off the toilet. She stepped out of her panties and took her shirt off, all so slowly. Her body bloomed with bruises. I could count her ribs. She’d lost so much weight since her mom died, even though it had only been a few weeks. She needed to see a doctor.
I wondered if she regretted what we did. She said she wouldn’t, but people don’t always know what’s going to happen. You do things you think you can deal with, but sometimes it turns out you just can’t.
“Val.” I could only manage a whisper.
She turned, stepping into the tub. The water hit her, so she winced. It splashed out beyond the curtain she hadn’t yet drawn.
Then she started to cry.
I got in the shower with her. It was all I could do. My friend, my sister. The other half of me. She’d lost her mother, and I didn’t know what to say or do to make it better; I didn’t think it could ever get better.
“I love you,” I whispered over and over. “I love you.”
“Pr
omise me that we will always be there for each other.”
“I promise.”
“Nobody will ever come between us, Diana. Promise!”
“I promise.” I meant it. She was my best friend. How could anyone ever come between us?
* * *
This is the ER where I took Val the day we cried together in the shower. It’s the same ER they brought me after the car accident. The same hospital where Val’s mom died. Lebanon’s not a big town, and there’s only the one.
“They really should just take you right back.” Harriett looks uneasily around the room, particularly at a Hispanic family trying to deal with their wailing toddler.
Agony has divested me of any courtesies I’m able to manage. I mutter a comment about how I’m not going to get cooties, and she should really just stop worrying about brown people.
“What’s that?”
I shake my head. “Never mind. It’s fine, Harriett. I’m not going to die.”
Fortunately, that’s when they’re able to take me back to a room. I sit there for another hour while Harriett paces and complains, until I ask her if she’ll run out and get me something to drink. I really just want her to go have a smoke already, because it’s clear she’s jonesing for it, and I’m about to bite her head off.
The doctor who comes in to see me while she’s gone is young. Dr. Banerjee is handsome and knows it, and I’m still barely loopy enough to appreciate the way he tries to set me at ease with a broad grin. He calls for an X-ray. That takes another hour. I send Harriett out for another drink.
Right before noon, Dr. Banerjee comes back to see me. “Some good news. There’s no new break.”
“I felt it …” I shake my head. The meds have worn off. With my arm in a sling, the pain’s manageable. “I thought I felt it.”
“From what I can tell, it’s simply still in the healing process. This is the worst of the breaks, yes?” He gestures at both my clavicles. “Common in clavicle breaks sustained during car accidents. The seatbelt, you know, where it crosses over. You were the passenger?”